RICHARD NORTH
Flagged up on this blog in December, the spectre of police reform has re-emerged, with multiple reports telling us that The Muslim Lady is set to commission a review of current arrangements which might see the 43 territorial police forces reduced to as few as ten so-called mega-forces.
There can be no dispute that policing in the UK needs reform, not least in response to the epidemic of organised crime, brought to us by the blessing of mass immigration and multiculturalism.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is the explosion of what might be called (often wrongly, from the victim’s perspective) “petty” crime, ranging from street violence, shoplifting, burglary and, of course, the wide range of traffic offences and much else.
In no single area of UK policing can performance said to be stellar and, according to the Telegraph, Mahmood also feels that the present set-up is overly bureaucratic and inefficient, diverting resources away from neighbourhood policing.
Notwithstanding that Labour has no mandate for embarking on a fundamental reform – not having discussed such a prospect in its 2024 manifesto – the home secretary is setting herself a gargantuan task that is fraught with problems.
Whichever way society is organised to deal with policing, the outcome is going to be messy – because human affairs are messy, and no more so than anti-social and criminal behaviour. There is no optimal way of policing society; no universal structure applies throughout the world.
It is fair to say, though, that some policing benefits from a national and even international overview, which demands a highly centralised force operating at a national level. Low-level public order, and dealing with “petty” crime, though, is often thought to be best dealt with at a local level, with strong community input and accountability.
But there is no clear definition of where the boundaries should be, and nor can there be. Shoplifting, for instance, is often categorised as petty crime, but it can also be carried out by organised gangs operating at a national level. Computer fraud is another of those problem issues. Most often carried at a national or international level, there can also be fraudsters operating locally and regionally.
Given the fairly obvious split, many countries operate multi-level systems, with local and national police forces, and sometimes a more complex array of local and regional forces, topped by one or more national agencies, some with specialist functions.
Of these, the system in the US stands out as the most fragmented with over 18,000 agencies, 17,000 of which are state and local law enforcement agencies with more than half of the police departments and sheriff’s offices boasting few than ten sworn officers. Many towns have a single officer or tiny 2-5 officer forces. At the other level, the FBI employs approximately 38,000 people, of which around 13,000–13,500 are special agents.
The UK back in the 1960s was closer to the US model, with individual towns and cities having their own police forces, often responsible to the local councils at a policy level, with boundaries contiguous with the local authority areas.
Immediately prior to the 1964 Police Act, there were said to be 117 police forces in England and Wales, which dropped to 47-49 with the reforms introduced by the Act, before further alignment to the current 43 under the Local Government Act 1972 (effective 1974).
My adopted home town, Bradford, established its own police force in 1848 which, along with the separate Leeds city police, maintained its independence until 31 March 1974, when it was dissolved and amalgamated with the Leeds City Police and the West Yorkshire Constabulary to form the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police, headquartered at Wakefield.
Under the further changes being considered by Mahmood, the idea is to have the large forces focusing on serious and organised crime, alongside complex investigations such as homicides. Then, at a local level, each town, city and borough will be designated a “local policing area”, where neighbourhood officers will concentrate on community issues like shoplifting and anti-social behaviour.
In theory, the amalgamations will generate savings by merging back-office functions, and streamlining procurement, thereby freeing up resources to invest in more police officers. But, as I pointed out in my previous piece, the attempt to rationalise police forces in 2006 was abandoned when it was realised that the transition costs would exceed £1 billion.
How Mahmood plans to work in the two often conflicting roles of dealing with serious and organised crime, and neighbourhood policing, isn’t specified. More detail will be set out in a White Paper but she is then planning to set up an independent review to define the “precise operational design” of the new forces.
So far, the proposals have not been welcomed by the opposition, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp says that: “There is no evidence that ripping up local police forces will cut crime or improve performance”. He argues that “Top-down reorganisation risks undermining efforts to fight crime, inevitably leading to centralised control that will hit towns and villages across the country hardest”.
Making the inevitable party-political point, he condemns the plans as “a cover for Labour’s failure to deliver on policing and their inability to get officer numbers, response times, or even funding on track”, adding: “The biggest force, the Met, has the lowest crime-solving rates and falling police numbers. Big is not necessarily better”.
There, Philp has a point, but there are more concerning issues which also do not seem to have been raised. As it stands, we do have some national policing assets, in the National Crime Agency (NCA), which supposedly deals with serious and organised crime, and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
Both organisations have been criticised for under-performing and there is talk of the SFO being taken over by the NCA, even though a reorganisation is already in progress.
Before embarking on a grandiose scheme of reorganising the territorial police forces, logic might suggest that attention should be focussed on the national organisations, which would be best equipped to deal with organised crime, which often crosses the borders of police areas.
Even reducing the number of police forces will not necessarily resolve this issue. For Yorkshire, by way of example, one might see the three separate Yorkshire forces combine, together with the Humberside Police, to form a single force policing a population of over five million – larger than many countries.
Yet, as it stands, these forces already collaborate on serious crime through the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit (YHROCU).
It is not necessarily the case that collaboration will be improved by amalgamating the forces, while many of the major cases – such as the “county lines” illegal drug trade – have substantial out-of-area links, extending into London, Birmingham and other cities.
Since other forces also operate their own regional organised crime units (ROCUs), working closely with the NCA, it would seem that better results might be obtained through improving national coordination by increasing the resources allocated to the NCA, plus measures to improve its status and performance.
On the other hand, we know from long experience that when forces amalgamate and become larger, local policing often suffers: decision-making becomes more distant and accountability even more diffuse.
With the West Yorkshire Police force, we often feel that Bradford’s policing needs are neglected by a force that is already seen as remote and unresponsive. Further enlargement can only exacerbate that problem, which will doubtless be reflected in many other areas.
On balance, it could readily be argued that Mahmood has yet to make a case for a fundamental reorganisation, which could just as easily make things worse rather than better.
One is reminded of that famous quote often attributed to Petronius Arbiter in the 1st Century AD, who complained: “We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be re-organised. And what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation”.
On top of improvements to the functioning of existing national agencies, there are many issues within the police forces which could be addressed, and which might yield dividends, without embarking on the expensive and uncertain process of reorganisation.
This article (Policing: the illusion of progress) was created and published by Turbulent Times and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Richard North
Leave a Reply