Prison Service staff are trying to correct errors in a
database covering more than 80,000 prisoners after it emerged that
thousands of records were wrong, incomplete or missing important
information.
The Local Inmate Database System (Lids) holds key information on
all prisoners in England and Wales, including how much of a risk
they pose to the public, their nationality, ethnic origins and
custodial history.
The Prison Service also uses Lids to track where prisoners are,
and where and when they are due to be transferred.
Missing numbers
A study by the Prison Service's main IT supplier EDS has found
that more than 30,000 (37%) offenders did not have a criminal
records number, and more than 21,000 (26%) did not have a police
national computer number. The database contains records with
made-up surnames such as "self-harm", and 194 offenders with no
surname at all. More than 1,500 records contain no nationality
information.
EDS checked the information in Lids ahead of a project to
transfer the data to a replacement database, C-Nomis (the National
Offender Management Information System). Prison staff said the
information quality problems stemmed from prison officers and other
officials entering inaccurate data.
Dirty data
The EDS study gives an insight into the amount of work yet to be
done on some public-sector databases to fill gaps and cleanse them
of inaccurate data.
Poor data quality is a widespread issue across government. For
example, millions of taxpayer records at HM Revenue and Customs are
"open" on its databases, partly because of inaccurate records.
A Prison Service spokesperson said the EDS study, although
quoted in a notice to staff in February 2008, was 18 months
old.
"The position has improved considerably since then and a greater
proportion of prisoners currently have their CRO [criminal records]
recorded in the Prison Service system," the spokesperson said.
But Prison Service staff question whether there has been a major
improvement. They said the system dates back to 1991 when it was
due to be replaced within several years, but is still used in
nearly all prisons. Lids' Nationalities field, for example, lists
East and West Germany as possible choices.
Wasted time
Alex Flynn, spokesman for the PCS union, said his members in the
Prison Service "waste large amounts of time" on cross-checking data
in Lids against paper records .
The Prisons Service uses Lids for the daily management of the
prison population, as well as to generate management information
and supply data to ministers and parliament. Last month the Prison
Service instructed prison governors, controllers of contracted-out
prisons and those receiving prisoners directly from the courts to
bring a halt to the entry of inaccurate information.
The notice explained changes in working practices to "ensure the
accuracy of Lids data", "ensure data fields are not used for
erroneous information", and "prepare for data migration to
C-Nomis".
The Lids database has been criticised, in part because
information on it is sometimes contradictory. In 2000 a research
paper for the Home Office found that where prisoners were being
considered for home detention there was a "large minority of cases"
in which Lids records were missing or incomplete.
Another research report found that Lids registered no previous
offence for a prisoner while noting separately if that individual
had previously received a custodial sentence.
Prison IT project scaled down >>