AC1.1 Evaluating the effectiveness of the roles of personnel involved in criminal
investigations
National crime agency
The national crime agency (NCA) was set up in 2013 as the UK’s leading crime fighting
agency. Their role in criminal investigations can vary depending on the crime, the NCA was
set up in 2013 to replace the serious organised crime agency as well as merging with the
child exploitation and online protection centre. The NCA can and has worked closely with
other law enforcement agencies and organisations to help investigate and prevent crime
both on a high and low scale.
Strengths
The NCA can be asked to investigate any type of crime, this includes serious and high stake
crime all the way down to petty crime. This can be extremely helpful to the under-funded
investigative personnel such as the police, The NCA’s annual budget is currently £458.8m.
The NCA also makes use of national and international databases to help tackle crime, this
means it can also operate internationally to stop larger scale crimes. The NCA’s international
presence stops crime from coming into the UK but can also help catch criminals in other
European countries as all EU arrest warrants pass through the NCA.
Limitations
Despite their seemingly large workforce (over 4100 overall,), the NCA are prone, like all
government agencies, to cuts. The NCA has a high running cost, the latest budget cut
(50%,) saw a large offload in staff within the NCA, limiting their availability. This can also
have a negative effect on the country's safety, the NCA’s international standing makes them
a target to terrorists and a shortage of staff could lead to officers being spread too thin
leaving the country vulnerable. The Database that the NCA operates off of is often slow and
is prone to crashes, especially so when third party personnel such as solicitors and other
professionals try to input data into the system. Delays on the system can alert criminals that
they are being monitored, harming the potential case against them. Being a government
agency puts the NCA in the limelight, any mistakes made by the NCA will be highlighted and
twisted in the press and so, they have to follow the exact wording of the law to the letter in
order to, not only avoid public ridicule, but to also prevent a case from being dismissed due
to their conduct.
Case study: Judges criticism on the NCA over a collapsed fraud trial
The NCA were investigating a fraud case that saw the deception of many multi-million pound
companies such as: Chester zoo, care UK and south essex college. The NCA argued that
between 2013-14, payments made to building contractors were intercepted and put through
multiple different bank accounts to make it harder to trace. This timeline, however, was
disputed in court. The NCA had made a number of mathematical and typographical mistakes
that were picked up on in court.The case, much to the defendants joy, collapsed completely.
It was apparent that the NCA had been terribly negligent in their investigations, rushing the
case and making a series of easily avoidable errors.
