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.

Looking back with an open mind

Research supports the Foucauldian identification of police as a major entity within the newly emerging science of discipline.  He found that as public order ‘was gradually established’ the emphasis in police work ‘began increasingly to be placed on enforcing the law against those groups of people who were responsible for sustaining various immoral activities’.  The police came more and more to use ‘methods such as supervision, surveillance, clandestine investigation and information gathering and co-operation with the Home Office, Foreign Office and Inland Revenue’.

Does this comment refer to policing the disturbances that we saw in London yesterday (26.3.11)?  Or the inner city disturbances of the mid 2000s or early 1980s?  No – this comment refers to policing from 1829 onwards and is from research undertaken by Petrow (1987).  And yet this piece could have been written about any of the above order maintenance situations.  It is interesting to see Petrow refer to the police science of discipline and one wonders how the discipline of ‘kettling’ would have been seen or considered by counterparts in the 19^th Century.   In fact one wonders whether the police of the 1800s would have coped better with the disturbances that they suffered.  Although Facebook, Twitter and the gamut of social media applications did not exist in those days, it is reasonable to accept that those involved in disturbances would have been able to communicate with each other quickly and with relative ease.  Similarly, the police of the day would not have had the protective kit of the modern day officer, but certain officers in the 1800s carried cutlasses and pistols, and I have no doubt that they would have been used!

We often equate crime fighting and a police service ethos with modern day policing.  Certainly the Operational Policing Review jointly undertaken by ACPO, Superintendents Association and Police Federation in 1990 pointed to the fact that the police of this time had to become ‘passionate’ about service.  However, according to Adlam (2000) the service orientation emerged as a core module of police experience in the mid nineteenth century.   To what extent did dealing with riot distract the ‘new’ police from giving a quality service?

Apart from accepting that once again policing in this postmodern society of greater consumerism and chaotic reform can learn lessons from the 1800s, we should be conscious of the never ending cycle of police reform and attempts to re-invent the wheel; a fact that many have built their reputation and career upon.

So, as one looks for ideal descriptions of policing, perhaps one of the best comes from Bunyard (1993) a former commandant of the Police Staff College at Bramshill, who stated that the police were described by others in the criminal justice system as ‘difficult artisans’.

For further information see Adlam (2000)

Looking after areas of natural beauty in California

I was recently honoured to be asked to address a conference in California.  The conference was jointly organised by California State Park Rangers Association (CSPRA) and Park Rangers Association of California ( PRAC). I agreed that I would deliver a lunch time address on changing cultures within the police service and I was asked to stress the diversity of policing parks in California.  What we (in the UK) would immediately understand as diversity would mean underrepresented  or minority groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or gypsy travellers.  However, in this instance it also meant the policing of national parks by a group of professional people that included police officers, fire officers, archaeologists, historians and maintenance people. 

At first I was unclear as to how these people worked together, however, as the conference in the stunning Yosemite National Park unfolded it became apparent that the groups of people are bound together by two objectives.  Firstly, to ensure the legacy of a parks complex that will be accessible for generations of people and secondly, to ensure the safety of the people who make use of the park as long or short term visitors.  Throughout the conference I heard stories of how the fire officers had worked with police officers who had worked with maintenance staff and historians.  There was no evidence of people working in silos or putting up barriers to collaboration – they just worked together in a wonderful environment; an environment that they were very protective of.

This made me think of how committed police officers in the UK are to the environment that they work in.  True, most do not have the opportunity to work in such a beautiful expanse, but the commitment to the parks was perhaps exemplified by the fact that there were a number of people who remained a part of this extended family despite the fact that they have retired.  That is certainly something that is uncommon in policing in urban areas in the UK and, I would venture, in the US.

In order to ensure the continued legacy, one supervising ranger and fire management officer successfully applied for funding to allow young people who are on the edge of a difficult future to become trainee fire officers for a year.  What was particularly impressive was the discipline that the young people followed.  Any member of staff that paraded for duty in an unshaved or unkempt state was immediately subjected to a penalty.   This may sound a bit draconian, however, the young people that I met were extremely smart, courteous and knowledgeable.  Perhaps more importantly, they were committed to their role and had a very trusting relationship with their boss.

There were also stories of retired people planning trips to national parks around the globe to learn about other places of natural beauty and how they are managed.  This sharing of knowledge and experience is seen as crucial if we are to allow people to enjoy our parks for years to come.

Finally, there were workshops that covered areas such as animal care, first aid and safety within the parks, but the underlying theme of the conference related to leadership and building relationships.  Presentations by the wildly enthusiastic Jim Brady touched on how people can manage their managers.  Much of the content used accepted academic models and touched on the importance of ‘followship’ as much as the importance of ‘leadership’. Jim used his vast experience of policing parks and managing people to get his message across in a somewhat unique style that was appreciated by all.

It was a reassuring and pleasing to see a true multi agency approach working together to attain a single objective.  There were no targets or performance indicators; no egotistical tub thumping or machismo.  The glue that binds all of these people together is a willingness to ensure that these areas of natural beauty remain unspoiled and open for people to enjoy.

Policing Communities - A sysiphean task?

This blog is a précis of a lecture that I recently gave at London Metropolitan University.  It is entitled Policing Communities - The Sisyphean Task.  A Sisyphean task is described as something that is on-going and futile.

The lecture starts with the development of policing by Peel and his Commissioners and their determination to create an approachable service that is accepted by and engages with the  public.  They achieved this after a time through the use of their uniform, recruiting and instructions given to constables and senior officers.   

By and large the style of policing remained unchanged until just after WW II when a review of policing in Aberdeen identified a new style where motorised patrols were used.  The reviews findings, which were later disputed, identified that this improved moral and did not have a detrimental impact on community engagement.

Notwithstanding this, in 1960 a Royal Commission identified the drawback of motorised patrol and yet in 1964 the Home Office issued a circular to police forces to introduce motorised Unit Beat Patrolling.  Again, academics proved that this style of response policing was anathema to engaging with communities as police officers become cocooned in their vehicles.

It was not until a review of policing in 1990 that it was fully determined that the welfare style of policing that communities wanted was at odds with the crime fighting responsive style that the police wanted.  A change of culture, introducing quality service was called for, but leaders were not able to change the culture of the service.

What followed was rapid change over a relatively short period of time.  In came neighbourhood policing in the early 1990s, then came Reassurance Policing in the 2000s, then the government mandated that every police force must have a neighbourhood policing team by April 2008 and then we had the Citizen Focus agenda concentrating on satisfaction levels and finally the public confidence target and the Policing Pledge – all government driven initiatives.  The only commonality was the reliance on building a relationship with communities as espoused by Peel all of those years ago.

However, recent evidence from the Chicago CAPS programme and a number of UK forces seems to suggest that communities do not want to engage with the police.  People do not attend meetings unless they are community champions or they have an axe to grind. So what is the point in making all of the effort to meet with them?

So, we come to the new Home Secretary who, as soon as she comes into power, removes all police targets and replaces them with the very one that caused many of the problems – reducing crime NOT  preventing crime.  The lessons from the 1990 Operations Policing Review that identified the dissonance between policing style of the police and public have not been learned.  Neither have we learned from the rapid changes introduced in the last decade.  None of the initiatives were given time to bed in and develop.  Instead we enter this late modern passion for change and change again.

Finally, on Wednesday 2^nd March 2011 the Home Secretary gives a speech in which she reaffirms her commitment to crime reduction and states ‘When I said in my first speech as Home Secretary that I didn’t want to run the police, I meant it’.  Good news.  Maybe we can have a period of tranquillity where the police are allowed to establish a relationship with communities that encourages them to come out of their homes and meet to discuss problems and issues.  Policing free of political interference….wait a minute, this statement comes a little later  ‘there are ways that the police can make the frontline more efficient too, while increasing visibility and availability on the streets, and without spending any more money.’  Call me cynical, but that sounds a bit like political interference.  And then this ‘So we will also mandate police forces to hold local beat meetings on a regular basis.’  Hello – haven’t we been trying to do this for some time?   

But police reform is not about settling down and learning.  This is the last sentence of her speech  ‘The result will be a police force with its powers enhanced, its discretion restored, its professionalism respected, flexible to deliver on the frontline – and free to cut crime.’

Police reform is caught in a relentless circle of re invention that does not learn from history or academic research and often results in the police internalising as identified by Prof. Herman Goldstein some years ago.  The final questions must be do our communities want to come to local beat meetings when the police are caught in a trap of reducing crime that will inevitably rely on response style crime fighting rather than the style of policing that communities want.

A final thought.  As government cuts bite into policing, there will doubtless be less officers in community or neighbourhood roles to undertake these meetings.  Therefore policing is seeking to make greater use of social media to connect with communities.  Call me old fashioned, and I accept that SM does have a great role to play, but let’s not move away from face to face contact were we are able to ‘just talk’ to people.

So is policing communities a sisyphean task?  I believe not.  But I also believe that the police have got be able to control their own resources and task them as they see fit.  They do the job year on year, unlike government which changes frequently.  Let police reform have time to bed in and encourage communities to see that policing today is as relevant to them as policing in 1829

                                             

              ---Academic references can be provided on request---