Investigating methods of sharing data between police, health, education, and social services: Semi-structured interviews with police service areas in Wales

The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) requires the police, local authorities, NHS, and other organisations to share intelligence and collectively work to reduce violent crime. This paper aimed to explore opinions on linking police data with other agency data. Interviews were undertaken with individuals from police forces in Wales, UK. Barriers to sharing data with other organisations involve differences in the systems used to store police data and uncertainties around what is allowed to be shared. Overcoming barriers would allow data linkage across organisations leading to deeper insights into the causes of violence, and therefore intelligence that supports crime prevention. The Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 requires the police, local authorities, the NHS, and other organisations to work together on collective approaches to reduce crime and to analyse shared data to inform resource allocation decisions. Data sharing has been conducted on a per-project basis, but it is rare for whole population data to be linked across organisations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of linking national data from the police with national data from other agencies including health data from General Practitioners, hospitals, and Emergency Departments (EDs). In addition, this study explored the views and opinions from police service areas in Wales on using a single software system to cover all police service areas for public protection purposes and to facilitate sharing data with other agencies. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 individuals from the 4 police services in Wales along with representatives from the Violence Prevention Unit (VPU) and the Police Liaison Unit (PLU). The interviews were analysed using codebook thematic analysis to generate key themes from qualitative responses. Two key themes and seven sub-themes were developed from the qualitative data. The key themes include the following: (1) Opinions on the systems used in the police for public protection including thoughts on the current system and moving to using one system. (2) Opinions on data sharing including what data should be shared, benefits of data sharing, barriers to data sharing (within the police and across organisations), and overcoming barriers to data sharing. Interviewees identified that a proprietary relational database, Niche, was the most used system for public protection, was highly regarded, and individuals felt that if all forces moved to the same system this would be a positive development. However, work needs to be undertaken to ensure there is a minimum dataset entered in each area as there is high variability in data quality. Barriers included not knowing what was possible to share and fear of sharing. An unambiguous framework endorsed at a high level of what data should and shouldn’t be shared was recommended to overcome this. The main barriers to shared police data included a lack of clarity around data governance and what is appropriate to share. It was felt that sharing should be the default position and with support these barriers could be removed. Data sharing between agencies would require high-level support and unambiguous guidelines as to what data can be shared, with whom, and in what format.