Statement writing
is a skill.
Practise it properly.
Attend a fictional incident. Question witnesses who answer back. Review the evidence, write your statement and get feedback that names the rule you missed, not just a mark out of a hundred.
- ✓ Built for police forces
- ✓ England & Wales baseline
- ✓ Organisation pilots for forces
Why StateMentor
The standard, built in
Marking is grounded in the same rules your force teaches, not a generic score.
Points to prove
Offence elements, curated from statute
Shown beside the writing sheet and checked in marking, never invented by AI.
ADVOKATE
Feedback names every factor
The mnemonics you're actually taught, cited one by one.
England & Wales
A maintained, versioned baseline
Forces layer their own rules and statement types on top.
Everyone who has to write one
Statement writing is taught long before anyone is sworn in, and it still matters years afterwards. It is not only the police who write them, either: a section 9 witness statement is the same document whoever makes it. The same scenarios, rules and marking serve all of them.
Training people who write statements
Run managed cohorts, set your own marking rules, and review every statement before it reaches a learner. Forces, colleges and universities, councils and any team whose evidence has to stand up.
Request a demoPractising on your own
Serving officers keeping it sharp between jobs, students and cadets learning it for the first time, and anyone weighing up the job before they apply. Buy a case pack and work through it at your own pace.
See the case packsIn policing
Serving officers and police staff, student officers on force intakes, special constables, police cadets, Professional Policing degree students, and college uniformed public services courses.
Beyond policing
A section 9 statement is the same document whoever makes it: council enforcement and trading standards, store security and door supervisors, health, safety and transport regulators, fire and NHS witnesses, and counter-fraud investigators.
The complete journey, from tasking to feedback
Every attempt runs the same arc as the real job: get tasked, investigate, write it up, learn from the marking. Nothing is multiple choice.
Receive the briefing
An incident log tasks you to a fictional job: a shop theft, an assault outside a pub, a burglary with a shaken victim.
Gather the account
Question AI-played witnesses in plain English. They misremember, hold things back and volunteer opinions, like real people.
Write the statement
A guided workspace with the evidence, the offence's points to prove and a live checklist beside your statement sheet.
Get explainable feedback
Marking cites the specific rule: chronology, direct speech, exhibits, ADVOKATE. Your Trainer amends, releases or returns work.
Then it gets marked
This is the writing sheet learners actually use. A statement is checked against the ruleset for its type, and every finding names the rule behind it.
Witness statement
Training simulation- Statement of:
- Jane SMITH
- Age if under 18:
- Over 18
- Occupation:
- Police Officer (trainee exercise)
- Date:
- 03/03/2026
TRAINING SIMULATION, this statement is a training exercise. In a real statement, the maker would declare it true to the best of their knowledge and belief.
1. I am Police Constable 1234 Jane SMITH of Avon Vale Constabulary, based at Avonford Police Station. I make this statement about a report of shop theft at QuickMart, 14 High Street, Avonford.
2. At 16:33 on Tuesday 3 March 2026 I was on uniformed mobile patrol when I was assigned to the report. I arrived at 16:41. The store was lit throughout by overhead lighting and it was daylight outside.
3. I was met by the store manager, Priya SHAH. She said to me, "He filled a rucksack with spirits and walked straight out past me. I shouted at him and he kept going."
4. Miss SHAH told me she first saw the man at about 16:20 and watched him for around two minutes from behind the till, about 12 metres away, with a clear and unobstructed view. She had seen him in the store twice the previous week and remembered him because he had asked her the price of a bottle and had a tattoo on the back of his right hand.
5. She described him as a white male, 30 to 35 years of age, around 6 feet tall and of slim build, with short dark hair and stubble, wearing a black hooded top, dark blue jeans and white trainers, and carrying a grey rucksack. She gave that description at 16:45, about 25 minutes after she last saw him. She first told me the hooded top was dark blue; when I read her description back she corrected this to black, before any footage was viewed.
6. I viewed the CCTV covering the shop floor between 16:15 and 16:25, seized the recording and produce it as exhibit JS/1.
Signature
Date
This would stand up well. Fine details below.
Rules met
- ✓ SPE Significant words quoted, not summarised
- ✓ DSC Full description: build, height, clothing, tattoo
- ✓ IDE ADVOKATE covered, all eight factors
- ✓ EXH CCTV produced as exhibit JS/1
What to improve
- CHR Paragraph 4 steps back a week mid-account. Mark the earlier sighting as background so the order stays clean.
- STR Paragraph 2 gives the lighting but not the weather, noise or layout. Set the scene fully while you remember it.
Illustrative. In an organisation a Trainer can review this before it reaches the learner.
Every statement type you'll actually write
Each type carries its own ruleset, checklist and marking rubric, versioned so an attempt is always judged against the rules that applied when it began.
Baseline maintained for England & Wales; forces can layer their own rules on top.
Officer witness statements
Attendance, observations, arrests, exhibits and continuity.
Public witness statements
First accounts in the witness's own words, hearsay attributed.
Victim witness statements
Sensitive language, the victim's own words, safeguarding considerations.
Victim Personal Statements
Impact: physical, emotional, financial. Kept separate from evidence.
Plus the ones your force defines
Add your own statement types, professional witness statements, use of force accounts, whatever you train, each with its own marking rules, checklist and coaching.
Could you write
a statement that
survives court?
Most people think the hard part is catching someone. It is writing down what happened so it still stands up in front of a defence solicitor six months later.
The shop manager, when asked
“Twice last week. Both times he stood by the spirits and left without buying.”
Trainers stay in control
- Your rules, your way: reword or reweight the marking rules, switch off what your force doesn't use, and define your own statement types
- Choose the help learners get: writing guides, points to prove, the AI coach and witness questioning each switch on or off per organisation
- Managed cohorts with seat-based licensing and CSV import
- AI marking is a first draft: Trainers amend scores with an audited reason, release on their terms, or return work for amendment
- Author scenarios by hand or expand a two-line brief with AI; nothing reaches learners without Supervisor review
- Integrity signals create review flags for a human decision, never automatic accusations
Write a better statement this week
See it on your own scenarios with your own marking rules, then buy online or through procurement, whichever suits your force.