Home Office puts IT at heart of crime prevention

The UK government is to spend almost £70m on IT systems and departments to help prevent crime, it was announced today.

The cash comes as part of a £285m commitment to fight crime made in last week's budget by Chancellor Gordon Brown.

Just under over third - £25m - will be spent on setting up a Government Technical Assistance Centre to deal with digital encrypted information seized by police. The centre will be constructed under the auspices of NCIS (National Criminal Intelligence Service) and will be manned 24 hours a day to process lawfully intercepted data.

A Home Office spokeswoman admitted the centre would gain extra relevance with the passage of the controversial Regulatory Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill - currently at committee stage - which gives the police powers to intercept information over the Internet.

Another £40m is to be spent to speed up the implementation of the National Strategy for Police Information Systems (NSPIS). This contract- for automating the police force's case preparation systems and custody management- is being piloted currently by the contractor Securicor Information Systems (SIS).

The Home Office now intends to have the contract rolled out throughout the UK by 2002, rather than the initial target of 2006.