During the meeting on 19 March 2015, South Wales Police agreed to provide the Committee with figures on:

·         the number of arrests and/or offences where alcohol was a contributory factor; and

·         figures on call demand and incident demand over a given week.

 

The Committee has received the following information:

 

Dyfed- Powys- February 2014 to January 2015

 

 

Total Reported Occurrences

Occurrences with Arrests

All Occurrences

 

 

Drug Related

 

1,683

Alcohol Related

 

1,109

Drug and Alcohol Related

2,512

2,148

 

Random week selected – 3rd – 9th November 2014

 

Priority

Total incidents

Alcohol related

Drugs related

Alcohol &

Drugs related

% Alcohol & Drugs related

Priority 1

497

58

13

71

14.30%

Priority 2

610

34

14

48

7.90%

Total

1,107

92

27

119

10.70%

 

MAJOR CAVEAT – All alcohol and drugs data relating to offences and occurrences is totally dependent on the extent to which the appropriate qualifiers are completed. So it is acknowledged that the %s will be significant under-counts compared to the true situation.

 

 

 

Gwent- February 2014 to January 2015

 

 

Total no. of arrests and/or offences

Drug Related

1760

Alcohol Related

1797

 

Despite looking into the request for figures on call demand and incident demand over a given week Gwent's Niche administrator has highlights some of the difficulties: 

 

There is no obvious location on the custody record to record this other than free text fields that we would have to search for the word ‘alcohol’, ‘drug’ etc.
The custody risk assessment contains questions regarding whether the person has consumed alcohol or has a dependency, but this doesn’t necessarily indicate that alcohol/drugs were a contributing factor to the arrest.
The occurrence MO and/or Stats Classification could potentially also contain this information but I'm aware this is not always the case and it is not always recorded.
 
To include results for all of the above locations would require the complication of several searches, the results wouldn’t produce a very reliable report and would require extensive cleaning up before it could be disseminated.
 
This is an example of one of the more obvious locations on the occurrence to record this information. This can currently only be completed by the Crime Management Unit.
There are 3148 Gwent occurrences where substance use has been recorded on the Stats Class as shown below.
Reporting on occurrences where this has been recorded would be relatively simple but I suspect would only tell half a story.

 

 

 

North Wales- February 2014 to January 2015

 

 

Recorded

Occurrences with Arrests

Drug Related

433

999

Alcohol Related

3,187

1,487

Drug and Alcohol Related

239

165

 

Incidents in a given week

 

Fiscal Year Week

Incident Code

No of Incidents

2014/43

0- Emergency Response

752

2014/43

1- Prompt Response

1370

 

Sum:

2122

 

Fiscal Year Week

NSIRTAG Description

No. of Incidents

2014/43

Alcohol

1

2014/43

Drugs

4

 

There were 2122 incidents reported in  the 43rd week of 2014. Only 5 incidents were tagged on the electronic system as being alcohol or drug related. As per the caveat below this is very unlikely to be a true representation of incidents involving alcohol and substance misuse; however these are the results and it is not practical to review each incident individual. Having spoken to North Wales the tagging system has recently changed to make searching in future easier.

 

MAJOR CAVEAT – All alcohol and drugs data relating to offences and occurrences is totally dependent on the extent to which the appropriate qualifiers are completed. So it is acknowledged that the %s will be significant under-counts compared to the true situation.

 

South Wales- February 2014 to January 2015

 

 

Total Reported Occurrences

Total Reported Occurrences %

Occurrences with Arrests

Occurrences with Arrests %

All Occurrences

406,664

406,664

28,780

28,780

Drug Related

12,278

3.0%

2,335

8.1%

Alcohol Related

29,938

7.4%

7,652

26.6%

Drug and Alcohol Related

2,303

0.6%

528

1.8%

 

Total Arrests

Total Arrests %

32,667

32,667

2,818

8.6%

8,409

25.7%

568

1.7%

 

The above relate to arrests involving alcohol, drugs and alcohol and drugs. As you will see there is a difference in the occurrences with arrests and total arrest columns. The reason for this being e.g. a car may be stopped and 4 persons arrested for drugs, the occurrence with arrest will only count as 1 however the total arrests will be 4.

 

Random week selected – 25th- 31st January 2015

 

G1s

G2s

G3s

G4s

No grade

Grand Total

1,585

2,052

2,349

878

40

6,904

 

PSC 999

PSC 999 s/board

PSC Bluelight

PSC English

PSC Welsh

PSC 390

PSC non select

PSC officer

PSC 0500

Grand Total

2,840

25

899

7,714

19

458

685

1,528

5

14,173

 

The above table shows the number of way in which calls were received. Part of the reason for the difference between the 2 tables would be because not all calls would result in a new occurrence being created (such as calls for updates by members of the public, calls to update existing occurrences by officers etc). However, as the figures are based on the total calls received, not every call would have been answered (for example, of the 7,714 PSC English Calls, 7,647 or 99.1% were answered)

 

It has not been possible to break the figures down further (into alcohol/ substance misuse) for the same reasons highlighted by North Wales.

 

MAJOR CAVEAT – All alcohol and drugs data relating to offences and occurrences is totally dependent on the extent to which the appropriate qualifiers are completed. So it is acknowledged that the %s will be significant under-counts compared to the true situation.