Grant Funding Acceptance – Advanced Tools for Offender Management

This paper requests the acceptance of £246,750 grant funding from the Home Office to improve the digital management of Registered Sex Offenders (RSO) in London. The funding is available until 31 March 2021. The funding will be used acquire new mobile triage equipment and monitoring software, and training for officers.

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to approve the receipt of £246,750 of grant funding from the Home Office to support the acquisition of digital equipment and associated training for the management of registered sex offenders in London.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. This papers seeks the authority to accept Home Office funding to enable the acquisition of equipment and training to improve the management of registered sex offenders.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. The grant will be used to fund the following

• new mobile triage equipment and monitoring software accounting for £126,000.

• training - total cost no more than £120,000

• in general digital investigation skills for all offender managers including the use of our existing office based search equipment.

• to train a smaller number of digital specialists who could provide additional advice to their own teams. This would in.

2.2. The investment will help address gaps identified in Child Protection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Police and Fire and Rescues Services (HMICFRS).

2.3. The MPS state that the acceptance of the grant contributes to the MOPAC Police & Crime Plan priorities of “Keeping children and young people safe, and tackling violence against women and girls. Well trained and resourced offender managers aim to prevent re offending and bring those to justice who commit further offences.”

3. Financial Comments

3.1. The proposal is for the acceptance of grant funding of £246,750 for 2020/21.

4. Legal Comments

4.1. The grant is accepted under Schedule 3, Paragraph 7 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which provides that

• 7(1)The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime may do anything which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the exercise of the functions of the Office.

• (2)That includes—

• (a)entering into contracts and other agreements (whether legally binding or not);

4.2. Paragraph 4.8 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all bids for grant funding.

5. Commercial Issues

5.1. The grant funding will be used to acquire fast time triage tools and training, which can be deployed at an offenders address to check devices for Indecent Images of Children (IIOC) or other illegal content.

5.2. The intention is that the requirement is awarded as a Call-Off via the MPS’ contract with CDW VAR (Value Added Reseller) contract. This is a recognised compliant route to market and allows the MPS to place Call-Offs with onboarded software and hardware suppliers.

5.3. Further non-device specific training for example general digital investigation skills will be procured through an existing training provider.

6. GDPR and Data Privacy

6.1. MOPAC will adhere to the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 and ensure that any organisations who are commissioned to do work with or on behalf of MOPAC are fully compliant with the policy and understand their GDPR responsibilities.

6.2. The MPS state that “The project will ensure a privacy by design approach, which will allow the MPS to find and fix problems at the early stages of any project, ensuring compliance with GDPR.” and that “A DPIA has been deemed as necessary to support this activity and is currently under development. The MPS will not implement the use of the new equipment/training until the DPIA has been completed and any additional mitigations put in place. ”

7. Equality Comments

7.1. MOPAC is required to comply with the public sector equality duty set out in section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010. This requires MOPAC to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations by reference to people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

7.2. The MPS has assured that this recommendation an extension of an existing service for sex offender managers. This work does not change any aspects relating to equality or diversity.

8. Background/supporting papers

• Appendix 1 MPS Report Grant Funding for ATOM (Advanced Tools for Offender Managers.