On page 1 of the original 1829 “Metropolitan Police – Instructions to Police Officers” it reads “It should be understood, at the outset, that the principal object to be attained is ‘the Prevention of Crime’. To this great end every effort of the Police is to be directed”. (Moskos, 2011); prevention has been a fundamental principle since the very beginning of policing. However, the prison population of England and Wales has quadrupled in size since 1900 to around 88,000 today, whilst the adult population has only just over doubled in that time. Between 1901 and 2021, the prison population aged 15 and over increased from 86 prisoners per 100,000 people to 159 per 100,000 (Sturge, 2024). Projections indicate the situation is set to worsen, with the prison population for England and Wales continuing to grow to between 95,100 and 114,200 by 2027, at a current cost of £51,108 per prison place (Sturge, 2024). Clearly, we have so far failed in this “principal object” of prevention.
However, the driver of increasing prison populations is not related to financial crime. Whilst fraud is now widely accepted as the most common crime type, accounting for over 40% of all crimes in England and Wales, fraud offences are the lowest prison population group with just 642 incarcerations (25 July 2024). Fraud accounts for less than 1% of the prison population, with Violence and sexual offences accounting for 65%, Drug offences accounting for 17%, and theft accounting for 9% (Ministry of Justice, 2024). This low prison population for fraud offences is unsurprising given no effective “Pursue” strategies by politicians or law enforcement. In their report “Fraud: Time to Choose”, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (2019) found in one police force area, 96% of fraud cases referred to them for investigation from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau resulted in “no further action”, despite good evidence on the reports, including some with named suspects. In February 2022, then British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, sustained fraud’s low priority when he claimed crime had fallen by 14% in the two year period between September 2019 and September 2021. This claim was only achievable by removing all fraud and computer misuse crimes from the calculations. Removal of these offences distorted the statistics by 28%, with crime actually increasing by 14% over the period (Norgrove, 2022); fraud by false representation? Then Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, supported Boris Johnson removing fraud from crime statistics, saying fraud was not a “crime that people experience in their day-to-day lives” (Haley, 2022). This laissez-faire attitude to fraud has arguably led to the “lost decade” of stagnation in counter-fraud policy described by Helena Wood (2024) following 2010.
Though Wood (2024) suggests more has been done to counter fraud in the past 12 months than in the past 12 years, systemic capacity does not exist to viably pursue fraud and financial crime to achieve prosecution and imprisonment. Clearly, alternative, effective Prevent measures are necessary.
In looking for effective Prevent measures, a previous Editorial, Yehuda Shaffer (Shaffer, 2024) identifies one of the “preventative” achievements by the Financial Action Task Force, that it is now harder for criminals to open a bank account. But criminals are like water, when they encounter an obstacle, they will simply innovate, adjust their course and flow around it. To circumvent Customer Due Diligence criminals have recruited “money mules” and “mule herders” to launder criminal proceeds. Money mules are often younger or have other vulnerabilities criminals exploit. Due to the threat caused and growth of Money mules, in 2023 UK Finance and Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System (CIFAS) joined forces to launch lesson plans and assembly presentations to schoolchildren in the UK aged 10–14 (CIFAS, 2023). The distributed materials warned of the dangers of children being recruited as money mules, used by fraudsters, terrorists and drug traffickers to launder their criminal proceeds.
Another previous editorial by Patrick Rapper (2024) considers the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which introduced a “failure to prevent fraud” offence, and also widened the scope of the senior manager test. Whilst this Act is seemingly titled and targeted specifically towards economic crime and fraud, it is still not targeted towards prevention and is just reaching for a bigger prosecution net that we know we do not have capacity for.
A more targeted Prevent measure may be identified in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (the Act) (HM Government, 2022). Although the Act is targeted toward preventing violence offences, it may have greater preventative impact on economic crime and its harms by introducing the “Serious Violence Duty” (the Duty). The Duty legislates that “specified authorities” for a local government area must collaborate with each other to prevent and reduce serious violence in the area.
These “specified authorities” are the police, local government, probation, youth offending teams, health and social care and the fire service. Inclusion of the word “must” in the legislation is extremely important; it means previously siloed authorities, often with differing perceived objectives, must overcome their different perspectives and cultures to collaborate coherently and effectively going forward; something difficult to achieve (Greer et al., 2019). Working in consultation with education, prisons and youth custody, these authorities “must” identify serious violence crime-types in their areas, as well as their causes; this local research and analysis leads to a Serious Violence Strategic Needs Assessment being published. Authorities “must” then also create and implement a Serious Violence Strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence in their areas; the first strategies needed to be published by 31 January 2024. Although only a “local” strategy, together they form a mosaic of serious violence across England and Wales. A snapshot review of a handful of these strategies unsurprisingly reveals illicit drugs as one of the factors contributing to “local” serious violence, with County Lines drug dealing frequently mentioned. This is unsurprising given government guidance to specified authorities on the definition of “serious violence,” which required the inclusion of a focus on public space youth violence such as homicide, gun crime and knife crime (Home Office, 2022). County Line drug dealing was also required for inclusion due to the inherent threat of violence (Home Office, 2022).
The emphasis in the Act is on prevention and reduction of serious violence through targeted intervention. In a 120-page guidance document published by the Home Office (2022) on the Duty, the word “arrest” is mentioned just once, while prevent/prevention is mentioned 177 times and reduce/reduction is mentioned 140 times. Authorities are advised their local strategy should consult organisations experienced in intervention, such as the Youth Endowment Fund Toolkit (YEF Toolkit), the Early Intervention Foundation and the College of Policing. The YEF Toolkit draws on over 2,000 international studies on effectiveness of interventions in preventing serious violence.
As the Journal readership knows, serious violence, serious organised crime and fraud go hand in hand, together with the criminal exploitation of vulnerable people. In their 2024 National Strategic Assessment, The National Crime Agency (NCA) includes fraud within its definition of Serious Organised Crime, along-side other threat areas including Child Sexual Abuse, and drug offences. The NCA concludes nearly every town in England and Wales is now affected by county lines drug dealing gangs. County lines is an example of how young people may find themselves in a downward spiral of crime that is out of their control. The Serious Violence Duty is drafted to prevent and reduce serious violence, in particular amongst young people and children who are on the short, steep, upward trajectory of the age crime curve which peaks in the late teens (Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1983; Sweeten et al., 2012). This, again, is an important point: interventions and strategies are considered in a targeted, coordinated manner that requires knowledge exchange and data sharing.
The Duty requires meaningful, transparent and accountable collaboration across agencies, building on the continued drive for an evidence-based approach to policing practice that strives to match that of the medical profession. This collaborative approach will develop over time, further increasing effectiveness and efficiency of Prevent strategies. Denley (2023) argues Prevent is an “under-utilised” tool and his study, directed at OCGs in the West Midlands, found targeting lower-level OCG offenders and those on the “cusp” of OCG membership with a preventative, procedurally fair “carrot and stick” approach, achieved a reduction in arrests of 35%.
In the year 2022-23, £106.9m of assets were restrained in England and Wales related to drug offences; 47% of all Restraint Orders since 2017 have related to drugs. In 2022-23, £125.6m in assets were Ordered for confiscation in relation to fraud offences (Home Office, 2023). Arguably, the Serious Violence Duty is inadvertently walking the same “beat” as the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002; or are they just deployed to the same “Hot Spot?”.
