Police use of tapes due to security

Long gone are the days when we used to record the Top 40 on a cassette tape and hit pause at just the right time before the DJ started speaking. But as recently as 2011, an estimated 90% of police interviews were still being recorded on cassette tapes.

First used to record police interviews in 1988, cassettes were a mainstay in interview rooms providing vital evidence in court cases. As well as millions of denials, they also captured confessions from serial killers including Fred West.

According to the National Policing Improvement Agency, as recently as 2011 an estimated 1.8m interviews were recorded on cassette tapes. As well as being reliable and cheap to buy, they could be securely stored and sealed - making it obvious if they had been tampered with or accessed.

Today, digital video cameras have largely replaced cassettes in police investigations, allowing an even greater amount of information to be recoded and analysed.

However information is recorded, it must be kept secure; people expect police to take great care of their personal information. The Information Commissioner’s Office fined a police force £120,000 when it lost an unencrypted memory stick that included witness statements related to a drugs investigation.