The saga of the Assets Recovery Agency seems to me like an episode of The Apprentice.

On the TV show, SirAlan gives the teams a few hundred pounds, sends them out with a task, and expects them to come back with a profit.

But usually one (or even both) of the teams screws up, and comes back with 8p and a half-chewed biscuit, or something.

Sadly, with the Assets Recovery Agency, it was £65m the team was given - and they came back with a rather paltry £23m, meaning they spent about £2.80 for every £1 they took off the criminals.

That £23m would have been impressive if they’d been selling canned goods in a supermarket carpark for a television show - but less impressive given they were supposed, in David Blunkett’s words, to be

“hitting organised criminals where it hurts”.

Best of all, though, it has emerged that about half of the £23m came from just one “client” who handed over some assets after a process of “negotiation” - he got to keep the rest of his potentially ill-gotten gains, apparently.

And that reminded me of the Comic Relief episode of the Apprentice where Cheryl Tweedy just phoned up her fiance (Ashley Cole) and got him to donate £20,000 or something. It seemed a bit like cheating…

It looks like proposed Violent Offender Orders will cause yet another split between government and the judges.

The Guardian reports:

Senior judges have warned ministers they risk a re-run of their clash with the courts over control orders by introducing new proposals that will place “massive restrictions” on certain convicted violent offenders after they have left prison.

The problems are not only those of proportionality and practicality raised by the judges. If those who breach orders face a five-year prison sentence, there’s bound to be a knock-on effect on prison numbers, already at record highs. Probation officers are already massively overworked, and it isn’t clear how they will find the time and resources to enforce VOOs as welll.

Perhaps the government should revisit Ming Campbell’s proposals for a more proportionate and manageable Violent Offenders Register, first suggested in May 2006. It has the clear advantage that it might actually help instead of hinder the criminal justice system…

Britain is in a state of anarchy, David Cameron informed us this morning. Bear in mind this is a man who’s visited Iraq and Afghanistan, so he should know a thing or two about anarchy.

His comments stem in part from reports of a characteristically astute analysis from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies on knife crime. It concludes:

Since it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to limit the availability of knives, and knives are merely a tool used in violent crime, success in fighting knife usage will only come with success in dealing with underlying causes of violence, fear and insecurity.

I wonder what effect Mr Cameron thinks his “anarchy” comments will have on the levels of fear and insecurity that drive people to carry knives? Just a thought.

Today we uncovered the worrying fact that over 100 children have been put on the DNA database before they even reached their tenth birthday.

DNA is stored until you hit 100 (whether or not you die) so those files will be stored for at least 90 years.

The rest of the data shows that, as of January, we had nearly 4.1m people’s DNA stored, so Britain retains its place at the top of the international league, with the largest database in the world.

I’m also fascinated to note that there are 46 DNA samples from people over the age of 90. Is a nonagenarian crime wave sweeping the country?

Today we learn the Forensic Science Service forgot to upload about 26,000 DNA samples onto the national database between 1994 and 2005.

I expect they dropped them down the back of the sofa, along with those 27,000 case files on offences committed by British citizens abroad. (Is this the Home Office version of “sofa government”…?)

This mistake left nearly 200 crimes undetected. Nice one.

Only this government could have a DNA database that tracks the innocent and leaves off the guilty.

Interestingly, the Home Office announced this gem themselves. A new outburst of frankness? Well, given ministers have apparently known since January, no. Just clearing the decks of bad news in time for the new guy is my guess.

A little story we dug up - you can read it here - keeping prisoners in court cells while the prisons are too overcrowded to take them has cost more than a deluxe suite at the Ritz.

Of course, the Ritz doesn’t have quite the same level of security, though you are in for a wrestle with the doorman if you try to cross the threshold in ripped jeans…

It’s been a peaceful fortnight for the Home Office. Barely a whisper of a scandal has crossed the threshold of Marsham Street - though parliament being in recess and not having to answer questions from MPs probably helped.

But perhaps it’s been a little too quiet.

Remember the foreign offences scandal? 27,500 files, detailing serious offences committed by British citizens abroad, were “lost” in the Home Office. Tackling that backlog and getting the offences noted on the Police National Computer was clearly the top priority. Such a high priority in fact that John Reid promised it would be completed in three months. His statement is here.

Three months was up, well, ages ago quite frankly, but not a peep from Dr Reid. Could they have missed a deadline? The Home Office? Surely not.

Suppose you’re the minister responsible for criminal records. You receive a letter telling you British citizens have committed a series of rapes, including of children, while in Germany - and administrative breakdown means their details haven’t been put on their police records. You’re told this is only the tip of the iceberg. Do you:

a) notice this sounds serious and ask for a full briefing

b) worry that some of these offenders might have been cleared to work with vulnerable people because of the gaps in the data - and divert officials to immediate investigation

c) write back saying “Thanks for the information. Keep up the good work.”

If you picked c) then congratulations: you’re fully qualified to take up Joan Ryan’s job as under-secretary of state at the Home Office.

The full report into the mess-up over offences committed abroad was released yesterday, and the headline revelations - there was a “collective failure” except on the part of ministers, apparently - have been all over the news.

But reading the whole report reveals a few more gems of Home Office chaos. (more…)

The Home Office has been sitting on its internal report into the backlog of offences committed by British citizens abroad for over a week, the Lib Dem Home Affairs team has discovered today.

A letter from Jack Straw to Nick Clegg confirms the report was submitted to permanent secretary David Normington on Wednesday 21st February - surely the Home Office isn’t waiting for a busy news day to release it?

You’ll remember that 27,500 case files were submitted to the Home Office by foreign governments and then studiously ignored for as many as eight years - and the whole affair only came to light when the files were sent over to the Association of Chief Police Officers to process.

ACPO sent a series of letters to the Home Office about this - and it is alleged asked for more money. We submitted a Freedom of Information request for these letters, dealt with by Tony McNulty and Joan Ryan, which the Home Office has ignored for 34 working days, despite a legal obligation to respond within 20.

Nothing like casual disregard for the law from the ministry responsible for making it…

The official crime statistics issued by the Home Office, both the number of crimes recorded by the Police, and the British Crime Survey, are still fundamentally “not fit for purpose”.

A report shows that the Home Office still cannot be trusted with them, and says that the BCS should be run by the Office for National Statistics instead.

The Statistics Commission reported that “If we consider the different purposes that the public have for crime [statistics] then they are generally not fit for purpose.

The Commission said that neither survey data nor police-recorded crime are well understood by the public.

Source: statscom.org.uk (PDF)