Policing identity crimes

Abstract

Identity-related crimes pose a significant problem to both the UK economy and also its citizens because they cause estimated annual losses of around £1.5billion. Not only do identity crimes cause considerable public concern, but they also create challenges for policing them; not least, because policing responses, in the broader regulatory sense, are often over-reactive or take the form of dramatic Public Relations gestures rather than coherent policing policy. Yet, the realities of identity-related crimes are quite different from the ways that they are perceived and even more important is that fact that this difference presents many challenges for those whose job is to ‘police’ them. This article will look at what identity crimes are and at the very real problems they pose for policing them as non-routine policing activities. The article will, firstly, map out identity crimes and outline the behaviours that we understand as identity crimes and their core characteristics. It will then consider how the characteristics map onto traditional police practice and consider some of the ways that the challenges have been addressed.

Keywords:

• identity crime
• identity theft
• identity fraud
• policing cybercrime
• policing cybercrimes
• social network crime

Acknowledgements

The origins of the first part of this paper are in research conducted on identity-related crime in the UK for the GO-Science (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) Foresight initiative that investigated how changes in technology, geo-politics, demographics and economics over the next 10 years might affect notions of identity and subsequently impact on behaviour (Wall 2013a). My thanks go to the anonymous referees of that paper and also to the referees of this paper for their constructive comments.

Notes

1. Not explored in this article.

2. http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/policy-futures/identity

3. The following six footnotes are taken from Home Office (2012).

4. The cautions statistics relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When an offender has been cautioned for two or more offences at the same time the principal offence is the more serious offence.

5. The figures given in the table for court proceedings relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.

6. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure that data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

7. Excludes data for Cardiff magistrates’ court for April, July and August 2008.

8. The number of defendants found guilty in a particular year may exceed the number proceeded against as the proceedings in the magistrates’ court took place in an earlier year and the defendants were found guilty at the Crown Court in the following year; or the defendants were found guilty of a different offence to that for which they were originally proceeded against.

9. The figures include obscene telephone calls and text messages as well as internet-based communications.

10. Also see discussion in Edwards (2012).

11. N.B. These statistics represent the most serious case where there were multiple offences.

12. http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/