police use of Home Office Road Traffic 1 form to identify active serious offenders

Self-selection policing is the term given to the identification of serious active offenders by dint of their commission of more minor infractions. The paper explores the feasibility of using the nonproduction of documentation as required after the issue of an instruction to do so (form HO/RT1) as a way of identifying active, serious offenders. Such non-producers (no shows): 1. were more likely to have recorded offence histories on the Police National Computer (PNC); 2. had offence histories comprising two or more offences, significantly more than offending ‘shows’; 3. had offended more recently than offending ‘shows’; 4. were found to have an offence history including serious offences; 5. typically offended after HO/RT1 issue, demonstrating that their offending was more current than historical. The implications of these results for operational policing are contended to be substantial, and are discussed.