CRIME OF THE CENTURY - THE DECEPTION OF FALLING CRIME

It is time someone put the public straight about crime in the UK.

As expected, on the run up to the election, Nu Labour continue to perpetuate their conspiracy of deceit, that crime is falling faster than a stone thanks to their strategies.

A few days ago, the Times Online ran a piece entitled “Police record lower number of crimes than when Labour came to power in 1997”

In fairness to the Times, the article was balanced enough to make reference to the public mistrust of national crime statistics.

That mistrust is well founded.

Let us dispel the myths and state the facts so that the public can make up their own mind.
 “Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said that if there was to be an honest debate on crime the Conservatives should accept what repeated surveys all confirm: that crime has fallen and is still falling”.

 An honest debate Mr Johnson? . . . . Bring it on!   Only, let us decide what will be on the agenda . . . .

Explain to us how you can rely so heavily on a two tiered crime measurement system that contains such disparities. BCS in 2009 suggested 10 million crimes were committed, yet only 4.7million were reported to the police. The British Crime Survey every year reports that actual crime is more than double that reported, and in fact less than 40% of crime is reported due to lack of confidence in your system. Could it be that your reliance on the two tier system has more to do with the fact that it is far easier to manipulate volume crime such as we have witnessed with vehicle and damage incidents ?

Explain to us how, whilst on your parties watch, you can justify the complexity of two major changes in the way crime is recorded that have subsequently enabled crime statistics to be so easily fiddled. The Home Office Counting Rules [1989] expanded the number of crimes recorded by including a greater number of minor crimes. The National Crime Recording Standard [2002] sought to make the process of crime recording more victim oriented. The introduction of these changes rendering figures before and after their introduction incomparable.

Outline for us, why continue to mislead the public about crime going down, when in fact you have overseen so many changes to the recording process that encourage the downward distortion of the enormity of crime. Shall we provide you examples? Ok… where a house is broken into, car keys taken and the vehicle driven away, only one offence of burglary [no vehicle related crime] is recorded. Worse, let us say for example, a communal housing block is entered via one door, twenty flats are entered, twenty sets of car keys taken and twenty vehicles stolen. Twenty victims, forty crimes. Under your changes, only one offence of burglary is recorded. Frontline police officers tell us of their frustration of how they are being forced to enact your deceitful conspiracy, with many, many more similar examples on record.

Explain to us why so many thousands of matters remain reported merely as incidents and not captured under the recording of crime. Perhaps you would care to divulge to us the numbers of incidents that should have been upgraded to a crime thereby revealing a more accurate reflection of the volume of crime. We’re assuming you will either not deliver that information or ensure it is suitably doctored so it continues to conceal the nefarious activities endorsed by your Government.

Admit the facts, that your party claims of a “significant fall in crime over the last decade” are in fact a fallacious headline masking a web of conspiracy and deceit about the recording and reporting of crime. Concede the truth, that in real terms, much of the fluctuation in crime rate had more to do with a number of major changes in the way crime was recorded than any direct influence of the Labour Party. Admit that the reported decline in crime has more to do with something criminologists call “attrition”, opposed to any specific Labour strategy. This is reflected by a massive reduction in the reporting of crime by the public (British Crime Survey suggests that less than 40% of real crime is reported for various reasons).

Tell us why violent crime carried out by children and teenagers, for example, has increased by one-third over three years. Frontline police are clear why this is happening. Rather than concentrating on persistent and violent youth offenders, they are busy creating crime to your government orders. Minor crime is going on all the time. Police merely “pluck something out of the air”, searching the pockets of a student for cannabis, for example, in order to detect a crime and so fulfill targets. Explain how you justify as one police officer put it : “bringing more and more people to justice - but they are the wrong people.”

Perhaps you would enlighten us as to why you measure Police performance in 'sanction detections'? [The term used for offences detected or cleared by charging someone, issuing a PND (penalty notice) or giving them a caution if they will admit the offence, have no previous record and have not recently received a PND. In order to meet your targets, police are now classifying incidents as crimes that would previously have been dealt with informally, classified differently or ignored. Section 5 of the Public Order Act allows police to arrest anyone for 'threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour within the sight of a
person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress'. Before the arrival of sanction detections, the police only used Section 5 for a public order offence, but now that police can now claim a sanction detection for an arrest under Section 5, minor crime and even innocuous activities appear in a different light. Could it be that your record of one new offence for each day in Government has enabled you to criminalise society just so that you can report increased detections and falling crime? Or are we being cynical?

Let us ask you to astound us with your honesty and ask you to comment on this. The rising numbers of sanction detections give the impression that the police are waging an effective war against crime, but, as one officer interviewed put it: 'We are bringing more and more people to justice but they are the wrong people.' Like other targets, they measure what was chosen to be measured, by Chief Officers in collaboration with the Home Office, not whether the public are getting a good service. 'Arresting someone for sending an offensive text on their mobile phone after a domestic dispute gets a sanction detection. The painstaking, time-consuming work of tracking down a missing child does not. A child stealing a Mars bar earns the same detection as a murder. Murders obviously require a lot more police time than a Mars bar. Officers are now forced by Senior Officer strategies to get involved in police work that does not earn a target. "We put less effort into areas we are not judged on."'

You’re not off the hook yet Mr Johnson . . . Plenty more for you to be honest about if you dare. Sixty five over-40s are now ‘made a criminal’ each day, which is confirmed by your very own Government figures. The number of people who are over 50 and enter the criminal justice system for the first time increased by 46.3 percent between 2000/01 and 2007/08, from 16,400 to 24,000. Meanwhile in the 40-49 age group, there was a 57.4 per cent rise to 32,900. How do you justify the targets imposed by your Government that have resulted in the mass criminalisation of a generation? Your party have introduced a range of offences aimed at householders which can be dealt with through on-the-spot fines. In doing so, you have criminalised a generation and treated tens of thousands of law-abiding middle-aged and elderly citizens like villains. Again, there are thousands of examples as evidence of your mismanagement. 

Explain for us, how the prisons are bursting at the seams with offenders, with numbers increasing every month, insurers report daily about increasing property theft claim numbers, and yet crime is somehow decreasing. Where are the offences these increased numbers of prisoners have committed? At the same time detection rates are declining. How do you explain this with increased occupancy reaching the stage where you are committing millions to increasing the size of the prison estate? The public smell a rat Mr Johnson. The game is almost up.

Speaking of Gaming . . . . .

How can you permit, condone or encourage the practice of manipulating crime statistics, tacitly approved by senior officers, police watchdogs and your 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. These practices inflame the debate about crime statistics, anger the frontline officers ordered to implement them, and wipe out any remaining public confidence in crime statistics and your claims about reducing crime and increased detections.

The techniques which you are surely aware of 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.

The academics call this ‘gaming’ but front line police officers 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 hoped had stopped in the 1970s.

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, which represents front line officers, said: “This 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 confirms the organisational nature of the practice and must contain co-ordination and direction by management.

The scale of the ‘gaming’ behaviours, is confirmed from disillusioned front line sources that senior officers are directly orchestrating the behaviour or turning a blind eye to it. You must be aware that other gaming techniques are still being used in forces across the country. The use of “stitching” is “significant”, while “cuffing” has 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. Mr Johnson…. 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 you are eroding confidence in the police by either condoning or supporting these practices. How can you continue to preach the gospel of increasing public confidence in the police whilst permitting these practices to continue?

And now we turn to what is perhaps the most serious crime of all . . . . . a crime that if ever revealed in its entirety, will surely eclipse the MP’s expenses scandal.

We have come to expect politicians to be economical with the truth, but when the integrity of our most senior police officers is called into question, with suspicions about conspiratorial and deceitful conduct, the time has come for a very public enquiry.

We have reported on this subject previously in our reports:-

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

FINALLY Mr Johnson, we would invite you to disclose the truth about the whole sordid affair of crime figure manipulation and the financial inducements paid to Senior Police Chiefs to perpetuate the conspiracy.

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 plot.

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 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, have made 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 to perpetuate the politicised myth of falling crime.

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?

The secrecy surrounding these payments 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 perseverance to take the necessary remedial action necessary to start healing the wounds that have been inflicted.

LATEST GOVERNMENT MADNESS - POLICE TO INVESTIGATE ALL INCIDENTS

SURELY THIS IS COMPLETE AND UTTER MADNESS?


Police are to be forced to fully investigate every case reported to them under new Home Office rules . . .

“The new guidelines, which have the backing of police chiefs, mean officers will have to give every report their full attention and makes it far more likely that they will visit any alleged victim”.

This latest stream of DRIVEL from the Government is surely the most ill thought out nonsense yet? If it is indeed has the backing of the police chiefs, then this is truly the saddest indictment of just how out-of-touch these boys club members really are with operational policing.

In this article in The Telegraph, it explains that officers will have to give every report their full attention and makes it far more likely that they will visit any alleged victim.

If the police are forced to investigate every report, this will just exacerbate the bureaucracy mountain government have built. Clearly they have completely lost the plot. This is echoed by the common sense front line officers we speak to.

Exactly which cardboard box contains the thousands of extra officers required to investigate every nonsense call that discretionary policing would weed out?

So Mr Johnson, you propose slashing the police overtime budget by £70 million over the next six months, back office support staff by £75million, continue paying exhorbitant bonus and perks packages to Chief Constables for crime reduction statistics no one has any confidence in, decimate the manpower, smash the last morsels of morale, and create an insurmountable bureacracy mountain. Just for good measure, let's show the front liners they can't be trusted to use their common sense and discretion, we'll make them attend and investigate every fabricated and nonsense report so our backs are covered and we might just capture a few votes in the process. Absolute madness.

Chief Constables are so far from the coal face they wouldn’t recognise it, if it smacked them around the head. The higher up the tree they climb, the further from reality they slip, and yet still their voices are heard louder than the guys at the front line, with common sense and discretion waiting to be used. Only by placing our trust in their abilities and experience will the public see better policing in this country.

Simon Reids’ comments on behalf of the police federation, seem eminently sensible, and in line with the proposal to restore more discretion to front line officers : "We are going to end up investigating every incident to prove no crime has happened. We need to trust the officer's discretion. All we are doing is making the whole process more bureaucratic. Let's use our supervisors in the role they are designed to do. They should be looking at these crime reports when they come in."

Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "This Government’s reputation over its use of crime figures is so shot to pieces that frankly most people will think that Labour Ministers are engaged in yet another attempt to massage figures for their own political advantage."

All we see is Labour issuing ridiculous vote catching propaganda and senior officers, apparently without thought or awareness of the operational consequences, echoing their sentiments. With all due respect to them all, the average member of the public wants to see effective and proportional transparent policing, delivered by effective coppers on the ground, not these airy fairy concepts dreamed up from within the gated confines of senior officers highly protected environments.

Sorry to rant, but this one will really widen the rift between Government and the front line troops and kill off what little public confidence remains.

PROTECTING THE PUBLIC:Supporting The Police to Succeed : Home Office White Paper December 2009

LABOUR TO CUT POLICE OVERTIME BY 20% AND SLASH BACK OFFICE SUPPORT

A long-awaited Home Office document, meant to dramatically reform the police service and slash red tape, outlines moves to dramatically cut police overtime, once again putting the Government on a crash course with front line police officers.

The paper also proposes standard police uniforms, body armour and beat cars in England and Wales.

Last year forces in England and Wales spent around £400 million on overtime. The Home Secretary, Alan Johnson will slash resources for police work at a time when the public are demanding officers spend more time on the streets. However, he also proposes huge reductions in back room staff, who are supposed to help free up officer time.

The White Paper — Protecting the Public: Supporting the Police to Succeed — sets out the Government plan to save £70 million on police overtime and £75 million by making huge cuts in back office support services over the next six months.  

The draft, released today, is available for download by clicking here, or the link in the Reference and Resource side bar. A quote from the draft states  “We will deliver better value for money for the public and achieve more frontline delivery through improving business processes, reducing bureaucracy and better deployment, at the same time saving money by reducing overtime.”

The document contains plans and long-term policies they plan to introduce, including police officers in England and Wales being required to wear the same uniform if Labour are re elected. A separate distinctive national uniform is also to be introduced in the next parliament for police community support officers.

Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "This is quite clearly a real damp squib of a White Paper. There is a lack of any new real ideas and we get a clear sense that we have now is a Labour Government which has run out of steam and has no idea how to reform policing in the UK."

Only sergeants and constables are paid overtime, officers working at the front line of our society. Front end policing is where the financial support should be focused and overtime is a vital part of delivering the policing the public wants and needs. Senior Officers should have the freedom and discretion to allocate overtime according to policing priorities.

"Supporting The Police to Succeed" hardly seems appropriate when accompanied by proposals that might just push police morale over the edge.  

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

CRIMINAL JUSTICE FARCE

A man has been charged with causing criminal damage to two hamburgers worth £5 after an alleged doorstep dispute with a fast food firm.

Stephen Morgan, 31, of South Wales, underwent a police grilling after he was arrested and taken from his home in handcuffs at the weekend.

He is due appear at Swansea Magistrates' Court, in south Wales, next Monday.

Morgan was at home in Culfor Road, Loughor, near Swansea, with partner Michelle Owen on Saturday evening.

The couple, who have two children, planned to stay in and watch ITV1's The X Factor with other family members.

A dispute is alleged to have started after an order of food with a local pizza parlour arrived minus two hamburgers.

Mr Morgan claims it was agreed the group should wait for the rest of the order, he told the South Wales Evening Post.

A dispute is alleged to have started with a delivery man who came to the house later, and £15 compensation was eventually paid out, he claims.

Police visited the address later that evening and arrested Mr Morgan on suspicion of robbery. He was taken to Swansea Central police station where he was questioned about the incident and held overnight.

A South Wales Police spokesman confirmed that a 31-year-old man was arrested on Saturday evening and has since been charged with causing criminal damage to food valued at £5.

COMMENT

Yet another example of the farcical abuse of the Criminal Justice System and complete and utter waste of police and judicial resources. C'mon Mr Johnson get it sorted for crying out loud!!! Ah well, at least the Home Office auditors will be pleased they got another detection.

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

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