Hampshire Constabulary one of worst for seizing assets

The £5.2m of assets recovered by the force over a three-year period represented the fifth smallest haul per head of local population of any force in England and Wales.

The performance of Hampshire Constabulary between 2006/7 and 2008/9 was revealed in a league table of the country’s 43 forces published by the Home Office yesterday as Prime Minister Gordon Brown delivered his first major speech on crime.

Mr Brown, announcing plans to allow communities to vote on how recovered criminal assets could be used, said: “Today we are publishing the first league tables so people can see how well their local area is doing in seizing criminal assets.

“We have quadrupled the amount of assets seized since 2001, to £135m last year.

And for the first time we will give local communities a say in what is done with the assets that are seized.”

The figures showed that while Hampshire Constabulary’s record on recovering assets under the Proceeds Of Crime Act was relatively poor over the three-year period, it had begun to improve.

In 2006/7 it seized just over £1m, by 2008/9, the latest year for which data is available, the value recovered had risen to £1.38m.

The assets were obtained through a combination of confiscation orders and cash forfeitures. A confiscation order is made after conviction to deprive a criminal of the benefit he has obtained from crime.

Most of the cash clawed back goes to the Government with a share returned to police forces.

Hampshire Constabulary said yesterday it was looking at ways of boosting the amount it recovered from criminals.

A spokesman said: “Hampshire Constabulary makes the best use of its resources to target those criminals who cause the most harm to the communities it serves.

“It may be that those criminals are not asset rich, but that will not prevent us from bringing them to justice. Indeed, it’s worth remembering the figures on asset recovery do not reflect the amount of work that goes into securing individual convictions.”