Crime files on computer

The Metropolitan Police finally joined the microchip age yesterday, completing a London-wide network of 2,400 computers that can record details of crimes and link them across the capital.

But it is adopting a "Year Zero" approach to old crime data on the Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS)- which means that information on burglaries, thefts and fraud stretching back six years, and held on paper at police stations around the city, will never be added to the system. Charles Arthur