Modernisation the ‘beginnings of a fully digitised criminal justice system’

Three thousand frontline officers will make use of specialist mobile technology in a regional partnership between Surrey Police and Sussex Police that will see a shift away from paper processes and the “beginnings of a fully digitised criminal justice system”.

The new joint project enables 1,250 officers at Surrey Police and 1,750 at Sussex Police to replace paper-based activities such as vehicle registration checks, speeding tickets and drugs or alcohol tests on drivers with intuitive digital forms on mobile devices.

The mobile technology is being provided by Airwave Solutions, part of Motorola Solutions, and supported by O2.

Both forces have already seen substantial time and cost saving benefits during initial trials.

Officers have saved up to two hours per shift, time that the two forces say can now be better spent policing the streets and supporting the public.

And Surrey Police says the “modernisation of processes” has enabled it to cut costs by £7 million. It was the first force in England within a national electronic witness and digital signature pilot project to present notes and a diagram drawn on the e-notebook’s screen as evidence in court.

“We are seeing the beginnings of a fully digitised criminal justice system – from incident to courtroom,” said Surrey Police Deputy Chief Constable Gavin Stephens. “What’s aspirational in digital policing and collaboration between forces in some parts of the country is reality here.”

The new extended regional deployment follows a successful six year partnership with Surrey Police that has seen the Pronto e-notebook and complementary suite of software applications deployed to frontline offers across both police forces.

According to Airwave, its Pronto solution is a complete digital replacement for an officer’s paper notebook, operational processes and forms. It provides remote, mobile access to all key policing systems, allowing officers to capture, reuse and validate information on the front line while reducing back office bureaucracy and inefficiency.

Before Pronto, a single activity such as writing out a ticket would take back-office staff more than four minutes to transfer paper-based notes onto a force’s system – now that process takes seconds as all data captured on devices is synchronised automatically.

Airwave says results from forces using the technology have also shown that the electronic processing of 60,000 witness statements saved an average of 27 minutes and £42 per statement. It adds that further time and cost savings are also achieved through the reduced error rate, “because Pronto applications contain purpose-built electronic forms with mandatory fields, which ensure data is entered in the correct format first time every time”.

As well as productivity benefits, Pronto is enabling greater sharing of information and collaboration between the two forces. Officers can access national police systems and local databases across the two forces, such as the Records Management Systems (Niche) on the move.

This allows officers to work together at an incident or crime scene, sharing data and resources in real-time rather than having to return to the station or have back-office staff locate and then upload relevant information.

Inspector Shane Baker at Sussex Police said: “The deployment of Pronto has meant we’ve been able to move officers away from desks and back onto the front line, the best place to pursue offenders and detect crime, protect vulnerable people, and prevent crime and disorder.

“Technology has helped us become more accessible and visible to the public we serve and it is playing an increasingly vital role in our mission to make the region as safe as it can possibly be.”

Phil Jefferson, MSSSI vice-president for UK and Ireland at Motorola Solutions, said Surrey Police was one of the first forces to embrace Pronto and over the past six years it worked closely with its officers to “evolve the software to make it as useful and usable as possible”.

“Today, forces like Surrey Police and Sussex Police are ab