Untying the police’s hands

The public want the police to be crime-fighters, not form-writers.  Yet, in spite of repeated Government promises to tackle excessive bureaucracy, police officers spend more time on paperwork than on patrol.  This could be remedied by reducing paperwork, employing technology and modernising workforces to improve efficiency.  Reducing central intervention and extending the police “family” will also help to free the police.  “Summary justice” must not be an alternative to reducing police bureaucracy.  Too often it is leading to soft justice.

Part 1: Reducing the burden of bureaucracy

A Home Office study admits that on average officers spend almost as much of their shift in the police station as they do out of it and less than a fifth of their time on the beat.  The Home Office’s own figures show that only 1 per cent of police time is spent on proactively reducing crime.

The police spend more time on paperwork than on patrol. Just 14 per cent of all police officers’ time is spent on patrol – a definition which “includes officers on foot/car/beat patrol, CID and traffic officers” – compared with 19.3 per cent of their time on paperwork.  Even patrol officers spend nearly as much time on paperwork as on patrol. 

The public want the police to be crime-fighters, not form-writers.  The recruitment of additional police officers and a public commitment to develop neighbourhood policing will have little impact until the major bureaucratic obstacles to police officer efficiency are addressed.  If the amount of time a police officer spends on the beat could be increased from one-fifth to two-fifths, this would effectively double the police presence on the streets of England and Wales.

Several steps could be taken to reduce the burden of bureaucracy on the police.  These include, amongst others,  joining up IT systems, making greater use of civilian staff and abolishing uneccesary stop forms.  [Read more]

Part 2: Reducing the burden of central intervention

Over the past decade police forces have been subject to increasing central intervention.  The Government has introduced an array of new central targets, a central standards unit, an excessive and bureaucratic performance framework that tries to micromanage forces, and a National Policing Plan.  Prior to this, forces were already subject to inspections from HMIC and the Audit Commission, and received guidance from ACPO and direction from the Home Office.  This increased central intervention leads to confusion and unnecessary workload for the police. 

Excessive reporting requirements impose considerable cost.  The annual cost of non-incident related police paperwork in England and Wales has been estimated at around £625 million.  The President of ACPO has said that policing has “got horribly bureaucratic, formulaic and Byzantine”. 

Paradoxically, while the Home Office has increasingly tried to micromanage the police from the centre, it has shown weak leadership in other areas of policing where the centre has a role in driving through reforms and improving collaboration.  There are huge potential savings to be gained from ensuring IT compatibility, joint procurement and sharing backroom functions such as fleet management, uniforms, and administrative work.

There needs to be a fundamental reorientation of policing.  National government should set key standards and the Home Secretary’s powers of intervention should be reserved for failures or when there is a national leadership requirement – for instance, in driving the shared services agenda, procurement and national workforce issues.  Force priorities should, as far as possible, be set locally.  Police chiefs should be given the freedom to manage their forces but be held accountable for their performance to the local community.  An independent national body should publish data and monitor performance.  [Read more]

Part 3: Setting the police free

The Government’s use of “summary justice” is frequently resulting in soft justice, with fixed Penalty Notices for Disorder of only £80.  The move is helping the police to boost detection rates - one in nine offences brought to justice is now a Penalty Notice for Disorder.  However, as a result of this, the proportion of offences brought to justice through a conviction in the courts has fallen from just under 70 per cent in 2004 to 53 per cent in 2006. 

As well as central targets, political correctness and heavy-handed interpretation of health and safety legislation also impinge upon police discretion.  This undermines the morale and effectiveness of the police.  A common-sense approach to policy-making should allow discretion to be returned to individual officers.  As far as possible police officers should be able to exercise their professional judgement in a framework of accountability.

In order to set the police free, the police “family” should be extended with a new cadre of part-time paid police reservists joining Police Community Support Officers, whose role should be re-evaluated.  Greater use should be made of wardens, which would allow local partners to do more to help the police.  Volunteers should be used to help man police stations.

The private sector could also be used more to release the police from tasks which they need not do.  Commercial security firms could be contracted to manage crime-scene guarding or cordon duties, provide mobile “street-to-suite” capabilities, pursue people who jump bail, monitor “at risk” prisoners and carry out security checks.  [Read more]