THE UK CALLS FOR PROTECTION
David Amess MP was tragically stabbed to death by a terrorist, bringing into sharp relief the violence which confronts MPs on a daily basis: the UK calls for more protection for politicians to ensure they can do their essential democratic job. The INSULATE BRITAIN demonstrators glue themselves to key roads to disrupt the lives of ordinary people in the cause of insulating lofts to combat climate change: the UK calls for their arrest, injunctions are obtained and need enforcement as the rule of law is undermined. Anti-vaxxers blockade schools to stop vaccination of children and so impede the containment of Covid-19, a national imperative: the UK calls for anti-vaxxers to be kept at a distance from schools. Women and girls in some neighbourhoods cannot walk the streets at night without fear of male inflicted violence: the UK calls for their safety to be guaranteed. Hate crime is on the rise, or at least publicity for it is: the UK calls for a clampdown on the haters. And who is to provide these required protections, enforcement, safety and clampdowns? The police of course.
AN UNDERMINED FORCE
In January 2020 Sherbhert wrote of the shortage of police resources. See POLICE RESOURCES- NEVER ENOUGH UNLESS LEADERSHIP FORCES CHANGE. Little has changed. The commitment to recruit 20,000 more police is a start but fails to address the big issues. Week on week the police are called upon to do more tasks, as new crimes are created by legislation; and more public and media, and therefore political, clamour pressurise them on the fashionable topic of the moment, focus on which does not mean that all the other crimes can be ignored. As new tasks are added, none get reduced or removed altogether: lockdown enforcement was a hospital pass exemplifying well the impossible demands being added to the daily priorities. The prioritization which police have to do, and that should surely always be on the most serious of crimes, means that swathes of people and interest groups are left disappointed with the lack of police attention to their cause, undermining the standing of the police in the community. The more publicity a group can garner, the greater the undermining.
In general, surveys show that more people respect the UK police than do not. Maintaining that respect depends on the police delivering a good service, which becomes ever harder as demands increase. In addition, accusations of failures such as systemic racism and of endemic sexism and misogyny, all done through sweeping generalisations, demonise the 43 police forces in England and Wales. Sometimes these critics have wider agendas. Wherever the police fall short of the standards they set themselves, it is right that is called out. No doubt the police in some areas must weed out the bad apples, and correct damaging cultural attitudes. But wholesale condemnation as so many promote is never accurate, and will only serve to reduce public confidence, police effectiveness and morale, at a time when the no doubt many dedicated and honourable officers need support. Perhaps some police leadership needs change. But does not something quite fundamental need to change to ensure the quality of law enforcement in this country? The rule of law surely is the foundation of the success of the UK, globally regarded as perhaps the most reliable and stable judicially of all the major nations. The police are a cornerstone of that standing and so the health of the police is a critical national issue.
SOME FACTS DEMONSTRATE THE ENORMITY OF THE TASK
Is what the police are asked to do by the public and Government reasonable? Sherbhert’s January 2020 article illustrated the monumental task the police face. Rethinking of basic assumptions is required, as exemplified by the suggestion that drugs such as cannabis and even heroin need to be brought into Government control, and addiction treated as a health not a criminal issue. For background to the issues faced a few facts are worth recording, although in an article such as this the surface is barely scraped. There are approximately 135,000 officers in the UK, about 210 per 100,000 people. Assuming an officer works an 8-hour shift, there are roughly 45,000 on duty at any one time, that is 70 per 100,000 people. The categories of crime they are asked to police run into hundreds. They are obliged to record incidents, a proportion of which might get categorised into crimes to investigate. The following is the number of crimes recorded under 8 of the broad major categories in the year ending March 2020:
Homicide 683; Knife and sharp instruments 46,265; Theft 3,299,000; Burglary 356,087; Violence 1,239,000; Vehicle offences 435,000; Robbery 83,000; Fraud 3,675,000.
On top of the numerous crime categories, the police perform a range of other duties which consume officer-power, such as policing crowds at demonstrations, sports and other events. Cybercrime falls in their remit too. Given the number of different types of crime and the sheer volume of incidents, many millions, can the police realistically be expected to combat them all effectively? Clearly not and so they must make hard choices and ignore a lot of what they judge to be less significant crime. Of course, to the victim of a crime the significance will be greater than it is assessed to be by the police when making comparisons. So, there will be many disgruntled victims.
Investigating and prosecuting crime is time consuming. To process a single arrest can take several hours. Bureaucratic procedures have to be followed, and a slip can mean tainting a prosecution. Recording and reporting absorb desk- based hours, and arguably the time spent by officers pursuing serious crime is insufficient. Perhaps it is worth noting that in France and Germany for example there are roughly twice the number of police as in the UK when their “national guards” are taken into account.
ILLUSTRATED CONSEQUENCES
Hate crime is one of the recent additions to the crime book. A hate crime is in summary where people are offended or scared by hostility or prejudice around race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. Its standard seems subjective, depending on the feelings of “the victim”, an anomaly in proving criminal behaviour. Donna Jones leads on serious and organised crime for the Association of Police Commissioners. She commented in the Sunday Telegraph of 24 October on the potential distraction away from the highest risk and serious crimes caused by asking police to focus on hate crime. Is it not absurd that policing incidents of people being scared or offended, often by words, should steal away officer time from rapes, exploitation etc? But this was inevitable once being offended or scared became the criteria for a crime in legislation. Apparently recorded hate crime rose to 115,000 incidents in the year to March 2021. That people are hateful is appalling but somehow this may need to be dealt with another way, other than in the most extreme of hate incidents. In January 2020, Sherbhert reported about the 87,000 non-crime hate incidents the police had to record, a practice which illustrates the absurdity to which authorities are extending police duties, pointlessly.
INSULATE BRITAIN have defied injunctions against them. The police have had to admit a lack of resource to unglue them in the timely way. The anger and frustration of innocent members of the public, whose ability to properly go about daily life is seriously affected by this law-breaking, are evident and they are often bemused that this is allowed. Lawful protest is rightly tolerated and encouraged, but that protesters such as these can simply defy the law brazenly is a testimony to the dangers society faces when the law is not properly enforceable.
On 24 October, the Observer reported how the amount of hostility and abuse against front line workers is on a seriously rising trend, including in the NHS, shops, transport and hospitality. The CEO of the Institute for Customer Service states how workers no longer bother to report cases because they don’t think it will make a difference and “they don’t think the police will act”. This sounds like a serious failure by and criticism of the police. But it is probably true, though perhaps the fault hardly lies with the police as they are so stretched. Again, these sentiments undermine confidence, but do not take account of the context of the duties of the police.
In these circumstances is it not right that the police must be allowed to prioritise their investigations as they see fit in good faith, making Solomon-like judgements as to which incidents to pursue and, in effect, which victims to ignore? They need to be scrutinised but those who level criticism need to contextualise their shouts for justice with regard for the overall burdens imposed on the police themselves.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
The answers are not here. However, a good start would be to see a public debate and strategic discussion which goes beyond the same old throw money at the problem. No doubt having more police would help but maybe answers lie elsewhere. Such as in technology and Artificial Intelligence perhaps to analyse incidents and categorise importance, improve recording and case processing to involve less time of individual officers. Some rethinking of what should be classed as crimes may help: for example, in an opinion piece in the Guardian of 23 October, Richard Lewis, Chief Constable of Cleveland, on the topic of drugs, believes a sea change is needed. He wants to end “the war on drugs” waged by authorities for the last 50 years. It patently has not worked. He says “In 21 years of police service I have slowly, perhaps too slowly, come to the conclusion that framing this crisis as a criminal justice problem has not simply been unhelpful, but counterproductive. This nationwide epidemic is a public health crisis.” There may be many other crimes which may better be decriminalised.
Is there simply far too much crime? UK society depends, as the pandemic has proved in spades, on a rule of law which has the support and confidence of the public: mostly they self-police where they believe a behaviour or prohibition is right and makes sense. Many of the pandemic legal restrictions would perhaps have been better had they been dependent on social pressure. Asking police to criticise people on park benches undermined them and social responsibility. When contemplating using the criminal justice system to make people nicer to others and not offend them with words, lawmakers need to think harder. So much knee-jerk legislation is like that. Not all crimes have victims who suffer significantly, and perhaps there should be an acceptance that police priority will always be crime where there is such a victim.
Perhaps too the leaders of the police need to rethink their ways and open minds to totally new approaches, rather than tinkering. Perhaps some leaders need replacing. Does the police qualification need reworking to attract a wider variety of skills such as in technology?
Perhaps, most of all there are too many people willing to commit crimes, who aspire to hate and abuse, and to whom a basic sense of right and wrong is not important to adopt. Instilling in children and young adults proper values through parenting and education is a good place for communities to make a difference. This is a localised responsibility, not a central government function. A zero tolerance of criminal behaviour within the community would make a big difference, as would greater provision, particularly in deprived areas, of activities which are attractive as an alternative to gang or drug associated behaviour. Is enough effort and resource committed here consistently across the country? Perhaps it is right to suspect there are a few outstanding examples of how to keep children out of crime, but this may not be sufficiently replicated across the cities and towns where crime is a problem. When looking at societal transformation, the young are often a good starting point.
The police must help themselves, stamping out for example racist and other abhorrent tendencies. However, the Government must help them too, as should the public. And the media? They have a major role in contextualising criticism and applauding good performance, not prioritising audience for the complainants and those who would destroy UK stability. Is it necessary also to be wary of those hostile nations using social media and people that influence to destabilise the institutions of this country? The police are one of the UK’s most important institutions and require revitalising.
