Recently the Prime Minister unveiled proposals for criminal justice; now the Tories have come out with ideas about ‘policing for the people’.
To balance things politically, we should report that Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said of the PM’s policy document: "It is appalling that it has taken 10 years, 3,000 new criminal offences, more than 60 Home Office bills, and countless headline-grabbing initiatives for the Prime Minister to realise that his approach simply wasn’t working.
"Abandoning everything he stood for on law and order isn’t much of a personal legacy, but fortunately for the public, it may actually cut crime. Mr Blair has adopted Liberal Democrat policies on community punishments, treating mental health problems, and cutting reoffending, because these are policies that work. The Government must now drop its over reliance on summary justice and biometric databases."
The Conservatives said their proposals to reform the police service in England and Wales, had the aim of ensuring that officers concentrate on crime fighting not form writing. Launching an interim report from the Party’s police reform taskforce, David Cameron criticised the way Labour had bogged the police down with bureaucracy.
Of most relevance to private security, the Tory document called for civilian staff or the private
sector to be employed to do jobs which sworn officers do not need to do, and argued that the police ‘family’ should be extended. "Commercial security firms could be contracted to manage crime-scene guarding or cordon duties,provide mobile ‘street-to-suite’ capabilities, pursue people who jump bail, monitor ‘at risk’ prisoners and carry out security checks.
The report quotes Sussex Police’s contract with Reliance to provide six new Investigation and Detainee Handling Centres (IDHCs). Elsewhere, the report suggests contracting out of security checks at the conferences of political parties, which already largely happens.
Put another way, the report argues that the increasing demands on the police make it inefficient and unsatisfactory for sworn officers to be used for every function the police perform: "Many tasks do not require the powers and skills of sworn officers and could be done more effectively and more cheaply by others."
The report praises as innovative schemes involving special constables, such as the ShopWatch Scheme, featured in Professional Security Magazine. The retail sector pays members of staff for a four-week training period and then allows them one day paid leave each fortnight to patrol in the area where they work. The Tories call for a new approach to special constables to stem a decline in their numbers.
Against forms
Mr Cameron said: "It’s quite clear what the police should be doing: not filling in forms, driving round in cars or hassling law-abiding people so officers can hit government targets, but out there doing what they want to be doing – stopping crime from happening and catching criminals when it does happen."
Under the proposals drawn up by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and Shadow Police Reform Minister Nick Herbert, a senior staff college similar to those in the Armed Forces would be set up, American style elected police commissioners would have powers to appoint and dismiss chief constables.
Britain’s first national police force – a 15,000 serious crime force – would assume responsibility for serious, organised and major crime.
Other major would include, the Tories claim, a reduction in form filling, the introduction of pay flexibility so that reflects skills as well as seniority, the old-fashioned model of the omnicompetent officer giving way to forces consisting of teams with diverse specialist skills, and better management of sick pay and restricted duties. The report calls on police to deliver ‘leadership and efficiency gains’. Much of the document has already been aired by some police and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary: for instance, the case for allowing talented managers from outside the police service to enter a force at senior manager level. The Tories quote Mike Bowron, Commissioner of the City of London
Police, who recently spoke of hopes that private sector financial specialists will be seconded to a new national fraud intelligence centre as proposed by his force.
The 240-page consultation document, "Policing for the People", proposes four key reforms. They are:
streamlining the structure of the police and improving co-operation between forces to enable them to fight serious crime while enhancing and sustaining community policing
setting up a Sandhurst-style senior staff college to prepare the police leaders of tomorrow, while developing a more professional, flexible, highly motivated workforce
scrapping what the Tories claim are unnecessary form filling; and modernising computer systems, replacing central direction and targets with locally accountable leadership and priority setting, hiring more civilian staff to take over office jobs from trained police officers, and setting up a new cadre of reservists.
making the police properly accountable, by introducing directly elected police commissioners to replace police authorities, and giving communities access to regular beat meetings with local police officers.
Claiming that only Conservatives have been successful in cutting crime since World War Two, Mr Cameron said: "The police have a very clear responsibility when it comes to crime, but Labour have made it harder for the police to live up to it. Their clear, focused, crime-fighting responsibility has got lost in a Labour sea of red tape, and targets, and management consultants, and reorganisations. So instead of responding to the demands of working people for tough, beat-based community policing, today’s police officers – just like the doctors in our hospitals and the teachers in our schools – respond to ministers in Whitehall. That is not what people pay their taxes for."
He accused Tony Blair of breaking his promises on crime. Mr Cameron said: "We’re going to have to turn this around. It won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. But by replacing Labour’s top-down centralisation with bottom-up local accountability, by replacing Labour’s superficial gimmicks with serious and substantive change and by replacing state control with social responsibility, I know we can make this country a safer and better place to live – for everyone."
