Mr. Robert AinsworthTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the nature of the information retrieval system used by the Metropolitan police to record burglaries; if information on burglaries is retrievable for(a) individual addresses, (b) persons or organisations burgled and (c) date of burglary; and if the information on crimes reported to individual police stations is recorded on a central database. [30950]
§ Mr. MacleanI understand from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that the Metropolitan police currently use two systems for recording crime information. The first is a paper based, manual system, and the second, which is replacing the first, is the crime reporting and information system, which is computerised. Information about individual addresses, names of persons or organisations involved and date of incident is retrievable on both systems at local level. Certain details of reported crimes are forwarded to a central database for statistical purposes, but as this database does not contain personal information, retrieval is not possible centrally.