The challenge for policing today

This year promises to be one of the toughest for policing for many a year. We are a quarter of the way through the year and the austerity measures of the coalition are staring to bit. Police staff are being made redundant in many forces. Officers with thirty years or more are being forced to retire. The Hutton Report and the Winsor Report have brought uncertainty about the future of police pensions and the recent Neyroud report proposes the most radical shake up of leadership within the police service since it was created by Peel in 1829.

The impact on policing and those involved is frustration,uncertainty and disillusion. Unlike the mid 1980s when Maggy Thatcher knew she would need the police to deal with the miners and inner city disturbances, the police will not escape conservative reform this time.

So a number of forces are taking the opportunity to redesign their service and structure through various 'change projects'. Many are focusing on changes designed to manage the impact of the cuts and identify where savings can be found. Savings will come through ideas such as outsourcing, however, before that becomes effective the police will have to address bureaucratic procurement processes and be willing to 'let go' of some services that they believe are too precious to be given up. The volume of time and effort that is going into this process is huge. Hours of time taken up by lengthy meetings and consultation processes. And we have yet to see the impact on levels of crime and satisfaction with the service delivered.I say service delivered somewhat tongue in cheek as I do not believe that forces will continue to place the same emphasis on this important aspect of policing.

So is it inevitable that crime will increase? If so, what will that do for public confidence in policing and does it matter? The answer to the former is - probably, the answer to the latter is almost certainly. The late 1980s saw a reduction in levels of public confidence and sparked the whole debate on quality service being delivered by the police. A lack of confidence has a broad impact on a society that feels insecure and an increased fear of crime is likely as the public perceive that the police are unable to tackle cime due to a lack of resources or a lack of caring.

The police are shoved into the limelight again when dealing with public unrest due to the government cuts. This level of confrontation has brought great criticism to the Metropolitan Police who cannot seem to win whether they use a softly softy approach or a more dynamic plan. The fact that we are seeing officers having to defend their actions will cause many to question whether they are doing the right thing. It is a no win situation. The public expect the police to manage demonstrations, but when violence erupts they do not want to see the police confront or arrest those who are breaking the law. The fact that the media stand close by and film/photograph acts of wilful damage does not help the situation. It is often forgotten that after the event there is a criminal investigation to identify and prosecute offenders. The criminal investigation and subsequent prosecutions cost a great deal of time and money.

So as police resources are stretched to deal with crime and disorder, one has to consider whether the government will back down and review their plans as they are supposed to be doing with the military. Maybe those who run the country could look at themselves as they reverse their policies for claiming expenses and last week it was reported that MPs claimed over three million pounds in expenses in just two months. How many police officers, PCSOs or members of police staff would that have employed?

For further information on concerns relating to police reform, visit http://www.police oracle.com/news/Concern-Mounts-Over-Pace-Of-Change_32499.HTML

Intolerance rules - wherever you are

I recently read an interesting article in The Washington Post http://tinyurl.com/3t3xc3a about Islam in America.  The article features Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf addresses a rally to protest congressional hearings on the role of Muslims in home-grown terrorism on March 6 in New York.  He identifies five myths about Muslims in America and goes on to explain how old Islam is in comparison to the American country and covers such issues as terrorism, the treatment of women and whether Muslim American want to introduce Sharia law.

Having recently returned from America and had many conversations about diversity and accepting other people’s differences I was somewhat disappointed that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf felt it necessary to bring up these issues in such a public domain.  That was until I read a headline in the online Gothamist.com http://tinyurl.com/3r9m98k which highlighted the fact that a 13 year old girl had been arrested for trying to rip the hijab off the head of another young Muslim girl in New York.  This followed the arrest of a 12 year old girl on a similar charge.

However, the USA is not the only country to be currently challenging the Muslim faith.  France is currently reviewing Islam and the hijab has been banned or is in the process of being banned in various countries across the world.

It seems that faith is an easy target for headline writers these days and often gives column inches to those who do not deserve it.  The Nursing Times.Net highlighted the Christian nurse who refused to remove a crucifix at work has lost her discrimination claim against Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust (http://tinyurl.com/6zoaabj).  And Personnel Today published the fact that Christian British Airways (BA) worker Nadia Eweida has lost her appeal against a ruling which said the airline was not guilty of discrimination by stopping her wearing a religious cross at work (http://tinyurl.com/43w9zlb), although this may have been subsequently reversed.

What is apparent is that religious tolerance is being challenged in two of the (so called) most tolerant societies in the world.  This does not even consider the intolerances in other part of the world that has resulted in wars and ongoing conflict.

The fact that people’s emotions run high gives the media great copy.  This is evidenced by a short piece on UK TV last night where a Christian preacher spoke of how he sits with Muslims friends, eats Halal food with them, but insists on blessing the food in the name of the Christian God denouncing all other false Gods – I assume referring to Allah.  I am not sure whether this guy was given air time as people would find it funny or odd or because it showed a lack of consideration for people that he himself called friends.  It reminded me of an occasion when I took two officers from the Metropolitan Force for dinner in Liverpool.  One was a devout Muslim so we headed to a restaurant that used Halal meat.  I was astounded when the non-Muslim colleague asked if we could go somewhere that was not Halal as they did not serve beer.  This was a colleague of his and he was ignoring his devout religious beliefs. Is this despotism?  No I don’t think so.  We still hear of people being attacked because of the colour of their skin, or their gender or sexuality.  It is ignorance plain and simple.  

I have just read two books that refer to police constables being leaders within society.  One comes from Sir John Alderson (1979) and the other from Professor Steve Savage (2007).  Both speak of the police as being leaders within society and even further back Storch (1975) refers to the police as being missionaries looking after the morals of society. 

The question is this.  If Peel’s principle of the public are the police and the police are the public is correct, can we be satisfied that we have the processes to prevent such ignorance from becoming an increasing problem within policing?

Public Policy Exchange Syposium March 2011- Hate Crime

Last week I was asked to speak at a Public Policy Exchange seminar on the subject of Working in Partnership to Tackle Hate Crime in Every Community.  As I was a stand in for someone who had dropped out I felt that I had carte blanche to cover any area that I wanted.  After much thought I decided to cover the fact that I believe that the police will not be able to fulfil this criteria.  And I do believe this to be true.

There is little doubt that the focus on modern day policing is on crime fighting and rapid response, two of the elements that have caused concern for Goldstein, Alderson, and many other academics.  It is an area that regularly reappears on the police reform agenda.  So who undertakes the community engagement aspect of policing, especially with minority groups?  Note that I have not used the term ‘hard to reach groups’ as I do not believe that there is any such thing.  I believe that if sufficient effort is made, then all groups can be engaged.

The austerity measures will undoubtedly have an impact on front line policing, a fact supported the day after my presentation by the Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary on national TV.  Chief Constable Finnigan is the lead for the ACPO performance portfolio and on the Lancashire Police web site states "The Chief Constable originally said that the Constabulary may have to lose 1000 posts over this difficult period, but the review process has identified that this is more likely to be around 800 in total. This split is likely to be around two thirds police officers and a third police staff. It is so far anticipated that around only 160 officer posts will come from what we call frontline posts which are visible to the public.”  This is surely reflective of the state of policing across the UK; however, I am not too sure that other Chiefs are being so honest and transparent.

 

Most Constabularies speak of cuts to the middle and back office, roles that will likely include researchers and analysts, people who play a key role in identifying patterns and trends of crime, including hate crime.  So who is involved in prevention or detection of such crimes?

The prevention often takes the form of engaging with the community, including minority communities, by police officers, PCSOs or those engaged in specialist roles including Community Relations or Diversity.  But we know that some of these roles will be reduced.  In brief – the support function to prevent hate crime is being dismantled.  So let’s have a look at detection function.  Following the publication of the MacPherson report a number of police forces sought to develop a bespoke crime investigation function to investigate hate crime.  The idea was that the new teams would be staffed with trained detectives and would be managed and lead by a supervisor who was also a detective.  However, over time this role was eroded as the trained officers were moved to new roles.

Those that suffer hate crime are amongst the most vulnerable in society.  The fear for those at the seminar was that it will take another crisis such as that which followed the death of Stephen Lawrence or Fiona Pilkintgon for the police to once again take hate crime seriously.

The problem is that if the police do not undertake the role of managing or leading partnerships who will?  The voluntary sector is facing as many cuts as the police.  If the solution is the Big Society, then I believe that we are in big trouble.  The Big Society was raised at the seminar but no-one was able to identify how this will help vulnerable communities.

The symposium agreed that the police have to take this issue seriously before another vulnerable person is badly hurt or even worse, loses their life.