The Police National Computer and the Offenders Index:can they be combined for research purposes?

The current standard research tool used in studying patterns of offending and reconviction in England and Wales is the Offenders Index. It has been suggested that a ‘complete criminal record’ should be created using information from the police, the courts, the prison service and the probation service (Allnutt, 2001). This study investigates the feasibility of merging relevant police records held on the Police National Computer into extracts from the Offenders Index in order to maximise the information available to researchers. However, external researchers are not given access to individual data as they are made anonymous