THE Home Secretary has admitted that a report which revealed the widespread under-recording of crime in the region made disturbing reading for victims.

Theresa May stressed that there was no place for target hunting within the police after a report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary found that around one in five crimes in the North-East and North Yorkshire are not being recorded.

Addressing the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners summit in Harrogate, the minister said the report made for disturbing reading, with victims of violence and sexual offences suffering particular injustice as these crimes were the most likely to be unrecorded nationally.

She said: “While the inspectorate did not find wide scale evidence to suggest that these terrible results were due to local performance targets, I want to state again that there is no place for target chasing in the police.

"I abolished national targets so that the police could get on with what they do best – fighting crime.

"It is never acceptable for the police to misrecord crime."

In the North-East and North Yorkshire, the inspection of police data integrity, Crime-recording:

making the victim count, report looked at 372 sample incidents between November 1 2012 and October 31 2013 which should have been recorded as a crime.

However, it found that of these only 295 had been recorded.

In North Yorkshire under-recording was around 16 per cent.

Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan said people had to have confidence that the police were recording crime.

“We take this very seriously. There are a number of recommendations that the inspectors have made and we are working on those."

Inspectors found a under-recording rate of 21 per cent in Cleveland.

Deputy Chief Constable Iain Spittal said the force has begun a number of workshops with officers to stress that Cleveland Police was victim focused and not target driven.

He added: “In Cleveland, we’ve taken immediate action to review all no-crime decisions, and also improve our decision-making process, with a higher level of scrutiny applied to ensure that decisions are accurate and compliant."

Durham Constabulary wrongly failed to record 15 per cent of crimes, the report found.

The Home Secretary used the conference to announce plans to stamp out misconduct and corruption within the police, including the opening up the disciplinary hearings of police officers to the public and offering greater protection for whistleblowers.