Police Foundation Report: An Initial Response

On March 8th, the Police Foundation published their Strategic Review of Policing in England & Wales. Three years in the making, the report examines policing past, present and future and makes a lengthy series of recommendations about where we need to go from here. The reaction to the launch on social media was predictably mixed - and I wanted to take a few moments of your time to offer a brief series of my own initial reflections on what I’ve read.

The first thing to say is that I think much of the content of the report is bang on. The world is changing beyond all recognition - demographically, socially, environmentally, technologically - and there is an overwhelming need for policing to keep up with the times. Among the headline analysis and recommendations in the report, I would wholeheartedly endorse the following:

• The need for a "radical shift to a more systemic preventative approach" to crime (one that is both public-health based and trauma-informed)
• The recognition that the responsibility for crime prevention extends far beyond policing
• The creation of a national Crime Prevention Agency
• The introduction of a new legal duty to prevent crime, applicable to all large private sector organisations
• Significant new investment in the NCA to enhance their ability to tackle cross-border and serious/organised crime
• Significant reinvestment in neighbourhood policing
• Significant reinvestment in police training
• Significant new investment in police technology
• Significant new investment in police health and wellbeing

The report is also absolutely right to identify the pressing need to redefine the policing mission for the 21st Century. As I have observed before, we urgently need to:

• Define what we want the police to be (because it was never just about crime)
• Define what we want the police to do (because everything can’t be a priority)
• Resource the police service to succeed (which is pretty much the opposite of what the Government has been doing since 2010)

The authors of the report understand that:

• The “range and complexity of public safety demand” is such that “there is no way that the police on their own are able to tackle it”.
• Policing has, in many ways, become the “public service of last resort” - picking up the pieces where other social services have failed.

And the authors understand that neither of those positions is sustainable.

My reservations about the report are as follows:

• In my view, it significantly underplays the impact of austerity on policing and the wider public sector. Mention is made of 20,000 police officers cut from 2010 onwards, but I saw no mention in the summary of the much more significant number - the combined total of 44,000 officers and staff cut from 2010-2018. The preoccupation with police officer numbers ignores the true impact of total staff cuts. And, of course, it wasn’t just the people we lost. It was the hundreds of years of policing experience that went with them - together with the relationships established with local communities that will take years to mend.
• (As an aside, it was depressing to see the review recycling the government’s narrative about the 20,000 “additional officers” now being recruited. As we all know perfectly well, they aren’t additional at all. They are, at best, no more than a partial replacement for the 44,000 people lost).
• In my view, the review underplays to an even greater extent the impact of politics on policing. The scale of the damage done by politicians to policing over the last 12 years would be impossible to overstate. But there is little substantive mention in the review of the disastrous series of reforms imposed by the Home Office from 2010 onwards. There is, I believe, an urgent need to re-establish the principle of operational independence from political control. And I would start with the abolition of PCCs.
• (As a further aside, the report - quite rightly - raises serious concerns about both police performance and public confidence in policing, but, in my view, it fails to make a clear enough connection between these things and the political failures of the last 12 years. We run the risk of blaming policing for the catastrophic mistakes made by people outside of policing.)
• The review talks at some length (and with good reason) about falling public confidence in policing, but makes comparatively little mention of falling confidence among police officers and staff themselves- particularly their confidence in politicians and, in some cases, in their own leadership.
• Unless I missed it, the review doesn't appear to acknowledge the damage done by the immense hostility in the prevailing public narrative about policing during the last 12 years: the relentless focus on the negative, frequently to the near-complete exclusion of the positive. Without for one moment shying away from what is difficult and uncomfortable, we desperately need to change the story we are telling about policing in this country. 
• Among the specifics, the idea of a ‘Licence to Practice’ seems to me to need a swift rethink. The intention behind it might well be an admirable one, but experience suggests that the implementation of it would likely descend into a logistical nightmare, placing wholly unnecessary pressure on already over-stretched people.
• I was concerned to note that there were no frontline officers on the Review’s Advisory Board - no PCs or DCs, no Sergeants or Detective Sergeants, and just one Inspector. I understand that visits were made to local forces and that focus groups etc were held, but I would like to have seen the voices of the frontline represented at the very heart of the process.

There’s so much more that might be said, but these are my initial thoughts. If we want the best police service in the world, we need the best people (paid what they’re truly worth), with the best leaders, with the best training, and with the best kit and equipment in the world. And all of it needs be free from endlessly damaging political interference. I hope very much that the Police Foundation report takes us closer to that ideal. The public and the women and men who stand on the thin blue line deserve no less.