THURSDAY NOVEMBER 02 2000 BY RICHARD FORD, HOME CORRESPONDENT A MULTIMILLION-POUND Home Office computer project to create a national database of dangerous offenders is to be scrapped after being criticised as a BdisasterB and a BnightmareB.

Murderers, sex offenders and other violent criminals would have been included on the register as part of a drive to keep track of them on release from prison.

But a highly critical Home Office report reveals that the system, estimated to have cost at least B#100 million, has been a failure and that probation officers are resorting to an old-fashioned card index system to find out where offenders are. Only 16 of 54 probation services are substantially using the new system.

The decision to scrap the Case Record Management System (Crams) is an embarrassment to the Home Office, which in the past three years has been hit by chaos in computerisation projects at the Passport Agency and the Immigration and Asylum Department at Croydon, South London.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said: BThere needs to be a full inquiry into how the Home Office got into this mess. This is just the latest of a number of Home Office new-technology projects that have ended in disaster.B

The project began in 1994, with the aim of providing a common computerised system for all 54 probation services in England and Wales. It was estimated to cost B#97 million, with efficiency saving for the services of 7 per cent, and was supposed to provide registers of offenders convicted of violent or sex crimes, offenders at risk of committing suicide and details of offenders where there was a risk of child abuse.

When police required information on an offender, probation staff should have been able to get it speedily, rather than relying on paper files. But probation staff complained that the system was unable to track offenders who used aliases B a common tactic. Hampshire probation service committee described the system as Bterrible, a disaster, a nightmare,B and Wiltshire said it was Buseless, a disasterB. West Yorkshire said that implementation of the system had been halted because of poor performance.

The scrapped system is to be replaced by a new one which will not be operational until 2003.

The report by Sir Graham Smith, chief inspector of probation, said that it was a matter of very serious concern that needs for accurate information about high-risk offendes were not being met and attacked the Home Office for Bpoor overall leadershipB. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,28974,00.html

-- Doris (reaper@pacifier.com), November 02, 2000