Review of Policing By Sir Ronnie Flanagan:
Response by the National Association of Retired Police Officers to Issues of Bureaucracy, Community Policing, Local Accountability and Resource Management
Introduction
The National Association of Retired Police Officers is a member organisation established in 1919. Our members are retired police officers of all ranks. We have over 73,500 members who jointly have a massive experience of British Policing both as providers of a policing service and more recently as its customers. Our members have a unique insight into policing issues as it were from both sides. Our response relies on that unique position, recognising that any police service needs to modernise to meet new demands but only after careful consideration of the consequences of any changes on the role and reputation of the service and on the relationship between the police and the community it serves.
Bureaucracy
I am sure that everyone will be pleased to see that the question of bureaucracy features high in the list of issues to be tackled by the review but I am equally sure that it will not be lost on anyone that this is not the first time that the office of HMIC has been asked to perform such a function nor have they been alone in trying to come up with ideas to reduce it. Unfortunately past attempts have produced fairly superficial results over a time when measures to improve performance and accountability have had exactly the opposite results and have generated significant additional bureaucratic burdens.
The service can probably trace its major bureaucracy increases through these changes starting with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in the mid 1980s and its introduction of Codes of Practice. Whilst there will be few who would now argue that the Codes of Practice are not fundamentally a good thing for both the police officer and the public, what is a fact is that since their introduction and through various amendments, the average time to initially process a prisoner has gone up very significantly. The service is currently trying various ways of processing those responsible for crimes in an effort to avoid the Custody Office process without looking closely at what has created the major blockages in that process and trying to re-balance bureaucratic requirement whilst still providing adequate protections for those detained.
The introduction of the Crown Prosecution Service, frankly in a form not really envisaged by the Royal Commission which recommended it, also saw significant increases in paperwork. Despite many of the best people both within the service and within the Crown Prosecution Service considering the problem, the demand for comprehensive files in even the most straightforward cases assured that paperwork demands on the frontline officer remained high.
The recent introduction of solicitors from the CPS to decide charges locally has had a similar affect in most areas as few solicitors are prepared to make a decision on even relatively minor charges without virtually a full file. Prisoners are frequently bailed awaiting a decision increasing future pressure on custody and creating further bureaucracy. Differing performance targets of the CPS and Police do not help this process. A move back to allowing greater discretion for the Custody Sergeant to agree the charge would go some way to rectifying this problem.
Government targets and attendant Home Office statistical requirements have also had an adverse effect both on policing and on the bureaucracy within the service. The question of the number and type of target and whether they are national or local is not a new debate with successive Home Secretaries promising to cut the number of targets and so reduce the paperwork associated with these measures. The fact that the debate continues is proof in itself that those promises have not been met.
The introduction of the National Intelligence Model to drive policing priorities was rightly seen as an attempt to better plan and direct resources but it is of itself a bureaucratic burden. The model can also help to demonstrate the accountability of the service but if not used sympathetically can overburden front line officers with information and requires considerable maintenance.
National Crime Recording Standards were introduced by ACPO to help to ensure national consistency in crime recording. The system is both bureaucratic and impractical. It signals that in many cases the reporting and recording of a crime has become more important than its investigation and detection. Whilst we can understand the reason for its introduction, it does pander to a pre-occupation with crime figures but has done little or nothing to reduce the constant debate created on each occasion crime figures are released. It has however created a situation where officers are recording and investigating some ‘crimes’ simply to meet the standard.
All this bureaucracy requires modern IT system and skills to be efficient. There is a question in some forces, if not all, if those IT systems are adequate to meet demand especially at peak times.
You have asked the question what constitutes ‘frontline policing’. A simple definition might be ‘those who provide a direct policing service to the public’. However any definition is bound to cause significant debate, so before agreeing or attempting to agree a definition perhaps one should ask ‘ Is there any point in defining frontline, when what is really required is a modern agreed definition of ‘policing’ and an agreed ‘contract’ between the public and the police essentially about what services the police will deliver’. That is a much wider debate than can be generated by your review but is a debate that is long overdue.
Perhaps the one advantage with defining ‘frontline’ is that it would give an opportunity to look at those who are not frontline and see the massive increases in such areas as Human Resources, Information Technology and administrative support departments of various types and ask the questions ‘What additional benefit do they provide to the service?’ and ‘At what cost?’.
If you agree our analysis of the roots of the current bureaucratic burdens on the Police, in effect that they have been imposed by Parliament and Government policies, your task is a thankless one but more than that it should look more fundamentally at both the nature and style of policing and, in particular, at what has been a piecemeal approach to change by successive Governments and leaders of the service, if it is to have any chance of changing things for the better. Simply tinkering at the edges again will not produce the significant improvements many hope for.
Neighbourhood Policing
British Policing is steeped in the tradition of ‘Community Policing’. Neighbourhood Policing attempts to replicate that tradition in a modern environment. We believe that it is the key to both policing by consent and to public involvement in policing. It is the key to safer communities and local intelligence exchanges as well as to the general acceptance of the police and policing methods. It can have a very significant impact on the reputation of the service.
What should be remembered is that neighbourhood policing is policing and should rely on police officers with police powers. What we believe the public want is an identifiable police presence in their community who is approachable and contactable and who remains so for a reasonable period of time.
There has been little wrong over the years with community based policing except for the actual commitment of the service to it. Successive senior officers and now Government state their commitment to ‘Community’ or ‘Neighbourhood’ policing, whilst at the same time failing to protect that resource. Despite verbal commitment over a considerable period in the past senior officers have seen ‘Community’ officers as a ready resource should they be stretched in other areas of police work. That attitude persists today. Officers of all ranks on neighbourhood policing teams are still regularly removed from those duties to provide cover on a variety of different policing tasks including response and various impromptu squads or uniform support groups as shortages or pressure to meet targets forces senior offices to reconsider their commitment to the Community teams.
If Neighbourhood policing is to succeed it needs to be seen by all as a vital part of a modern accountable police service and a key link to the Community it serves. Those involved in Community Policing Teams need to be seen as specialists in their own right and be treated as such. Commitment to Community should be more than verbal reassurances and members of those policing teams should only be removed from the teams to provide alternative policing functions in exceptional circumstances.
Local involvement and accountability
The tri-partite arrangement currently in place to provide governance of the Police Service has stood the test of time. If strains have been placed on these arrangement in recent years it could be said to be as a direct consequence of one of the partners, Central Government, trying to exert an unequal pressure on the process.
In addition, perhaps the role of the Police Authorities has not been well explained or understood in the past. Education and publicity explaining that role should help this problem and assist in making the system more transparent.
These arrangements were in place to avoid any form of direct political interference in Policing and as such they have just about met that aim. Care must be taken that any new arrangements for local accountability do not result in direct local political interference in local policing. In addition to this the police are subject through the complaints procedure to individual and collective accountability to any individual member of the public.
Most forces have very effective joint working arrangement with other public and some private bodies providing or impacting on public safety and security. All parties in these arrangements can learn from their partners. These arrangements are encouraged but it would be difficult to legislate for individual circumstances.
Properly resourced and managed Community/Neighbourhood Policing Teams should be capable of feeding public concerns in addition to the more formal arrangements mentioned above.
Whilst it is an admirable aim to involve the public in policing decisions two key points should be kept in mind. In order to encourage greater public involvement in the decision making process a system has to be adopted to deliver public responses. There are dangers in this process:-
Minority groups or individuals can exert an influence upon the process in conflict with the more general view held by the silent majority
The whole process becomes time consuming and bureaucratic.
However, in the end it is ultimately the Police who are responsible and accountable for the operational decisions they make.
Finally, the question of elected mayors and police chiefs being in charge of local forces in the future goes against our traditions and brings with it the spectre of political motivation and interference in policing. More than this it would drive forces towards local isolation and work against current efforts aimed at joint inter-force working arrangement if, as would be the case, local votes and therefore local issues decided who would lead the service.
Managing Resources
Whilst Police numbers are at or close to their highest level historically the question still needs to be asked as to whether these numbers are sufficient. Response Policing, which one could argue, is the shop window of everyday policing still seems to be the Cinderella of the organisation. This front line role continues to be under strength and predominantly fulfilled by younger less experienced officers.
A key function in everyday resource allocation is that of Force Control Rooms. Telephone calls from the public are frequently the first contact the public in need of assistance have with the police. The way those calls are handled has a significant affect on both resource allocation and public satisfaction. Whilst the pressure is on call handlers and dispatchers to meet time targets, the quality of information taken and assistance promised suffers, as does the information provided to the attending police officer. Monitoring and improving this aspect of police work is essential to an improved service.
The Police Service is seen by most of the public in times of need, as a twenty four hour response and support. It is also frequently seen as the lead organisation in many of the partnerships and joint ventures forces embark on locally. For these reasons the police are today expected to fulfil a larger range of ‘ancillary’ tasks to meet both the expectations of the public and partner organisations alike. This can have significant consequences for resource management and availability.
There is we believe also a good deal of time wasted in simply waiting. This is most apparent in prisoner handling, when as we stated earlier times to both initially process and finally charge prisoners has increased significantly to the extent that arresting officers are simply written off for hours after an arrest. It is consequential on both procedures in the custody suite and the actions of CPS solicitors.
Many forces still employ targets and, in particular, sanctioned detections as a measure of effectiveness. This has two major effects. The first is to reduce the individual discretion of individual officers. The second is to create a situation where a minor but sanctioned detection fulfils the officer’s requirement to meet the target. Minor assaults or public order offences fit these criteria admirably from the point of view of the officer without taking up too much police time. Supervisors and managers do not challenge this behaviour as they too are judged on these simply tick box measure.
This is not the only area where discretion has been limited, the National Crime Reporting Standard is another but neither of these examples is exhaustive. There seems to have been over recent years a drive to restrict discretion at all ranks and impose targets. This has resulted in a much less flexible service and we believe much less job satisfaction. It also, in our view leads to a lower service to the public. A continued trend towards less discretion is bound in the end to affect both the quality of recruit and the quality of those who choose to make a long term career in the service, to the detriment of the service as a whole and the public it serves.
Conclusion
The idea of a review of policing to see if it meets the needs of a 21st Century society is an admirable one but not new. Whilst we at NARPO have every respect for you as an individual and your office and colleagues we do ask the question whether this limited review can really answer all the questions about the future of the service and the needs of the public in respect of a police service in these modern times. Clearly it cannot.
We would also question whether this is the right process at such an important time for policing. You and your colleagues and others both within and outside the service have identified many of the questions which need to be answered about policing in the future. Most of these issues require much wider debate than your time limited review can offer. Whilst we are happy to offer our experience to your review we continue to believe that the time is overdue for a Royal Commission into the service. We do however wish you every good fortune in this endeavour and hope that some improvement results from the work.