CHIEF POLICE OFFICERS AND HOME OFFICE - "COOKING THE BOOKS" OF CRIME

Cooking the books on crime

Is it just a game to Chief Police Officers?

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary and the Tory Party were accused of fiddling crime figures this week, by suggesting violent crime has soared under Labour rule.  Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling was accused of damaging public trust in official statistics today.

The row revolves around changes in how violent crime has been recorded since 2002. Instead of police deciding whether an incident should be recorded as violence, the system now requires them to do so whenever an alleged victim asks them to. As a result, the level of recorded violent crimes soared by an estimated 35 per cent in the first year the system was introduced. The Home Office has warned that the statistics for before and after 2002 are therefore not comparable.

Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics Authority, also told Mr Grayling his use of the figures 'seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics'. Sir Michael said the British Crime Survey, which is based on interviews, provides a more reliable measure of national trends.
 
Chris Grayling said he did not distort statistics and denied any wrongdoing, insisting that the Home Office itself had used the same data set to draw comparisons on other issues. He said: ‘We don't create crime figures. We use the official crime figures published by the Home Office. The Home Office has continued to use the same comparators.’

Mr Grayling said: "Like everyone else we will continue to use recorded crime statistics, because they reflect an important reality; that the number of violent crimes reported to police stations, and particularly serious violent crimes, has increased substantially over the past decade, even taking into account any changes to data collection. The Home Office itself admits this in its internal documents."

Home Secretary Alan Johnson labelled the Tory information ‘dodgy statistics’ used by the party ‘to talk Britain down’. If ever there was an excellent example of "A Pot Calling The Kettle Black" - this is it.
An accurate system of recording is the true measure of how effectively a Government deals with crime. When Alan Johnson stated at the Labour Conference that crime statistics were of least importance, it was a weak deflection tactic, protecting the illusion of reduced crime this Government has spun for so long.

Turkeys Don't Vote For Christmas

Just as turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, Alan Johnson and to an extent, even Sir Michael Scholar are hardly likely to concede that the crime figures are as badly flawed as readers of these pages know them to be.

As you may have seen from our articles from this site based on data from the Home Office, ONS, MOJ, Dft, DVLA and other sources, supported by front line police corroboration, the Home Office process of collating and presenting crime statistics can no longer be trusted as a measure of crime in the UK.

Cooking The Books of Crime

The rot in recorded crime and detections goes back many years. The senior management have long since relied upon their store of tricks for “cooking the books”, or “Gaming” as it has become known. It was interesting to see the retired West Midlands Detective Chief Inspector, Dr Rodger Patrick confirming these practices are still prevalent in the Telegraph article :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6736505/Police-force-tricks-to-fiddle-crime-figures.html

"Cuffing” “Stiching” “Skewing” and “Nodding” are all familiar terms to both the front line and Chief Officers, as methods of manipulating the numbers to perpetuate the illusion of falling crime. We know from our front line contact that the practices remain endemic across the forces. Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation said: "This research demonstrates that senior officers are directing and controlling widespread manipulation of crime figures. The public are misled, politicians can claim crime is falling and chief officers are rewarded with performance-related bonuses."

Denis O'Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, published an official report into the way police record violent crime and admitted the figures may be skewed by "perverse incentives" around government performance targets.

As Dr Patrick discovered though, the HMIC and Police Standards Unit have displayed a general tendency to underplay the scale and nature of the practices. It certainly begs the question as to why there are no examples of Chief Officers being brought to book, or even publicly criticised for this type of crime figure manipulation. Apparently, the HMIC refer examples of widespread gaming to the Home Secretary or police authority, rather than "hold the chief constable to account" because of the risk of political embarrassment.

It seems improbable that Mr Johnson would be amenable to approach on this subject as it would undoubtedly open the can of crooked worms they have cultivated these past twelve years.

We concur with Dr Patrick when he expressed the view that HMIC inspectors should be made accountable to Parliament rather than the Home Office, and suggested they should be drawn from other professions rather than solely from senior police ranks.

The months between now and the end of the financial year are particularly challenging within police circles for reporting crime.  In particular, the challenges and pressure are aimed at the front line rank and file. These months see a marked increase in pressure from Chief Officers cascading down through the ranks, urging officers to “censor” the crimes that are reported. The reason for this is clear. The Chiefs are massively financially remunerated with bonuses for decreased crime and increased detections and this is the last quarter when they can exert pressure down the line to protect their "gravy train" from derailing.  

Over on the Inspector Gadget pages this week, his recent article draws attention to the increased pressure exerted by Chief Officers from now until the end of the financial year.  To quote Gadget :-

“They must not, under any circumstances, get out on the street and find any more crime. Not until the next financial year anyway. All their accumulated leave (and there is lots of it being as we don’t pay overtime any more) is to be taken between now and April. It’s best to have them out-of-the-way, they just can’t be trusted to stay indoors”.

How crooked the system intended to prevent and detect crime has become. You only have to read some of the officers comments on the Gadget post from all around the country to see that the pressure and corrupt practices are rife. Whoever assumes the mantle of Criminal Justice will face a mammoth challenge unraveling this pernicious conspiracy and web of deceit that has been foisted upon the tax payer.

BCS –vs- Recorded Crime

Seriously flawed as it is, the current two level method of measurement is all there is to measure the level of crime. However, when the BCS, based on a survey of 40,000 people “estimates” the crime numbers for 2009 to be in the region of 10 million and recorded crime reflects a little over 4million incidents, there is clearly a massive disparity between the processes. How can the Home Office expect the public to have any confidence in crime levels whilst this continues?

So, please forgive our cynical smiles when Michael Scholar accuses Chris Grayling of conduct that may damage public trust in official statistics. Sir Michael says that the British Crime Survey, which is based on interviews and estimates, provides a more reliable measure of national trends. WAKE UP Sir Michael! This Government and their twelve years of lies and manipulation have crucified any trust the public might have had in crime statistics. Mr Grayling has only peeked into this can of crooked worms up to now, wait until the whole sorry mess is crawling about on the table top for the world to see.

So, what did NuLabour do, rather than choosing the honest, more difficult alternative? We've witnessed them drown the public sector with bureaucratic systems, build management teams to pilot fancy projects, recruit the Chief Officers and management teams, including ACPO to enforce their dirty work and pay scandalous bonuses to elicit their support. They created the NPIA, a police improvement "Quango" to supposedly set high standards for the service, yet now sets the most disgraceful example of wastefulness and profligacy.

None of these have yet proved their value or effectiveness.

It seems this Government will do anything but apply simple common sense back to basics solutions that work.

And possibly the worst internal crime of all, that by far eclipses the MP expenses issue.

Chief Officer Bonuses

We recently examined the 43 police force recorded crime performance levels and produced a report disclosing our findings. We looked at Chief Officer pay scales and bonus structures. In our most visited article and downloaded analysis of recent months, we looked closely at the connection between the illusion of reducing crime and Chief Officer pay.

The Home Office concede that as much as 50% of crime goes unreported. This doesn’t mean the non reported cases do not exist, they do. Furthermore, the police, though not reporting crimes, by reallocating or misreporting incidents are disguising the real problem. How can a Local Authority allocate adequate funding or resources accurately based on such wildly differing statistics?

We have reported in some detail our observations about the process in our reports. (We have the recorded crime statistics going back to 1898).

http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-cops-pay-crime-scandal.html

The above article presents alarming evidence supporting a widespread belief that the manipulation of crime statistics forms part of a conspiracy to deceive the public into believing that crime is decreasing. The orchestrators of this deceit are the Government and Home Office, aided and abetted by senior police officers, who are obscenely rewarded for their part in the conspiracy.

Front line police officers are unable to untangle this web of deceit, despite protestations by many with an informed and accurate perspective at the public facing coal face. Distortion of the figures has led to misallocation of financial and human resources, resulting in the public being deprived of the policing it deserves. The gravy train of police funds has been milked and the “con” disguised through years of bureaucracy, performance targeting and distraction techniques, making the task of basic policing more difficult to deliver.

There is plenty of evidence that there are senior officers who are paid grossly disproportionate salaries and bonuses for perpetuating the deceitful illusion of crime reduction. The honour and distinction of achieving a high rank in public service has been replaced with greed, with a convenient blindness to the immorality of their actions. A full, transparent 43 force public enquiry is needed to force the disclosure of these illicit payments and inducements. Among the most disturbing are the revelations of Heather Brooke in the Guardian, about the perks and expenses of Sir Hugh Orde the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers. The rot is clearly embedded within the “root and branch” culture of the highest ranking police officers, when the man who is charged with the responsibility of overseeing the Chief Officers in England & Wales sets such an immoral example.

The consequences are dire and plain for all to see. The victims in all of this are the tax payer, who is deprived of the police service his contributions are intended to provide, and the front line police officer who is forced into silent acceptance and resignation of a job that has become enmeshed with bureaucracy, risk averse policing and fiddled crime figures. Who could blame officers that have no faith or respect for senior officers and politicians who orchestrate a criminal deception of the highest magnitude for personal gain, and then expect the staff on the ground to do their dirty work with no resistance?

Alan Johnsons’ proposal for cutting frontline police overtime by £70 million is not in the best public interest. A more appropriate target for savings surely lies within the senior officer pay structure. Our report shows that there is plenty of "fat" that should be cut from that source before even considering such an essential as operational police overtime.

We support the proposal that crime statistics should be properly independent. This would remove responsibility for compiling and publishing crime figures from the Home Office, who clearly cannot be trusted to be truthful with the electorate and not to apply their political spin. The responsibility should be placed with the Office for National Statistics which is totally independent. The pre-release access that Ministers and political advisers get to crime statistics should be abolished – so the public would be the first to get an honest account of the facts.

Click here to view our report on the "TOP COPS PAY & CRIME SCANDAL" The report enters into some detail about the secrecy surrounding these payments which serves only to feed suspicion of a boys’ club stitch-up. Chief constables need to be open on pay and perks if trust is to be restored, not only with the public, but also with the front line officers who also feel cheated. Respect for Chief Officers is at an all time low and we have to sympathise with the front line officers who feel they are doing the dirty work of the Chiefs, betraying the public trust and feeling pressured into compliance.

No one should be surprised to see the dramatic changes to the crime reporting processes that occurred during the Labour ministry. What a clever game of smoke and mirrors they have played. Obfuscate, disguise, confuse or even blatantly lie about the statistics to prevent the truth getting out to the public, that they have failed spectacularly to handle the problem honestly and effectively.

The wider public have been well and truly conned by Labour. The police rank and file have become embroiled in a tangled web of deceit. The challenge is a scary one, because it involves the unwinding of many years of conspiratorial, deceitful conduct. But change it must if we are to move forward.

Whoever assumes the mantle of Home Secretary will face many obstacles from the media and Labour, who will not want the truth revealed for fear of the damaging consequences. The fact is public confidence is shattered almost beyond recognition and it will take a supreme dose of courage and perserverence to take the necessary remedial action necessary to start healing the wounds that have been inflicted.

Our recent articles and analytics about crime reporting :-

http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/09/crime-statistics-hide-truth.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/09/extracts-from-labours-home-secretary.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/10/fudging-crime-statistics-is-no-way-to.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/10/crime-mapping-is-police-recorded-crime.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/10/no-faith-in-police-statistics.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/11/home-office-crime-figures-conspiring-to.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/12/force-or-farce-police-recorded-crime.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-cops-pay-crime-scandal.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2010/01/top-cops-are-still-fiddling-crime.html
http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2010/01/national-police-improvement-agency-yet.html

TOP COPS ARE STILL FIDDLING THE CRIME STATISTICS

As usual, the latest crime figures (September to November 2009), are pure fantasy, but at least the Chief Officers will get their 15-20% bonuses (except Gwent, who are the only force to report an increase in crime).

It’s hardly surprising that no one gives them any credibility. In the real world, we would expect to see monthly or geographical variances. You would have thought that they would have employed someone with half a brain to spot that not every force will achieve a crime reduction every month, month in month out.

Greed has taken over in the upper echelons of the police now, and we have reported on this in some detail in previous articles.

Unfortunately, it's the guys at the sharp end who face the real consequences of it all. Forces showing consistent decreases will be seen to have crime under control and will be those who face the cutbacks. (Probably the basis for Alan Johnsons overtime cuts - he has heard the positive message for so long, he believes his own p.r.)
Ah well, at least the Chiefs will get a nice fat pay packet this month, even if they didn't turn up in the snow!

We should not be surprised to see the continued illusion of reduced crime when so much of the Chief Officer bonus is paid out to create the illusory effect of crime reduction. Chief Officers can receive as much as 15% on top of their six figure basic pay to report reductions in crime and increased detections. Little wonder with such an inducement that month after month we see a reduction in crime posted. To see the previous post about the top cops pay and crime scandal click here. To see our detailed report click here.
Very timely this article, a few weeks after Rodger Patrick, a retired Detective Chief Inspector from the West Midlands Police, claimed in the Telegraph that manipulative methods are tacitly approved of by senior officers, police watchdogs and the Home Office.

The techniques – dubbed “gaming” – are used to create the illusion that fewer crimes are being committed and that a bigger proportion are being solved.

The claims will inflame the debate about crime statistics after recent figures suggested that crime fell four per cent in the second quarter of last year.

The techniques identified by Dr Patrick include:

“Cuffing” – in which officers make crimes disappear from official figures by either recording them as a “false report” or downgrading their seriousness. For example, a robbery in which a mobile phone is stolen with violence or threats of violence is recorded as “theft from the person”, which is not classed as a violent crime.

“Stitching” – from “stitching up”, whereby offenders are charged with a crime when there is insufficient evidence. Police know that prosecutors will never proceed with the case but the crime appears in police records to have been “solved”.

“Skewing” – when police activity is directed at easier-to-solve crimes to boost detection rates, at the expense of more serious offences such as sex crimes or child abuse.

“Nodding” – where clear-up rates are boosted by persuading convicted offenders to admit to crimes they have not committed, in exchange for inducements such as a lower sentence.

Dr Patrick, who researched the subject for a PhD, said: “The academics call this ‘gaming’ but front line police officers would call it fiddling the figures, massaging the books or, the current favourite term, ‘good housekeeping’. It is a bit like the police activities that we all thought stopped in the 1970s.”

The article cited lots of real life examples and one detective, who declined to be named, said: “Name any crime and I’ll tell you how it can be fiddled.”

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, which represents front line officers, said: “This research demonstrates that senior officers are directing and controlling widespread manipulation of crime figures.

“The public are misled, politicians can claim crime is falling and chief officers are rewarded with performance-related bonuses.”

Rank and file officers were told in 2002 that informal police warnings could no longer be counted as a detection for common assaults. Within 12 months the number of recorded common assaults dropped from 22,000 to 3,000 while thousands more crimes switched to the category “other woundings”.

“Such a rapid adjustment indicates the organisational nature of the phenomenon and suggests some form of co-ordination and direction by management,” the research said.

“The scale of the ‘gaming’ behaviours measured in this thesis … suggested senior officers were either directly orchestrating the behaviour or turning a blind eye to it.”

Dr Patrick believes other gaming techniques are still being used in forces across the country.

The report also warned that the use of “stitching” was “significant”, while “cuffing” had continued after the introduction of Home Office rules which were supposed to guarantee and standardise the way crimes are recorded.

“Cuffing” can involve a situation where a victim of crime is accused of making a false crime report, and is therefore treated like a suspect rather than an injured party, Dr Patrick said. “You cannot have members of the public who have been victims of crime coming to the police for help and being treated like suspects. That is not right and it will erode confidence in the police,” he said.

He was scathing of HMIC’s failure to tackle the problem, noting there were no examples of chief police officers being publicly criticised by inspectors for this type of crime figure manipulation.

To see the Telegraph article by Dr Patrick click here.

Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

CRIME MAPPING - IS POLICE RECORDED CRIME A TRUE MEASURE?

Click on the map above to see full size.

An interactive map offering detailed crime statistics on every street in England and Wales crashed hours after its launch today.


Users in London, Yorkshire, Humberside and Manchester were unable to access the detailed online map.

Those attempting to visit the site, http://maps.police.uk/  were shown an automated message saying it was temporarily unavailable.

The teething problems surfaced as Home Office minister David Hanson officially unveiled the website during a visit to a regeneration project in south west London. He was joined by National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) deputy chief executive Steve Mortimore, whose colleagues drew up the map.

The website aimed to offer members of the public unprecedented access to information about crimes taking place in their neighbourhood. The national map follows on the heels of regional versions created by the 43 forces across England and Wales.

Users should be able to access figures on levels of burglary, robbery, violence, vehicle crime and anti-social behaviour. They can also compare one area against another and compare figures against the same period the previous year to see if crime is getting better or worse. The website also offers messages from senior officers and links to local policing priorities and information about forthcoming crime-fighting events.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The high level of public interest in the new national crime map has put temporary pressure on the website. Urgent work is under way to resolve this and the website should be working again shortly."

The launch of the “Crime Mapping” facility, http://maps.police.uk/ unites the crime statistics of the 43 police forces of England & Wales  under one software banner for the first time.

This is long overdue. Only yesterday an article posted on this site complained that the Home Office were allowing 8 forces responsible for 40% of the population and 48% of crime to use their own software. Cynical perhaps, but we suspected that this was yet another Home Office strategy to prevent the general public from accessing the full picture of current recorded crime, and also continuing the “fudging” of figures.

After the shaky start when the facility kept freezing up, it started to work more efficiently this evening. We have attached a composite report of the 43 forces current recorded crime for Burglary, Car Crime, Robbery and All recorded crime. On completion, we are not one bit convinced that the police recording of crime is now an accurate reflection of crime in the UK.

A few observations.

• The “All Crime” monthly average for the most recent three months is 357,365 incidents

• On that basis, the full year forecast will be 4,288,380 crimes

• In 2008 the recorded crime incident was 4,703,814 (-415,434)

• Will we be expected to believe a crime reduction of 13.4% ??

• This is more than a months full crime reporting for the nation!

• In 2008 as in previous years, the BCS estimates of crime were over twice that of recorded crime

• Front line officers tell us that if anything, the volume of crime is increasing NOT decreasing

• Crimes are often misclassified… robbery downgraded to theft, car theft included in burglary when keys are stolen on egress

• How many crimes are not now reported as such, if the victim does not insist? (Citizen focus?)

• Has public confidence sunk so low that they have simply lost all faith in reporting?

• The BCS last year suggested that reporting had dropped as low as 33% for some offences, to 38% overall

To quote from the Home Office BCS : “For the crime types it covers, the BCS provides a better reflection of the true extent of household and personal crime than police recorded statistics because the survey includes crimes that are not reported to or recorded by the police. The primary purpose of the BCS is to provide national level analysis but some headline figures are available at regional and police force area level. The BCS is also a better indicator of long-term trends than police recorded crime because it is unaffected by changes in levels of reporting to the police or police recording practices”.

• This implies that the Government will place importance on police recorded crime only when it suits them. i.e. If recorded crime shows a decrease, with all the measures introduced to achieve that.

• The table below shows a steady decline in reporting of overall crime in the last 12 years, coincidentally the years of New Labour.

• Does this explain the “gap” of crimes that seem to have appeared in the reduction of reported crime?

• With so many new offences created, we are advised that it is simple to reallocate a reported offence to a lesser category.

• Section 5 Public Order Offences (crimeable) are now commonly demoted to drunk and disorderly (no crime report)

• Of those interviewed by BCS, 76% said they did not report because they felt the police would not/could not do anything

Click on table below to see larger image

• Is that what the CJS has come to, that the public won’t report because they have lost heart?

• Could this be a major contributory factor to the decrease in recorded crime?

• Has the massive surge in bureaucracy resulted in the massive misreporting of crime?

• How timely that the Government have pushed through the alignment of 43 forces data for current crime

• Are they planning yet another media spin about how crime has been dramatically decreased thanks to their effort?

• The recorded crime shows reductions of 5% burglary, 18% car crime, 7% for robbery and overall crime

• The target, performance and senior officer bonus culture will continue to “fudge” until stopped.

• We are guessing that a Home Office release will be imminent.

We wish we could accompany all of this skepticism with a dose of solutions, but unfortunately, we cannot yet see an answer. Clearly, the crime recording system is flawed and unreliable as a measure of crime. Detections are similarly distorted it would seem. It will be a courageous team that arrives at an acceptable solution that will encourage confidence to return, in the face of a Government and senior management teams that will apply many more dirty tricks to keep their noses buried in that trough. The BCS is only based on a trawl of 46,000 members of the public which hardly seems representative.

Dominic Grieve stated it so well. “We would advocate and support the proposal to make crime statistics properly independent. This would remove responsibility for compiling and publishing crime figures from the Home Office. The responsibility should be placed with the Office for National Statistics which is totally independent. The pre-release access that Ministers and political advisers get to crime statistics should be abolished – so the public would be the first to get an honest account of the facts. Any politician can talk about resuscitating public trust”.

The party that demonstrates their intentions and follows it up with decisive transparent and honest action that is genuinely in the public interest, will have the best chance of achieving it.

Crime Analysis Team

Nice 1 Limited

FUDGING CRIME STATISTICS IS NO WAY TO RESTORE PUBLIC CONFIDENCE

WHOOPEE!! Pass the rose coloured spex, crime is on the decrease, detections are on the increase. Or so the Government would have us believe.

Whilst the production of crime statistics remain the responsibility of the Home Office, the public faith in the Criminal Justice System will not be restored.

There are now countless examples of how this Government have manipulated the numbers to portray the impression that all in the garden is rosy.

According to research by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, trust in government Ministers to tell the truth is down from 27% (2006) to 22% (2008). Polls show politicians at the bottom of the list of professionals trusted by the public. What’s gone wrong, and what can be done about it?

At the most basic level, the Home Office has relied on the British Crime Survey to argue that violent crime has come down by 40% under this government, ignoring formal warnings by Sir David Normington, that ‘levels of the most serious violence are higher than they were ten years ago’. The BCS is an obviously poor measure of violent crime. It does not count homicide offences, rape and multiple assaults. It also excludes some of the most vulnerable victims of violence, including: the homeless, elderly people in care homes, students in digs and – until this year – all children. In fact, we know that police recorded violent crime has nearly doubled since 1997.

The Home Office clearly place great importance on the British Crime Survey (BCS), as this quote from the Home Office website confirms :-

"The BCS includes crimes which are not reported to the police, so it is an important alternative to police records. The BCS is a particularly important survey because it can provide a more complete picture of crime than police recorded crime statistics alone. The BCS includes crimes which are not reported to, or recorded by, the police and is therefore unaffected by changes in recording practices. It can provide the best guide to long-term trends in crime".

Reports from front line officers, of ridiculous levels of bureaucracy and procedure confirms what many of the public already suspect, that their effectiveness is severely impaired. This results in a lack of public confidence in the system of policing in the UK. How can the public be expected to have confidence in either BCS statistics or police recorded crime, when the BCS figures for 2008 suggest that over 10 million crimes were committed, yet the police recorded numbers amount to only 4.7 million?

Again front line officers provide an answer. They tell us that so much time is consumed recording and dealing with so many minor offences that are purely for the purposes of meeting political performance targets, that the most desired objective, providing protection where it's needed most, is the most impossible target of all to hit. This Government have introduced over 3000 new offences since arriving in office.

When Gordon Brown took office, he promised ‘a different type of politics – a more open and honest dialogue: frank about problems, candid about dilemmas’. And the reality? Back in June 2008, he responded to a planted question in Prime Minister’s Questions, by claiming ‘As far as CCTV is concerned, in the most recent experiment, in central Newcastle, CCTV reduced crime by 60 per cent’. Dig below the surface, and the study relied upon was not recent at all – but published in 1995. Whilst burglaries in central Newcastle allegedly fell by 56%, the wider area showed a fall in burglary of just 2%, whilst criminal damage and theft rose by 8%. The Prime Minister ignored as inconvenient subsequent Home Office studies (2005 and 2007) showing CCTV had ‘little overall effect on crime levels’ because 80% of CCTV footage is not fit for purpose.

THE WAY POLICE RECORD CRIME

Public access to information about crime in their local area has improved. And yet the Government still have not delivered on this promise to the full extent the public deserve.

The table below illustrates the 43 police forces of England & Wales, showing the population & households each force is responsible for, and the share of the national crime each polices.

The BCS is published in July each year detailing crime that occurred in the previous year. Six months have elapsed by the time the document goes to print. The statistics are already history, so what's a bit of manipulation and fudging here and there? The public will never know the difference, so why not exploit the opportunity to sensationalise and spin with inaccurate headlines? Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary in a recent speech, said that crime statistics are the least important part of the problem. Well, he would say that when the years of manipulation have served only to diminish public confidence still further.

Only by opening the books and exposing the real picture, will there be an opportunity for reform.

Have a look at the table. Of the 43 police forces 34 subscribe to the same analytical software that the public may view for the current crime in a particular area.

The top nine forces in the table police 41% of the population & households and a massive 48% of the nations crime. Yet these same forces are permitted, perhaps even encouraged to utilise their own software that is not as easily interrogated. The question has to be asked whether this is yet another Government strategy to make the collating of national current crime less accessible. The national picture of current crime is not easily obtained. When 48% of it is made difficult and laborious to compile, there are not many who would bother. And so, once again, the Government continues its charade of falling crime.

Click the table to see full view

Beyond the Home Office, the manipulation of government information has become endemic. The government has fiddled the figures on numbers claiming Jobseekers allowance to mask the true state of unemployment. The Treasury has disguised the level of government debt. Last year, the National Audit Office criticised the government for the way it counts carbon emissions, to overstate its record by up to 12%.

This is bad for policy-making – if you cover up the problems, how can you solve them? It also erodes public trust. Government must be much more honest about the challenges facing the country, if we are to begin to tackle them. Short-term spin must give way to proper long-term strategic thinking. That is the way to restore public confidence.

We would advocate and support the proposal to make crime statistics properly independent. This would remove responsibility for compiling and publishing crime figures from the Home Office, who clearly cannot be trusted to be truthful with the electorate and not to apply their political spin. The reposnsibility should be placed with the Office for National Statistics which is totally independent. The pre-release access that Ministers and political advisers get to crime statistics should be abolished – so the public would be the first to get an honest account of the facts. Any politician can talk about resuscitating public trust. The party that demonstrates their intentions and follows it up with decisive action that is genuinely in the public interest, will have the best chance of achieving it.

Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

ARE YOU READY FOR THE TRUTH ABOUT POLICING IN THE UK?

One of the better police blogs is http://200weeks.police999.com/ which burst into life on September 9th 2005. The site was created by a rEgular police officer who has dedicated his life to the force and area that he serves.

In his own words, the site author has spent his entire life "in the trenches" as a front line officer. In February 2009, the author hung up his boots and truncheon, and after 30 years service, became a civilian in his police force control room, a vantage point from where he is able to continue his insightful reports on policing as it really is in the UK today.

A prolific and intelligent writer, "200" posts regular articles that provide an honest and informed view of the challenges that face police officers in their attempts to deliver a fair system of justice, despite an ever increasing burden of bureacuracy and idiotic procedures.

The articles reprinted below are two fine examples from "200" of real world of policing in Britain in 2009.

NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH

The dreadful case of Fiona Pilkington whose life was blighted by anti social youths on her estate to such an extent that she took her own child’s life & committed suicide by setting fire to her car as they sat in it, will have some far-reaching repurcussions. The surprise is that, in the two years since this tragic event happened, there has been just about zero change in the way police deal with anti-social behaviour.

I spend every late shift in every town I control not sending police officers to anti social youths. This is despite the fact that I know what an effect it can have on people’s lives let alone their peace. I’m almost ashamed to say but I have anti social behaviour in my street & I never report it to the police, the reason purely & simply is, I know there is little chance of the police arriving before the youths have moved on. If it’s gotten too bad I have gone out there myself & given some ‘advice’, though I don’t like doing this in my own street. (I tend to climb over my back fence & appear from somewhere not near my house so they don’t know where I live).

The apalling crux of the matter is one of mathematics. We have X-amount of officers & we get Y-amount of jobs which take Z-amount of time. When Y x Z > X we cannot possibly get to all the jobs on time, if at all. We either have to make people wait, in some cases days, or we just don’t go.

The problem with antisocial behaviour is that it doesn’t fit in with any targets & we don’t get to tick any boxes. When Jay sends a text message to his ex-girlfriend Leah saying she’s a slag, that’s threats to violence or damage, malicious communications or a domestic, all of which are recordable & may result in a detected crime. When Mrs Miggins is fed up to the back teeth with a bunch of teenage yobs who spend every night shouting & swearing outside her bedroom & pissing up against her fence, that’s just a bit of ASB. Guess which one gets an officer sent to it whether they want one or not & which one gets closed off 2 hours after the youths have gone elsewhere with a ‘no officer available’ closing.

Mrs Pilkington did not have the protection afforded to certain groups within society. Had she been black or Asian, Jewish or gay, she would have had an officer every single occasion she phoned. There are teams within each police force whose sole job it is to look at ‘hate’ crimes against minority groups. I well remember a case of some kids throwing snowballs at a Jewish shop, on a day when the kids were throwing snowballs at everyone & anyone & we didn’t have the resources to deal with all the accidents & crime let alone kids chucking snowballs. Most of the snowball jobs just got closed off because there was absolutely no chance of us sending anyone; we had more important & immediate things to do. The Jewish shop had to remain open because the racism word had been mentioned. Within an hour the Inspector in charge of the diversity unit was on the phone to the control room inspector demanding to know why this racist incident hadn’t been assigned within the 1 hour requirement of force policy.

Nobody phoned up from any police unit who sit on their arses looking at logs in some office somewhere at HQ on behalf of all the other people being taunted by kids with snow. The fact that Mrs Pilkington had a disabled daughter, much of which taunting was aimed at, doesn’t seem to have cut any ice with the local constabulary.

I’ve blogged before about the unfairness of diversity policy & have argued that everyone should be treated on their own merits only. It completely baffles me that, for instance, a 6′6 Afro-Caribbean nightclub bouncer with years in the nighttime entertainment trade, who gets called a rude name is entitled to a better service than a vulnerable teenage girl who may be, unknowingly to us, considering suicide because of some bullying. How can a rule written on a policy somewhere at police HQ possibly differentiate between the effect on these two people & class one as somehow more deserving of a higher response than the other. Where is the leeway to attend based on the individual potential effect on the victim?

Just occasionally, someone will come up with a local operation to target antisocial behaviour. Extra resources will be called in & they will be tasked for ASB jobs alone, unavailable for RTCs, assaults or domestics. This is a clear acceptance of the importance of tackling such behaviour, but if it is important, why isn’t important all the time & on every estate.

Antisocial behaviour is the key to so many more problems in society. Someone who grows up not having consequences for their behaviour will learn that they are entitled to do what they want, when they want, to whom they want. They will grow up with a me, me, me attitude & will spend the rest of their lives demanding everything they can get. A child who grows up to respect other peoples needs & rights will end up as net givers to society.

When I was on the street I actually enjoyed helping to make other people’s lives a little better. One of the reasons I wanted to join the police was to help people who couldn’t help themselves. I held that belief until the day I retired. I still believe it. I am unable to do it because I do not have the resources nor the will from those who run the show to sort the matter out.

After the story of Mrs Pilkington, I will be wondering if the next job I fail to send an officer to will end up with someone murdering their child & topping themselves. That’s simply not fair & I don’t have the power to address it properly.

Time will tell whether the fallout from Mrs Pilkington will make any difference.

AND SO IT GOES . . . .


Twenty years ago Mrs Pilkington would have had a much better service than she got in the years leading up to 2007. There were many thousands less police officers. In March this year there were 144,000 police officers. In March 1987 there were 120,000.

We have 24,000 more police officers yet those available for front line policing have been slashed dramatically. I don’t have access to any figures for the amount of officers available for day-to-day policing calls so I can only go by my own experience. In 1987 one division I worked in paraded 18 officers split between 4 police stations. This did not include 3 rural cars which covered the villages, 1 officer in every neighbourhood beat & a rural officers who shared all the villages between them. We put out 9 patrol cars in the division plus a walker in each of the town centres & the police stations were open 24 hours a day.

Now those same 4 towns have a maximum of 8 officers between them, we are lucky if they can put out 5 cars in the whole division, all of the police stations are closed longer than they are open.

Back in the day the village bobby lived on the patch & knew everyone & everything there was to be known. He probably looked after 2 or 3 villages. Every estate had a neighbourhood officer who lived on their patch, they often had a little police office attached to their house, they too knew everyone, they were a vast source of information. What they knew & what they did couldn’t be recorded in an exel spreadsheet yet their value to policing was enormous.

Then someone in a wendy house somewhere decided that the only way to measure the success of an organisation was to match its performance against a written down set of criteria & the way to do this was to count beans. Suddenly, the value of everything was measured in beans & rural/neighbourhood officers didn’t grow any beans on their patches. Add to that the fact that they lived in expensive police houses.

The theory went that if you did away with neighbourhood & rural officers not only could you pull them all back to the nick where they could produce a few beans, you could also save the expense of maintaining their houses, sell them off & plough lots of lovely lolly into all the new & dynamic projects which were about to hit the world of UK policing. We lost a generation of intelligence which we are only now getting back, amazingly enough, through local PCSOs, who will, within a few years, be just as valuable a tool to police intelligence as the old village bobby.

It made good political – read voting – sense to increase the number of bobbies, so every government promised more. More bobbies means more votes ‘cos we all want more bobbies on the streets, only they never made the streets. They all went into disparate little ‘remit’ teams. You know the teams, they are the ones you ask for help when you’re struggling to meet all the frontline priorities who turn round & say “sorry, mate, not my remit”.

So we had the burglary squad, set up to specifically target burglary beans, the robbery squad busy collecting robbery beans, sexual offences squad, paedophile squad, computer crime squad, diversity squad, more officers means more potential for naughty goings-on so the rubber heel squad was boosted. We had the serious crime units, the bloody serious crime units, organised crime, it goes on. Then there are the units who monitor the other units, who count the beans, who supervise those who count the beans, who make sure the right beans are being counted.

So every time an Inspector of Constabulary comes a-calling & says, “now look here Mr Chief Constable, your force is doing particularly low in detections of spanner-wielding credit-card thieves” we have to have a department whose soul aim is to reduce spanner-wielding credit card thefts.

The problem for those on the front line is that most of the calls we get don’t lead to all the remit-beans. Nobody measures the prevention of crime, nobody measures kids who piss up your garage & chuck eggs through your windows, nobody measures depressed people who threaten suicide but never go through with it. You don’t get a bean for sitting outside a row of shops stopping the kids from spitting at people with special needs.

And if they’re not measured, they’re not important.

If the next Inspector of Constabulary comes round & says “Now look here Mr Chief Constable, the behaviour of teenage yobs in this area is apalling, this chart shows a 150% increase in bad language in front of old ladies, get it sorted” you’ll have so many shiny-arses out of their offices that the problem could be sorted in a year.

It ain’t gonna happen, though.

COMMENT

The authors of this site have been contacted by senior politicians who are capable of introducing effective criminal justice reforms. They tell us that they are interested and paying regular attention to the content on these pages. Whilst the statistical analysis contained in the reports from these pages is our work, the majority of the real life experiences are inspired by or drawn from people at the coal face of British policing, such as the author of the 200 site, Inspector Gadget, PC Bloggs and others contained in the "Thin Blue Line" links opposite.

To the politicians, Home Office civil servants and senior officers that may read these pages, we would invite you to spend some time reading some of the enlightening articles contained on these and other front line policing sites. Be prepared to confront the real world head on through these pages. We invite you to step out of your environment for a while, so that you may empathise with the challenges and obstructions faced by the front line officer. The content is an often colourful, honest view of the framework within which our guys at the coal face of society perform their increasingly difficult duty.

Listening is not enough. Take what you hear to heart. Then take the effective action only you are empowered to take, to make the necessary reforms that may ultimately restore public confidence in the Criminal Justice System that should be the bedrock of a decent, peaceful society.

We know the challenge is a difficult one that will require all your reserves of courage and direct thought. We know it involves accepting openly and honestly that mistakes have been made. Only by applying this level of honesty and transparency in any reforms you consider are appropriate, will your efforts bear the fruit in transforming society.

Britain is broken. You have the power to fix it. Cut through the distractions and obstructions that have plagued modern policing. Let us hear less of the minority projects and more of firm and effective use of police resources. Show us evidence that our taxes are being well spent, that the ratio of frontline officers actually available for real policework, dramatically exceeds those tied up counting beans, creating flow charts and ivory tower projects to justify the perpetuation of departments crammed with wasted resources.

Spend our money wisely. Show us the real value we deserve to see. You will find you have a much greater degree of public support and confidence from the wider public than you may have imagined.

We hope to see evidence of your efforts very soon.

The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

MORE SPIN FROM LABOUR ON OUR FAILING JUSTICE SYSTEM

Extracts from Labour's Home Secretary, Alan Johnson's speech to the 2009 Labour Party Annual Conference:

"Crime is the area of government policy where statistics matter the least and perception matters the most. But the fact is that we have an excellent record to defend".

COMMENT : Statistics matter the least? You would say that, considering the actual level of crime (10million incidents) is twice that reported to the police (4.7million) and the Home Office admit that the higher figure is the most reliable. To admit they matter would mean you having do accept that crime is out of control and the public have lost confidence in reporting it. Tell the victims of crime that statistics matter the least, especially the ones that the Government policing system couldn't respond to because of endemic police bureaucracy, misdirected priorities and ivory tower minority projects.

"Overall crime is down by 36% since we came to power, violent crime by 41%, domestic burglary by 54% and vehicle-related theft by 57%."

COMMENT : What you mean is, you've found better ways to manipulate and misrepresent the statistics. If you mean that fewer people report crime because they have lost confidence in the system, we agree. However, the fudging of crime statistics has caused the general public to take your statistics with a pinch of salt, as political spin. Vehicle related thefts are now swallowed up in re allocated offences, such as burglary, robbery, or simple thefts. Your headlines earlier this year announced that vehicle crime was down by 10%. Yet Jacqui Smith revealed that 18,600 vehicle thefts were not reported as such, being absorbed into other offences. When added back into the vehicle theft numbers, take into account the under reporting and vehicle crime is INCREASING not decreasing. Your numbers are flawed by a serious corruption of the numbers for political gain.

"These achievements are a tribute to our policemen and women. There are more of them than ever before, supported by 16,000 Police Community Support Officers with a budget 60% higher than we inherited in 1997".

COMMENT : Yes, the crime figures are a tribute to our police officers, who do a very difficult job, despite a corrupted criminal justice system. 16,000 PCSO's without the powers to defend themselves and the public adequately. The funding for 16,000 PCSO's would have been better spent putting 12,500 regular officers, with full powers on the streets. 142,000 police officers in England & Wales. How many of them are involved in frontline duties?? The public would be shocked to hear that Government initiatives and projects, supported and promoted by the more senior politically directed officers take the vast majority of those officers off the streets, engaged in adminstrative, office based duties. A ridiculous number of officers are engaged in wasteful activity rather than actually doing the job we need them for, protecting our community and citizens.

The fact is, the thin blue line has become so transparent it is barely visible. Go to any police station between the hours of 9am - 5pm... try and get a parking space. Then revisit the same station at 10pm. That picture tells the story of the ineffective use of police resources when on the street policing is really needed. But hey, there are some lovely flow charts and tables to look at in those offices.

How much of that 60% budget funds frontline officer resources and how many millions are wasted on Government "Wendy House" ideas and projects?? All forces have been presented with a 10% budget cut for 2010/2011, based in part on the manufactured statistics and detections devised and implemented by the Home Office you represent.

"We need to ensure that any breach of an ASBO is prosecuted. Above all, we need to make it clear that anti-social behaviour isn't a low-level nuisance to be tolerated, it's a major source of insecurity and unhappiness that has to be tackled wherever and whenever it occurs".

COMMENT : 60,000 ASBO's with over half being breached, with the Criminal Justice System a toothless tiger to deal with it. The kids are laughing at authority because adequate powers were not put in place to deal with breaches of ASBO's. The penalties for breaching ASBO's are so pathetic, more than 50% have done so repeatedly with NO repercussions. Tell the victims of their behaviour how effective ASBO's have been without the necessary follow up powers to deal with breaches.

"It was Labour that introduced specialist domestic violence courts and helped put 720 fully trained independent domestic violence advisers in place. More arrests are being made and conviction rates are rising".

COMMENT : Domestic violence is an important issue that needs effective solutions. Yet again though, the Home Office saw this as a means of manipulating statistics and detection rates. No one would dispute the benefits of the extra steps now being taken to protect vulnerable victims in these circumstances. However, look more closely at the crime figures you boast about. Ask the front line officers how many cases they have been forced to deal with where complaints are withdrawn but the offence remains on the books for the purposes of ticking the detection box, criminalising thousands more people that the victim does not want to see prosecuted. Genuine cases where vulnerable parties are victimised and want to proceed are applauded, but there remains a massive distortion of the real picture by the Home Officer and senior officers pursuing detections at all costs.

"Gordon Brown has been integral to all of these achievements and he has led the way in addressing the biggest global economic and political challenges of our age".

COMMENT : This is the same Gordon Brown that did the deal with Gadaffi, trading justice for commerce over the Lockerbie bomber and the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher? How can the British public ever trust a man who would make such a despicable trade off?

Mr Johnson, you may choose to dismiss the statistics, the British public certainly do, they carry no weight when presented by a party that has manipulated and distorted them beyong truthful recognition. You may make your promises at Conference time, when it suits your political ends. However, the front line police officers know the real truth of your falsehoods. The general public are not stupid. They know the Government have been conning them these last twelve years on crime and policing. The see the evidence in the decay of our social fabric every day on the streets of Britain. So don't feed us your spin about crime being slashed, the figures are worthless and the words and hollow promises of your party are no longer trusted.

Britain may not yet be broken, but it is deeply wounded by the lies and spin we have been fed.

The wounds can be healed with transparent reform and back to basics policing unfettered by excessive political influence.

The Government to which you have pinned your flag of loyalty, no longer inspires the confidence and support of the public.

We look forward to witnessing a better future, with a Government whose actions will speak louder than words, delivering the justice and society we seek, with honesty and transparent solutions that will go a long way to regain the trust of the public.

The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Ltd

RAPE NUMBERS SUPPRESSED BY POLICE RECORDING PROCESS

Yet another example of how crime statistics are distorted for immoral purposes is highlighted in a report from the BBC.

The article states that the BBC have learned that rape claims are being left off official crime records. A freedom of information request has revealed that some UK police forces fail to record more than 40% of cases.

Police rules of guidance for rape state that only allegations verified as false, reported to the wrong force, or recorded in error can be removed.

Wide regional variations are reflected but some forces had such a high number of cases removed from records - known as "no-criming" - that critics say it is evident the rules are not being properly applied.

The article goes on to reveal that there are hundreds of instances where rapes are reported but never make it into the Home Office figures. This doesn't even take into account incidents that were reported and subsequently "no-crimed".

This is a further, more serious example of  example of how police procedures and the ridiculous race for detections and performance targeting obstruct the frontline officer from fulfilling their function as effectively as they would want, with the knock on effect of frustrating the ends of justice for the true victims.

False Allegations

There are instances where false allegations are made for whatever reason. A relationship goes wrong and the woman regrets having sex with a man and makes the allegation, after a few drinks a woman has sex with a man then fearing the consequences of discovery by her partner, reports the matter as rape to cover her tracks. The police have an extremely difficult task in getting to the truth of these allegations but there are skilled and trusted officers who are eminently capable of doing so. Rape is one allegation that is said to be "difficult to prove and even more difficult to disprove", so a great degree of care, sensitvity and diligence is required to arrive at the facts.

Of the rape cases that are reported, a meagre 6.5% are detected. Home Office and police information suggests that only 2% of cases are found to be false. If offences are being concealed or suppressed in this way, it disguises the enormity and sevirity of the real problem.

RAPE IS TRIVIALISED

The issue that is of great concern here is that the police crime reporting process is used as yet another means to suppress the real undetected crime picture in the UK. Any commitment and endeavour of the investigating officers is tainted by the subsequent failure to record the offence accurately when the offence is misrepresented or simply not recorded.

The police guidelines for recording crime centre around "Victim Focus". If a crime is reported, the victim has grounds to believe a crime has occurred and there is no quality evidence to suggest otherwise, the police are required to record the matter as a crime. This applies regardless of the offence, burglary, theft, wounding, fraud or sexual offences including rape. If someone breaks into your house and steals your property, it is reported as a burglary. That crime stands on the books whether the offender is caught and a detection is achieved or not. If the suspect is arrested, charged and for whatever reason a conviction is not achieved, the crime of burglary remains as a recorded crime. How can it be then, that if a woman is raped, and there is no quality evidence to suggest it is a false allegation, that the incident can be so easily wiped off the books?

There is something seriously wrong with the moral compass of the policy of a force that encourages or permits this to happen.

POLICE ATTITUDES

It is easy to make the mistake of generalising police attitudes. The cases that attract the media attention are those where officers displayed  a less than sympathetic or even dismissive attitude toward the victim. One of the best writers on this subject is a police blogger, writing under a pseudonym of WPC Ellie Bloggs. Read some of her articles on the subject by clicking here. "Ellie" is both a woman and a serving police officer, with a balanced view of the problem and her views make for informed reading on the subject.

The distortion of the recording of rape crimes is a despicable use of the process for statistical benefit and needs revision urgently. As we have seen in other articles from these pages, rape is not the only crime that is misreported or mis-allocated for the sole purpose of projecting a better image of policing and detections. It is however, one of the examples with far more serious implications and consequences to justice being delivered and restoring public confidence.

Far better that a crime is reported, whatever its category, and the public are made aware of the real resource needs of the police service to deal with the problem, than using statistics as a political football so that the latest crime reduction headlines can be so blithly reported. Once the true picture is revealed, the correct degree of resource and expertise can be applied to deal with it. Until that time, the UK public will continue to be short changed and conned, both in terms of the millions paid in tax and the justice it deserves.

Crime Statistics - A Measure Of Public Confidence?

Click the image to see larger (also contained within the full report - see below)

Nice 1 Ltd have complete a further analysis of Home Office crime statistics, comparing British Crime Survey results with offences notified to the police in the 2008/09 period. To see the analysis click here.

Closer scrutiny of the Home Office statistics reveals a massive disparity between the crime experienced in society and that actually notified to the police.

The British Crime Survey is the source of data relied upon by the Government as being the most accurate reflection of crime in England & Wales.

Whilst 4.7 million crimes were reported to the police, the survey suggests that the actual number of notifiable incidents is nearer to 10.7 million and that a mere 41% of comparable crimes are actually reported.

Of those interviewed who admitted they had not reported being a victim of crime, 76% said they felt the police would not or could not do anything.

If the problem of public confidence in the police were compared to the layers of an onion, the front line bobbies, with all the obstructions they face to delivering the service they want to give, are the outer layer. Inside that layer, lies the core of the problem.

The more layers of the onion are removed, the closer we get to the heart of responsibility for the state of policing and crime in England & Wales. The Home Office lies at the heart, which is a political department as well as being at the heart of the Criminal Justice System.

The thin blue line of front line officers, constables, sergeants and inspectors deal with the real problems at street level. It is they who are best qualified to comment on the state of the society they police. Yet they are continually obstructed by the infrastructure, paperwork and procedures designed, influenced and implemented by those within the inner layers, conveniently, those who are higher up the hierarchy and furthest away from the coal face.

Not only do the thin blue line have to deal with the outer layer of the problems of society, but they also face the full force of the lack of public confidence, caused by the very procedural obstructions created by the inner layers. So the designers of these processes don't even have to face the consequences of their handywork.

The layers of the onion must be peeled away to bare the warts n all facts that lie at the heart of the problem.

The problem and solution lies not within the thin blue line, but in the very heart of the matter, where fanciful procedures and strategies, committees and project teams are wasting millions of taxpayers money. Strip away the layers of adminstration and unnecessary obstructions. Give the police the freedom and resources to return to 'common sense back to basics' policing, without the influence and interference of politicians and external agencies who are bleeding the country dry and feeding us manipulated headlines to keep them in office.

When the police can realise their true effective potential, with optimised use of their resources, reporting the accurate picture of society, good and bad, we may see the green shoots of public confidence start to return.

Crime Analysis Team

Nice 1 Limited

Home Secretary Sets Out His Position On Policing

Earlier this week the Home Secretary spoke to the Superintendents' conference about the future of UK policing...

Alan Johnson MP addresses Police Superintendents conference


In his address to the Police Superintendents Association conference, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said:

"Your association was indeed the first Home Office-linked organisation I met after becoming Home Secretary. In that short meeting with your executive, I had the luxury of not being expected to know anything and the benefit of hearing from people who knew an awful lot.

Since its formal recognition in 1952, the Superintendents’ Association has been a crucial influence not only in advocating on behalf of superintendents, but in shaping modern policing as we know it today.


I have been indebted to Ian and his colleagues for their advice and insight over the last few months. I don’t want my address today to be a simple recitation of flattering statistics, but it would be remiss not to mention the significant reduction in crime over the last 12 years – a fall of 39 per cent since 1997.

It is important to mention it because it is a real and genuine achievement. It’s your achievement and it is testament to the incredible commitment and dedication of Britain’s police. But crime is the area of government policy where statistics matter the least and perception matters the most.

The achievements in crime reduction need to be balanced against the fact that people's concern about crime isn’t declining at the same rate. And fear of crime, as well as being debilitating in itself, dilutes public confidence. The police have always had to ride two horses; a police force for those who break the law, and a police service for the law-abiding public.

As Sir Robert Peel once said: “the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen.”

It is testament to this legacy that while in many other countries in the world, the police are feared and reviled, in the UK, they are respected and admired. While the renewed focus on the relationship between the police and the public through neighbourhood policing echoes the fundamental purpose of the police, as articulated so well in the 19th century, some of the challenges faced by modern police forces would be unrecognisable to Peel and his colleagues.

When the first modern police forces were established, they had to confront the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation – people flooded to cities like London, Manchester and Glasgow - where the demand for cheap, unskilled labour was insatiable. Overcrowded, squalid slums quickly became breeding grounds for violent gang wars as rival “Scuttlers,” as they were called, in Manchester, terrorised people with their sustained and brutal street fights.

If the challenge was industrialisation in the 19th Century, then it’s globalisation in the 21st. Terrorists and criminal networks pay scant attention to national borders. On Monday, the three ring leaders of the airline bomb plot, who planned unimaginable carnage, were sentenced to 40 years, 36 years and 32 years respectively – sentences they fully deserved.

The success of Operation Overt is a salient reminder both of the unprecedented and international scale of the challenges we face. It also highlights the fact that our police and security forces are a precious national asset that we diminish or constrain at our peril. While the primary duty of the state, as exercised by the Home Secretary and the police, has always been to keep people safe, fulfilling that duty, under the threat of terrorist attack, has never been more complex.

We in the UK have a long experience of terrorism. But the sustained nature of the threat we face today, has taken us into new territory, and demonstrated the extraordinary capacity of the police to adapt to changing circumstances. But they need the right tools to do the job. Having considered the House of Lords Judgement, I have to decide whether control orders should be abandoned or maintained. They are not and never were intended to be the first line of defence.

Where an individual is suspected of terrorist activity, our first objective will always be for that person to be tried and prosecuted in an open court, or deported if they are foreign nationals. But there is a very small number of people who undoubtedly pose a substantial threat to public safety, and who for good reason, we can neither prosecute nor deport.

In handing down his judgement on control orders on 10 June this year, Lord Justice Scott said: “The duty of the courts … is not … to protect the lives of citizens. It is…to apply the law.” It is however, my primary duty to do both.

So while the courts are bound to be an impartial arbitrator of how the law is applied, it falls on police and security services to protect the public. In their efforts to prevent dangerous individuals from doing harm, they must use a range of measures which the law allows.

Control orders are a practical and proportionate legislative tool that can be applied in such cases. They are not perfect and one day, I hope they won’t be necessary. But for a handful of people, they remain the best option we have for ensuring the public is safe and our security services are able to do their work effectively. That is why I have decided to maintain their availability within the constraints of the House of Lords judgement.

There are those who claim that a global sense of purpose sits uneasily with the renewed focus on neighbourhood policing and public confidence. But every police officer knows that it is only through earning the trust of local communities, that their cooperation can be secured in tackling organised crime, gang violence, and yes, even terrorism. We know that public confidence is at its highest in areas where the police are a constant visible presence; where they make themselves accessible to local people, and where they explain what they are doing to tackle crime whilst listening and responding to people’s concerns.

The surveys show that those who feel properly informed about the measures that the police are taking in their area are nearly twice as likely to believe that crime is being effectively addressed.

Having completed my first three months in this job, I am very clear from all that I’ve seen and heard that there’s no need for more central targets, radical reorganisations or eye-catching initiatives. We need to further consolidate that which is already in place, and we need to do more, much more, to tackle antisocial behaviour.

Petty acts of vandalism, fly-tipping, abandoned cars, intimidating or threatening behaviour – these are not trivial or, as they are sometimes dismissed, “low-level problems.” For the people who have to live with them on a daily basis, they are far from trivial - they have a profound impact on their health and wellbeing.

But in a lot of communities, there’s a “why bother?” sentiment. They don’t raise these issues with the police or others because they think they think it won’t make any difference. Or even that it will make the problem worse. This is despite the fact that the police and local authorities have more powers to deal with antisocial behaviour than ever before and the statistics tell us that after any kind of intervention, two thirds of perpetrators desist. After 3 interventions, all but the most persistent 7 per cent desist. But if we cannot convince the public to come forward, because past experience tells them their complaint will be passed from the local authority to the police and then back again, then we are fighting a loosing battle.

Everyone has the right to feel safe where they live. Tackling antisocial behaviour must be a priority for the police and local authorities and the public need to believe that their complaint will be acted upon. Last Friday, I spent some time with Merseyside Police. They have a taskforce dedicated to tackling antisocial behaviour in areas where it’s a big problem. As well as taking tough action on the perpetrators, police officers regularly visit the victims of antisocial behaviour to check that they are satisfied with the action the police have taken. It can be no coincidence that public confidence in this area has increased from 50 per cent in September last year to 56.9 per cent in March this year. The police also say that being tough on antisocial behaviour is helping them to address other issues like gang violence and gun crime, because often those involved in antisocial behaviour are connected to more serious crimes too.

The White Paper, which will be published shortly, won’t be an overwrite of the Green Paper but will embed those principles further and I hope resolve the issues which are making their implementation more difficult.

I know that one of the Green Paper issues that is at the forefront of your concerns is accountability. I’m adamant that there’s no case for elected members of police authorities, and neither this nor elected commissioners will feature in the White Paper. Ian is wise to warn us to be wary of those who offer simple solutions to complex problems.

When the public say they want the police to be more accountable, that doesn’t mean they want the dubious delights of elected police boards. It certainly doesn’t mean they want politicians pulling the strings, or telling the police how to do their jobs – in London or elsewhere. Locally, they want a name and a number they can call about problems they see in their neighbourhood and they want that problem to be dealt with quickly, preferably by a police officer with a familiar face.


If they think that a police officer hasn’t followed up the crime they’ve reported, or failed in some other way, they want their complaint dealt with quickly and proportionately. Most would rather have a speedy apology and an assurance that something similar won’t happen again than a lengthy investigation into that officer’s conduct. They also want to see the criminal justice system working for victims, not, as 79 per cent of people believe, for offenders. This is why Justice Seen, Justice Done is so critical. It is no coincidence that when people see criminals and perpetrators of antisocial behaviour being brought to account, their confidence in the police goes up.

Whilst as Home Secretary, I will advocate remorselessly on the public’s behalf, I would be doing them and the police a disservice if I thought that meant telling police officers how to do their job.

Similarly, I’m very clear that while centrally imposed targets may have once been necessary, that phase is over. There is now only one central target on public confidence and there are no accompanying government diktats about how this target will be delivered.

I recognise your concerns that the single confidence target will somehow be undermined by more complex arrangements for monitoring police performance. Simultaneously holding the police to account, while allowing for freedom and flexibility, will be a difficult balancing act. The Policing Pledge is not just another list of targets , and neither will it be monitored by the Home Office as if it was. The Pledge sets out the minimum that the public can justifiably expect from their local police force, to ensure that consistent standards are applied across the country. But I am clear, that whatever arrangements HMIC agree with you about how performance is monitored, it must not place unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on the police.

Over the last few years, we’ve made huge efforts to cut the laborious and unnecessary paperwork that chains police officers to their desks.

Thirty-six data collection requirements have either been removed or significantly reduced.

Scrapping activity-based costing alone has saved around 260,000 hours of police time.

The foot-long Stop and Account form has gone – saving another 690,000 hours.

The hand-held devices which are steadily replacing the iconic bobby’s notebook mean that police officers can do on the beat what could once only be done back to the station, saving half an hour every shift.

Analogue radios have been replaced by infinitely more powerful airwave handsets, making it easier for police officers to communicate, even on the London Tube network and saving more time for officers.

In addition, we will also explore whether we can reduce the requirements of the Stop and Search form. Currently, regardless of whether someone who is stopped and searched is arrested, police officers still have to fill in the form. It’s obviously essential to record the ethnicity of the person and the reason they were stopped, so that any complaint can be properly considered. But there should be no need for the police to record anything further.

In the forthcoming Policing, Crime and Private Security Bill, we will take the first steps towards radically slimming down the form for such incidents.

Despite these developments, I know the bureaucracy dragon has not yet been slain. Central government may have been slashed, but we were never the only manufacturer of red tape. Local requirements are often, equally, if not more burdensome, and these need to be addressed too.

To give one example, while the Stop and Account form has been abolished, I have heard of instances where neighbourhood police officers are still filling in the form even though it’s no longer required.

The confidence target was introduced to ensure that police officers could focus on what really mattered – that they were chasing criminals, not statistics, and so that they can exercise their professional judgement in making their communities safer. We have rightly been challenged by you and others to go further in reducing bureaucratic burdens on the service. But making further inroads will require more action at force and authority level. It is on this element that Jan Berry’s forthcoming review will concentrate.


I want to end by saying something about a subject that I’m sure has caused much discussion during your conference – future funding. I know it must feel like an uncomfortable squeeze between meeting rising public expectations and improving efficiency. When we talk about greater productivity and efficiency, commentators find it convenient to interpret this as a euphemism for cutting frontline staff. But when 43 police forces have between them, many hundreds of IT contracts, when many of those forces have separate arrangements for buying uniforms, vehicles and equipment, you cannot convince me that improving efficiency means abandoning neighbourhood policing.

We have not spent the last 12 years building frontline police numbers to record levels to see all these advances reversed.

I don’t believe that the way to respond to this tighter financial climate is to hang the sword of Damocles over frontline officers. The three year settlement up to 2011 is a good one, and in contrast to our political opponents, we have no intention of cutting into it The three year pay deal will be honoured, and because we recognise that we are asking you to deliver a challenging agenda, I can tell you today that the Basic Command Unit Fund will not be scrapped. It will continue in 2010/11, providing £40 million for the police, working in partnership with local authorities, to improve public confidence in communities they serve – whether that’s by tackling antisocial behaviour or investing more in neighbourhood policing.

I began by talking about the complexity of modern police work. How the challenges faced by police officers don’t just go from neighbourhood to national, but from local to global; from antisocial behaviour to terrorism. All are of equal importance to the public. But the overriding principle is very simple. Keeping people safe, providing them with security and serenity in their lives is the most basic duty that any government owes its citizens. The principles at the heart of the creation of the modern police service in the 19th century are as relevant today.

It is through greater engagement in neighbourhood policing, genuine accountability, collaboration and strong leadership that we can ensure that policing is carried out both with and for the public.

It is my role as Home Secretary to support the police in their difficult and dangerous work, and I will fulfil that role to the best of my ability."

Reprinted from :-

http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Home-Secretary-Sets-Out-His-Position-On-Policing_20278.html

Comment :-

Some fine words Mr Johnson. We feel sure they were received with rapturous applause. However, the frontline bobbies and response troops have heard these words before. ACTION is what is needed and speaks louder than any of your famliar force fed platitudes. Forgive us if we reserve our trust for the word of this Government, but we will not raise our expectations until we see positive results and action.

The list of reasons for doubting the word of this Government is endless. Years of "Jobs for the boys" in the form of expensive and doubtful community projects where funding would be better spent on real frontline resource allocation, manipulated crime statistics (and make no mistake, the word is out), the MP expenses scandal, the lack of support for the National Victims Association families, the treacherous trading of justice for the Libyan killer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, the worldwide condemnation for the release of the convicted Lockerbie murderer to name just a few of the more recent betrayals that have eroded trust in words alone.

From a policing perspective, there needs to be a clean slate. That requires an immediate acceptance that the crime figures you happily broadcast have been consistently manipulated for political benefit for many years and the time has come to spill the beans and start afresh. If you are sincere about seeking the return of public confidence, YOU MUST EARN IT. That requires a brave man and a brave party, but better the public knew the full truth, and adequate funding is allocated for policing that this fanstasy world in your headlines that crime is decreasing. This only perpetuates the problem.

Mr Johnson, you mention the disparity between the the reported crime figures and actual crime. You make the statement "They don’t raise these issues with the police or others because they think they think it won’t make any difference. Or even that it will make the problem worse".

What you don't say is WHY they feel it won't make a difference. Once again you fall back on the political cushion of  the extra police powers that have been introduced. That is all very well, when they get the chance to use them, (and believe us they would love to) when they are not chasing detections, protecting their own backs against petty internal attacks, tied up for hours with paperwork that is largely excessive.

Can you not see, this is what lies at the very core of public confidence. The very system that has been created down the years has drifted away from common sense and the back to basics approach must be taken seriously if the service is to recover from its current malaise. The public have seen for themselves that through no lack of commitment or desire on the part of the response officers, public calls for help all too often go unanswered due to the tangled web of obstructions to justice that have evolved down the years.

Accept that as a Government minister, it is unlikely that you will live in proximity or circumstances where you will come face-to-face with the violent and criminal face of Britain. That does not mean you should shut your eyes to what the average tax payer sees every day at the corner shop, on the High Streets or in the town centres.

An open and honest start would be to create a forum where police officers from the front line can speak openly and honestly about the real issues preventing the return to common sense back to basics policing, without fear or reprisals of threat to their career. You have started with the Superintendents, now deliver your message the the constables, sergeants and inspectors, ALL OF THEM, especially those on the front line, the response officers, who deal with real life policing every day. Create an environment where they are unafraid to voice their concerns. If you turn up with Chief Constables' or SMT Officers in tow, you can hardly expect officers to put their neck on the line and openly criticise the hierarchy, bureaucracy and processes that obstruct them from delivering the policing the nation deserves and you so speak of wanting.

The truth of policing in the UK will not be discovered in your office or that of senior officers, but out there on the street, where the real problems are being handled by real coppers every day. If you are to gain the confidence of these officers, get out and meet them, one-to-one, see the real world that they have to deal with. You will find the picture is far worse than you could ever imagine or are being fed by the SMT's, many of whom are part of the problem that needs solving.

We do not imagine for one moment that you would actually turn up on the wildest parts of London, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol to see the situation for yourself, but until the word of the experienced frontline bobby is taken more seriously and action is taken, the state of our society will spiral ever downward taking the aspiration of public confidence down with it.

Whether you are in office for twelve months or for years to come, the time to start is now.

LESS PROMISES MORE ACTION.

The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited