Some Sound Advice

I notice the Quakers are offering the Labour Party some sound advice as we head towards a general election:- 

Quakers in Britain submission to Labour Policy Forum ‘Safe and secure communities’ consultation

Introduction 

Quakers in Britain is a national church of Quakers across England, Scotland and Wales. We are also a charity, working for positive change in areas such as peace and democracy. 

Affiliated to Quakers in Britain are Quakers in Criminal Justice, an informal network of Quakers with experience (including lived experience) and professional knowledge of many aspects of the criminal justice system. 

Quakers have worked for positive change in criminal justice since our emergence in the seventeenth century. Our testimonies to peace and equality lead to an emphasis on prevention, rehabilitation and restorative justice. We are passionate advocates of democracy, human rights and community peacebuilding. 

This consultation response reflects our faith perspective and our experience and expertise in building safe and secure communities. We recognise that both structural and personal changes are needed. 

1. How should Labour tackle anti-social behaviour and ensure people feel safe in their homes, workplaces and local communities? 

We welcome the Labour Policy Forum’s intention to address these complex and important issues. Our response focuses on local communities. “Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime” was a promising slogan but was not honoured in an even-handed way under the last Labour government: the response to crime was given more emphasis. Any new strategy must address causes. Many of the coercive and divisive “anti-social behaviour” strategies, pursued in isolation, proved counterproductive. In the austerity regimes that have prevailed since 2010, valuable preventive measures such as SureStart were undone, and the task of addressing causes has become harder. 

Most of the interventions that improve the feeling of security and reduce fear of crime, or build community cohesion, are to be found in non-criminal justice areas such as health (and especially mental health), housing, education and employment. 

Investment in programmes for young people, such as mentoring, especially in groups at a disproportionate risk of becoming involved in crime – such as young men not in education or employment – would be worthwhile. Of course, these approaches will only reduce crime, not eliminate it, and criminal justice agencies such as police, youth justice and probation will need to be involved. Where they are, close working with local partners is key, based on the smallest reasonable geography: local authority or police command unit, or smaller. Locally inspired solutions are the most effective and sustainable but this requires a commitment to devolving money and decision making, again, to the lowest decision making level or smallest geography. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) published a report on Crime and Justice after Devolution in 2010. It spoke in favour of greater local identification of priorities and design of services and interventions. Labour could pursue and update the agenda developed here. 

Labour’s key message on anti-social behaviour must be that communities will not tolerate or harbour hate crime or discrimination of any sort. All public services and their staff must be encouraged to show this commitment through their work and engagement with the community. Successes should be publicised in a range of media: this is one small way of countering the punitive media rhetoric which denigrates and often undermines serious efforts at reform and improvement. 

Some community problems can only be addressed by nationally-initiated efforts. We think Labour should work for a humane and compassionate response to drug users and look at the experience of other jurisdictions in this regard. 

We welcome Labour’s emphasis on the safety of women and girls. On this too there needs to be a strong sense of national direction and prioritisation. Misogyny needs to be tackled in all institutions and agencies, including in the police itself, both in terms of restraints on its expression and education to challenge and undermine it. 

2. What resources and tools do the police and enforcement agencies need to keep our streets safe and to deal with neighbourhood crime? 

There is a clear need for immediate police responses to harmful anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood crime, but in the medium and longer term this is not an issue for police forces alone. Neighbourhood policing, in which officers on the ground have a chance to build up trusting relationships with residents and spot “signs of trouble” early have social value, even where they may not seem cost-efficient. Additional sensitivities are required in policing communities of colour, and to the appropriateness of placing police officers in schools. 

We encourage Labour to question how militarised British policing should become, and how transparently accountable armed officers should be after controversial shootings, which can rouse whole communities against the police. 

Most of the significant developments in effective practice in the last two or three decades have come from the advances in frontline, multidisciplinary working. Examples include the original 1997 youth offending team legislation, drugs work and the management of high-risk offenders through multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA). 

Without suggesting specific tools or resources, we feel it sensible that any policy should be assessed as to whether it can and should be delivered through a multiagency or multi-disciplinary approach, and where possible with some sort of pooled budget to ensure alignment and “buy-in”. 

For instance, despite some notable efforts on working with families, there has been an absence of any strategic priority to improve wrap-around service to families identified as having high needs or with children at risk of offending or dropping out of education. This priority should be restored. Support (not just classes) for parents or families experiencing separation could and should make a difference to the trajectory of young people, away from criminal justice. 

Much of police work involves dealing with people who show signs of mental distress. It therefore makes sense for mental health specialists to work closely alongside all police forces. Where homelessness is an issue, there needs to be close working with housing officials. The more efficiently people in need can be handed over to those trained and able to assist them, the less these burdens fall on the police. 

3. How can prevention and diversion schemes be improved to reduce crime and reoffending?

Prevention, at its best, is about far more than liaison and diversion schemes. It involves applying the research which shows us why and how people fall into crime in the first place. The following all play their part: adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), poverty, school exclusion, failure to provide for the needs of looked-after children, lack of drug and alcohol treatment centres, insufficient mental health services, closing of youth centres which has been linked to the growth of gang culture, and intergenerational limited opportunities. 

Given the massive costs of reoffending in England and Wales (estimated by the Ministry of Justice to be around £18 billion) together with the cost of housing a growing number of prisoners across the prison estate at £48,000 per person per year, a radical approach to prevention is called for. This would not only bring huge savings down the line but contribute to the well-being of society overall. 

Local, community-based responses to alcohol abuse and the crime associated with it can be made, but this really needs a national strategy which reaches all parts of the UK at local level. There are many aspects of local social policy that require overarching national or regional strategies before they can ever make a difference at neighbourhood level. There is always a danger of demanding or hoping that local communities solve their own problems when they no longer have the resources or morale to do so. 

4. What approach should the Labour Party take to improving justice? 

Court back-log 

It is clear that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. But this has been happening for a long time. When the heads of the four criminal justice inspectorates in England and Wales came before the Justice Committee (June 2020) to answer the question ‘what is the most serious issue we face?’ the answer was ‘the court back-log’, given as 40,000 in the crown court and 483,678 in the magistrates court. For the sake of victims, witnesses and defendants this must be tackled. Court services could be provided in accessible community settings with appointment times that are convenient for working people. 

Prison, probation and rehabilitation 

The longstanding crisis in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has its roots in the long-term underfunding of both prison and probation services. Furthermore, staffing levels, recruitment, retention and morale in both areas have been deeply affected by poor policy choices in the recent past: the ‘Fair and Sustainable’ cull of prison staff and the ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ exercise which part-privatised and effectively dismantled probation from 2014, leading, among other things, to a collapse of sentence confidence in community penalties. The newly unified statutory National Probation Service has not recovered from the damage that has been inflicted on it. The stresses under which often inexperienced officers with impossibly large caseloads (because of staff shortages) struggle cannot be underestimated. We support the ideal of trauma-informed practice for all service users who need, but recognise that it is a long way from being realised. 

There is a counterproductive trend towards ever-longer sentences, despite no evidence that this works as a deterrent. It is our experience, through the work of prison chaplains and visitors across the prison estate, that the system is unable to recognise when a prisoner has accepted guilt, started to turn their life around and is keen for the rehabilitation and resettlement work that over-crowded prisons are unable to provide. Parole hearings have long waiting times and are frequently postponed. Lord Ramsbotham, former Chief Prison Inspector, stated that ‘enforced idleness is not good for mental health’. In a retrograde step, the Secretary of State for Justice has recently limited recommendations that can be made to the Parole Board, strengthening the role of the department over those voices of professionals who have knowledge of the person under consideration. 

The current Justice Secretary has not accepted the main recommendations from the House of Commons Justice Committee on dealing with the legacy of the abolished sentence of Imprisonment of Public Protection (IPP) in England and Wales, created in 2003. The call for evidence produced the highest number of submissions that the committee had ever received, most of which were hugely critical of IPP, which was technically abolished in 2012. The findings must not be dismissed in this way. We call on any future Labour government to take forward the recommendations at the first opportunity, and to press for them while still in opposition. This includes developing a new IPP action plan with clear performance measures.

Evidence-based approaches 

Longstanding empirically-based answers are available to all of the questions on justice in this consultation document, in academic research and the reports of think tanks, working parties and committees of enquiry. We appreciate that such questions should be asked anew with new generations of voters, but we sincerely hope that Labour will respect established and unfolding truths about creating safe and secure communities. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. We advocate the full implementation of a number of ground-breaking expert reports and reviews that have addressed a wide range of areas relevant to this consultation. These are: 2007 Corston (women offenders); 2009 Bradley (mental health); 2015 Taylor (under-18s); 2016 Coates (education and more); 2017 Lammy (BAME); 2017 Farmer (improving family ties); and the Neurodiversity Action Plan currently under consideration. 

The strategy of ‘justice reinvestment’ is relevant here. It usually means saving money on criminal justice interventions and investing it back into the poorest communities where crime and victimisation rates are highest, and that have the largest rates of resettling offenders returning to them from prison. It is undeniably a good idea, but no political party has taken it seriously since it first emerged in the 1990s. We encourage Labour to consider it. 

Labour must also give more strategic attention to restorative justice (RJ), and the variety of practical forms and legal and administrative contexts in which it can be applied. Much lip-service has been paid to it over the past 30 years, some progress has been made in its use with young offenders, but its potential as a means of addressing crime and anti-social behaviour, and its utility as a means of reducing conflict in communities, remains unrealised. There is a postcode lottery in availability. While RJ services should be victim-led, with victims having a right to information on it (as well as other relevant services), the proven value of its positive impact on offenders should be recognised. 

5. In what ways can devolution and constitutional reform empower people and bring our communities closer together? 

Cleaning up Westminster 

Quakers have engaged with political power since our earliest days. We are committed to democracy as the embodiment of our testimonies to equality, peace, truth and integrity. In recent years we have become concerned about the increasing amount of policy, legislation, rhetoric and behaviour that threaten both the structures and the culture of democracy. 

We are keen to ensure that if elected, Labour does not accept our weakened democracy as the status quo, and instead takes steps to strengthen it. We agree with the finding of the Commission on the UK’s Future that significant reform is needed to restore ethical standards and their safeguards, and therefore help improve trust in politicians and our political system. We would like Labour to prioritise truth and integrity as fundamental values underpinning our democracy. 

We ask the Labour Policy Forum to consider how the Commission on the UK’s Future’s proposals can be improved to ensure that the system does not still rely on the governing party to regulate itself. For example, the Commission report suggested that the Prime Minister or Parliament should decide whether to accept the proposed Integrity and Ethics Commission’s recommendation on how to deal with rule breaches by members of parliament. If the governing party has a strong majority in parliament, this leaves the power with that party. Similarly, the Commission on the UK’s Future report does not specify who will make sure the recommendations of the citizens’ jury are implemented, and whether this body will be independent or party-political. This risks leaving the system open to abuse by a governing party with a strong majority. 

Promoting human rights 

Quakers believe there is ‘that of God’ in everyone and that every human being should have the chance to flourish. Labour must do everything it can to ensure the Human Rights Act is protected. We welcome the Commission on the UK’s Future’s recommendations to entrench and expand some human rights in UK law. We would like environmental rights to be included in that list. 

The rights to freedom of assembly and expression have been undermined by recent changes in policy and legislation. These rights are key to a thriving democracy, ensuring that people can raise concerns when their voices aren’t being heard through other democratic channels such as voting. Protest has helped bring about many positive political changes in history, such as votes for women and the end of apartheid. We welcome the Labour leadership team’s emphasis on policing by consent. We ask Labour to ensure that peaceful protest is enabled, and the policing of protests is limited, proportionate, consistent, predictable and accountable. This includes repealing Part 3 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (PCSC Act) and scrapping the Public Order Bill. These could be replaced with legislation that enables peaceful protest. 

Nurturing civil society 

We believe civil society is fundamental to democracy and social change. Charities and other civil society organisations can bring a huge amount of knowledge, expertise and ideas to benefit policymaking at a national and local level. Civil society engagement results in better-designed policies, and ensures that essential services have a greater positive impact. It also helps the collective experiences and views of ordinary people to influence political and policy decisions, and enables people to participate in efforts to bring about social change. 

Yet civil society in the UK has had to contend with a challenging political and operating environment for years, including: 

• Legislation such as the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 and Elections Act 2022 

• The politicisation of regulatory bodies such as the Electoral Commission 

• A dominant narrative that seeks to de-legitimise campaigning and other work on injustice and discrimination e.g. criticism of the National Trust for exploring its colonial history. 

We ask the Labour to take steps to improve the relationship between government and civil society. A cross-departmental engagement strategy is needed to set out how a Labour government would involve civil society organisations, and the people they work with, in all strategy and decision-making processes. This includes full consultation, pre-legislative scrutiny and equality impact assessments ahead of all planned new legislation, and meaningful engagement ahead of emergency legislation. The strategy must ensure that all engagement between civil society and government is meaningful, inclusive, and deliberative.

We think it would be helpful to appoint a standalone Minister for Civil Society who acts as a champion for civil society within government and beyond. They would be most effective if placed at heart of government in the Cabinet Office. The Civil Society Directorate should also be moved back to the Cabinet Office and given responsibility for setting strategy and targets on civil society across government. There must be clear accountability mechanisms so that it can hold other departments to account. 

Regulators exist to provide accountability. It is therefore crucial that they are independent from both government and party politics. This enables them to be effective, and credible in the eyes of the public. We ask Labour to protect the regulatory independence of the Electoral Commission, Charity Commission, Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies, and Equality and Human Rights Commission. Restoring the independence of the Electoral Commission will require amending or repealing Part 3 of the Elections Act 2022. 

Reform of the public appointments process is needed to increase the power of parliament, increase fair competition, and prevent the appointment of unqualified candidates. We ask Labour to give the House of Commons formal control of appointment processes, provide Select Committees with an effective power of veto at pre-appointment hearings, and ensure terms for the Chairs of regulatory bodies are non-renewable and fixed. 

6. What are the specific implications of policy proposals in this area for (a) women, (b) Black, Asian and minority ethnic people; (c) LGBT+ people, (d) disabled people and (e) all those with other protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010? 

People with protected characteristics have been disproportionately negatively affected by recent changes in policy and legislation around democracy and human rights. For example, Black people are disproportionately affected by stop and search, which has been expanded in England and Wales via the PCSC Act and Public Order Bill. The PCSC Act also put many Gypsies and Travellers at risk of criminalisation through creating new police powers and sentences around trespass. The introduction of voter ID in the Elections Act will disenfranchise many people from minoritised groups. We ask Labour to repeal parts 3 and 4 of the PCSC Act, scrap the Public Order Bill and reform electoral law so that everyone who is eligible to vote can participate fully in elections and can engage in public debate.

A Toxic Met

Lets face it, the 'Met' has been a problem for a very long time indeed. I well remember hearing that corruption had become so embedded by the 1970's that an exasperated Commissioner Sir Robert Mark eventually coined the now famous words 'a good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs'. Things were so bad he threatened to put all CID back in uniform. Only the other day I couldn't help but chuckle at an early scene in the BBC period drama 'The Gold' about the Brink's-Mat robbery and the CIO warning his small team about 'no freemasonry; no overtime and no drink'. 

That was 1983 and sadly the slide appears to have only worsened to become the utterly toxic environment so forensically catalogued in the damning Casey Report published today. I can't help but put this into the context of probation's current woes, sandwiched as we are between a toxic HMPPS/MoJ employer and at least one toxic police service that we are now required to work so closely with and be vetted by. 

An independent review into the standards of behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service

Summary and conclusions 

The Met has faced significant challenges over the last ten years. Many of these have been beyond their control. These include austerity, changes in crime patterns, greater non-crime demand and a regulatory system that makes it difficult to get rid of people who corrupt the Met’s integrity. The Crown Prosecution Service and the courts are also under acute pressure. This impacts the effectiveness of the Met, and makes the criminal justice system overall much less effective. 

Significant societal shifts are rightly making us less tolerant of crimes such as domestic abuse, rape and child abuse as well as discrimination. Public expectations on policing are therefore greater. 

London too is always changing. Its population is expanding, and is swelled by thousands of commuters daily and millions of visitors each year. It is more diverse in terms of nationalities, ethnic and faith groups, and sexuality than other UK cities. The majority of the population are not from White British ethnic backgrounds, one in five do not have English as their main language, and London has greater extremes of wealth and poverty than other parts of the UK. 

In contrast, Met officers are 82% White and 71% male, and the majority do not live in the city they police. As such, the Met does not look like the majority of Londoners. 

Traditional volume crime (such as burglary and theft) has declined, while low volume but more serious offences such as violence against the person, and sexual offences have significantly increased from 17% of all crimes in 2012-13 to 31% in 2022-23. Such cases take longer to investigate and resolve. Domestic abuse-related crimes have doubled over ten years to nearly 100,000 a year and the number of reported rape cases have increased fourfold. But the number of officers investigating them has not increased at the same rate. This places more demand on police detective services in particular, while there is a national shortage of detectives. 

Like other public services, austerity has profoundly affected the Met. In real-terms, the Review has calculated that the Met now has £0.7 billion less than at the start of the previous decade, meaning its budget is 18% smaller. This is enough to employ more than 9,600 extra Police Constables at full cost. It has lost 21% of its civilian staff and two thirds of its Special Constables while the number of Police Community Support Officers has halved. Between 2010 and 2022 it closed 126 police stations. Specialist units and functions have been prioritised, including through ringfenced Government funding. 

Together, this has eroded frontline policing, weakening the strongest day-to-day point of connection with Londoners, as well as impacting the Met’s reactive 10 capabilities, its response levels, and its response to male violence perpetrated against women and children. 

The model of policing by consent, pioneered in London and admired and copied around the world, requires the Met to both earn and maintain public trust in everything it does. However, there is declining public confidence and trust in the institution. Public trust has fallen from a high point of 89% in 2016 to a low of 66% in March 2022. Public confidence in the Met to do a good job locally has fallen from high points of 70% in 2016 and 2017 to a low of 45% in March 2022. 

People from Black and mixed ethnic groups have lower trust and confidence in the Met, scoring 10 to 20% lower than average on trust and 5 to 10% lower on confidence, although declining scores among White Londoners mean that gap is closing. 

Among those who responded to surveys undertaken for the Review, three quarters of Met employees and two in five Londoners think the Met’s external reputation is poor. Black Londoners are even more likely to say its reputation is poor.

 A series of scandals involving the Met and the Met’s response – playing them down, denial, obfuscation, and digging in to defend officers without seeming to understand their wider significance – combined with this loss of trust, are strong indicators of fundamental problems.

In September 2022, the appointment of a new Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner with a commitment to reform marked a new, positive beginning for the Met. 

This Review, commissioned in the wake of the scandals that have rocked policing nationally, has sought to examine the Met’s culture and standards. We have not undertaken an inspection of the Met’s overall performance, efficiency and effectiveness although we have looked at some aspects of this. 

Our approach has been to talk to officers, staff and others, and review and analyse information, data, systems and operational performance for their relevance to the Met’s culture and standards. We considered how the Met's culture affects its central purpose to keep Londoners safe, how it inspires trust and confidence, and how it upholds the British model of policing by consent. 

Our conclusions are set out below. 

1. There are systemic and fundamental problems in how the Met is run 

The size of the Met makes it challenging to operate and also to change. The problem, however, is not its size but its inadequate management. The Met is run as a set of disconnected and competing moving parts, lacking clear systems, goals or strategies. It runs on a series of uncoordinated and short-lived initiatives, long on activity but short on action.

There is no workforce plan, no strategic assessment of the needs and skills of the organisation, and demand modelling is outdated. Recruitment and vetting systems are poor and fail to guard against those who seek power in order to abuse it. There has been no central record of training, so officers may well be in roles which they are not trained for. 

The management of people is poor. The Met’s processes do not effectively root out bad officers, help to tackle mediocre officers, or truly support and develop good officers. Some of this is down to national systems (including misconduct processes, under-performance regulations, and the national promotion framework). But the Met doesn’t actively intervene to make these work better for its people, and its own policies, practices and culture serve to exacerbate the problem. 

We witnessed clear signs of high stress and pressure among officers due to the nature of their work dealing with very stressful and upsetting situations, working with traumatised, vulnerable and dangerous people and facing daily abuse from the public. Frontline officers working on Response and Public Protection Teams were not being properly assisted with psychological support to protect their mental health or prevent desensitisation towards victims and the public. 

Sergeants and Inspectors are expected to manage very large numbers of constables and junior staff as a core feature of their work, without the time and the tools to do so. Under current Met systems it is easier for them to ignore poor performing officers or let those with conduct issues get away with bad behaviour. In an organisation where people are its principal asset, the vital role of Human Resources has been outsourced and is too distant from local policing needs. 

Since publication of the Macpherson report in 1999, the Met has remained largely White and largely male. If recruitment continues on its current trajectory, it will take at least another thirty years, until 2053, to reach gender balance. It will take even longer, until 2061, to reach 46% Black, Asian and ethnic minority representation – what is needed to be representative of London today, let alone the even more diverse city it will be in nearly 40 years’ time. 

The Police Uplift Programme has been a missed opportunity to improve the diversity and skills base of its workforce. There is no plan B. This isn’t about being ‘woke’ or having politically correct quotas. It means the Met is missing out on the talent it desperately needs to improve its effectiveness. It is also damaging community confidence, by failing to create a force that looks like the city it polices. This is creating a negative spiral in which some communities continue to have negative experiences at the hands of the police, trust them less, and are less likely to join. 

2. The Met has not managed the integrity of its own police service 

This Met is tasked with upholding law and order and keeping citizens safe. But it has failed over time to ensure the integrity of its officers and therefore of the organisation. Despite the obvious signals of major failure – with heinous crimes perpetrated by serving Met officers – it did not stop to question its processes. 

Policing will attract those who wish to abuse the powers conferred by a warrant card. The Met has not taken this fact seriously. Its vetting processes are not vigilant in identifying clear warning signs such as previous indecent exposure or domestic abuse from applicant officers. Transferees from other forces are trusted to be good enough. Periodic re-vetting has been perfunctory, and self-declarations are relied upon. The Met does not make ethical standards as clear as it could, and it has no systems in place to ensure staff and officers adhere to them, nor clear consequences if they do not. 

Concerns raised through the misconduct or complaints process are not well recorded and are more likely to be dismissed than acted upon. Patterns of behaviour and escalating incidents which are the hallmarks of predatory behaviour are not identified. Instead, time and time again, those complaining are not believed or supported. They are treated badly, or face counter-claims from those they have accused. Behaviour which in most other organisations would lead to instant dismissal or serious disciplinary action – particularly amongst those who work routinely with vulnerable people – is too often addressed through ‘management action’ or ‘reflective practice’. 

In the absence of vigilance towards those who intend to abuse the office of constable, predatory and unacceptable behaviour has been allowed to flourish. There are too many places for people to hide. The integrity of the organisation remains vulnerable to threat. 

3. The Met’s new leadership represent a welcome change of tone and approach. However, deep seated cultures need to be tackled in order for change to be sustained 

When he became Commissioner in 1972, over 50 years ago, Sir Robert Mark said he had ‘never experienced…blindness, arrogance and prejudice on anything like the scale accepted as routine in the Met’. The Met is a very different organisation today. But we have found those cultures alive and well. We want to be crystal clear that we are not saying everyone within the organisation behaves in these ways, but that these are the prevailing and default cultures: ‘the way we do things’. Worryingly, some of the worst cultures, behaviours and practices have been found in specialist firearms units, where standards and accountability should be at their absolute highest. 

Too much hubris and too little humility: The organisation has a ‘we know best’ attitude. It dismisses external views and criticisms, and adopts the attitude that no one outside the Met can understand the special nature and unique demands of their work. This hubris has become a serious weakness. It stops them hearing and understanding other views, including those of Londoners, and prevents them bringing in external help, co-opting experts and stakeholders to provide support and challenge. 

Defensiveness and denial: The Met does not easily accept criticism nor ‘own’ its failures. It does not embrace or learn from its mistakes. Instead, it starts from a position that nothing wrong has occurred. It looks for, and latches onto, small flaws in any criticism, only accepting reluctantly that any wrong-doing has occurred after incontrovertible evidence has been produced. 

One of the saddest aspects of this culture of denial is that many of the issues highlighted in this report – systemic racial bias in the misconduct system, poor child protection services, not recognising predatory behaviour, the dire state of property storage – have been known about, reported on and investigated before. But the Met’s culture, combined with its poor management, has meant that these issues have not been sufficiently addressed. This has allowed wrongdoing to persist. 

Speaking up is not welcome: Keeping your head down, looking the other way, and telling people – especially senior officers – what they want to hear is the way things are done in the Met. The culture of not speaking up has become so ingrained that even when senior officers actively seek candid views, there is a reluctance to speak up. Disciplined services such as policing might be more prone to such behaviours. This makes it all the more important that those who do speak up are supported, protected, and their contribution is valued. But those who speak up in the Met learn the hard way that there are adverse consequences for themselves, for their careers, and for their teams. Systems support wrongdoers. Complainants are not believed. Staff Associations and Independent Advisory Groups feel ignored. A bullying culture underpins all this. Racist, misogynist, homophobic and other discriminatory acts are tolerated, ignored, or dismissed as ‘banter’. 

Optimism bias: Following any issue, there is a strong tendency to look for a positive spin, which allows the organisation to move on. They seek to put it in the past and blame individual ‘bad apples’, rather than pausing for genuine reflection on systemic issues. The Met talks up future actions as if they were already implemented. This tendency is most clearly noticeable in a tick box approach to critical reports, inspections, inquiries and other forms of scrutiny where bigger picture issues are broken down into individual actions. Problems with culture and attitudes cannot be addressed by developing a new policy, changing the rules or developing a new process. 

‘Initiative-itis’: Instead of focusing on getting the basics right, short term projects and campaigns have been launched from HQ without seeing them through, considering their impact or engaging the organisation in embedding enduring systemic change. This particularly wears down officers on the frontline. They experience slogans and spreadsheet returns instead of a single, clear and widely understood strategy for improvement. This is exacerbated by poor management within the organisation. 

Elitism: putting frontline policing at the back of the queue: The Met has allowed an imbalance to grow between well-resourced specialist units and a denuded frontline. It has also allowed the distance between New Scotland Yard and frontline policing teams to widen. Londoners see and rely on frontline officers the most day to day, but these officers feel demoralised and let down by their leaders. 

4. Londoners have been put last 

The frontline has been deprioritised. A reorganisation moved 32 borough-based police commands to 12 units with some covering up to four boroughs. There are now much weaker connections to long established communities. Democratic borough structures and Londoners have become a step further removed from their police service. 

Local policing has been fractured by the loss of skilled civilian staff, especially crime analysts and support staff. Officers who should be on the streets of London are left to backfill some of these roles. There is less knowledge of local crime patterns and Response teams are responding to ever increasing demands on their service. The result is longer response times.

London no longer has a functioning neighbourhood policing service. Far from being ring-fenced as promised in the reorganisation, it has become a resource for backfilling other services like Response. The number of PCSOs has been drastically reduced. 

Those running BCUs do not have authority over their patch and are not responsible or accountable for the actions of specialist teams like the Violent Crime Task Force and the TSG. 

5. London’s women and children have been left even further behind 

The de-prioritisation and de-specialisation of public protection has put women and children at greater risk than necessary. 

Despite some outstanding, experienced senior officers, an overworked, inexperienced workforce polices child protection, rape and serious sexual offences. They lack the infrastructure and specialism which the Sapphire specialist command benefited from. Instead of access to fast-track forensic services, officers have to contend with over-stuffed, dilapidated or broken fridges and freezers containing evidence including the rape kits of victims, and endure long waits for test results. 

It is more than six years since the 2016 HMIC report into child protection was described as “the most severely critical that HMIC has published about any force, on any subject, ever.” But the Met’s child protection service continues to have major inadequacies. 

The Met’s VAWG strategy rings hollow since its claim to be prioritising ‘serious violence’ has really not included the crimes that most affect women and girls. Those investigating domestic abuse are also under considerable pressures, with unmanageable caseloads and poor support for victims. This has increased the disconnection from Londoners. 

6. The Met lacks accountability and transparency 

The Met is a £4 billion public institution. Therefore, it should be transparent and accountable for the services it provides and the resources it uses, while maintaining operational responsibility for policing decisions. Yet all too often, it has been unaccountable to the public and their representatives. 

The structures of governance and scrutiny are relatively weak. HMICFRS are an inspectorate not a regulator and can only really comment on what they find. They have limited levers to drive improvement. The ‘engage’ phase is a reflection of the Inspectorate’s significant concerns about the force, but it holds no real consequences for the Met. Their internal audit processes are not valued by the organisation as a process of assurance and early warning.

The Met have in the past avoided scrutiny, holding MOPAC at arms-length, and not sharing information and data. MOPAC in turn have not been able to provide the strategic oversight function that the Met needs. Holding the Met to account has become more tactical. More robust and strategic oversight, based on support, challenge and mutual respect for their respective roles, is needed. 

Within each BCU, some the size of a county police force, it is very surprising and concerning that local policing lacks the level of local accountability which would be found in a constabulary across the rest of England and Wales. Londoners are further and further from their policing service. 

The Met needs to increase its accountability to Londoners, by being more transparent with the public, with local authorities and MPs, by explaining their decisions and the reasons for them, and by acting with greater candour. 

The checks and balances provided by robust scrutiny, governance and accountability are vital for public bodies, perhaps especially the police with their duties towards and powers over the public. However, at a point where the Met requires major reform, it is even more important that those who have responsibility for oversight and inspection support it to change. 

7. Discrimination is tolerated, not dealt with and has become baked into the system 

We have found widespread bullying, particularly of those with protected characteristics. 22% of staff and officers experienced bullying. There is a profound culture across the Met that incentivises people to look, act and sound the same, and a resistance to difference. 

33% of those with a long-standing illness, disability or infirmity have experienced bullying. Claims for disability discrimination is the most frequent claim type brought against the Met. But there is no willingness to learn from these cases. 

There is deep seated homophobia within the Met, as shown by the fact that almost one in five lesbian, gay and bisexual Met employees have personally experienced homophobia and 30% of LGBTQ+ employees have said they had been bullied. Trust, confidence and fairness scores among LGBTQ+ Londoners have fallen significantly. 

Female officers and staff routinely face sexism and misogyny. The Met has not protected its female employees or members of the public from police perpetrators of domestic abuse, nor those who abuse their position for sexual purposes. Despite the Met saying violence against women and girls is a priority, it has been treated differently from ‘serious violence’. In practice, this has meant it has not been taken as seriously in terms of resourcing and prioritisation. 

There are people in the Met with racist attitudes, and Black, Asian and ethnic minority officers and staff are more likely to experience racism, discrimination and bullying at their hands. Discrimination is often ignored, and complaints are likely to be turned against Black, Asian and ethnic minority officers. Many do not think it is worth reporting. Black officers are 81% more likely to be in the misconduct system than their White counterparts. The organisation has failed to significantly improve the recruitment and retention of Black officers at all levels. This is particularly true of Black and ethnic minority women. 

Meanwhile Black Londoners in particular remain over-policed. They are more likely to be stopped and searched, handcuffed, batoned and Tasered, are overrepresented in many serious crimes, and when they are victims of crime, they are less satisfied with the service they receive than other Londoners. There is now generational mistrust of the police among Black Londoners. Stop and search is currently deployed by the Met at the cost of legitimacy, trust and, therefore, consent. 

We have found institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia in the Met. In coming to this conclusion, we have applied four tests. We believe these can be applied in respect of homophobia, misogyny and racism but we have applied them in respect of racism below. 

1. Clearly not everyone in the Met is racist, but there are racists and people with racist attitudes within the organisation 

2. Black and ethnic minority officers and staff experience racism at work and it is routinely ignored, dismissed, or not spoken about. Many do not think it is worth reporting 

3. Racism and racial bias are reinforced within Met systems 

4. The Met under-protects and over-polices Black Londoners 

Tackling discrimination is a legal and operational imperative for the Met. It needs to acknowledge the extent to which racism, misogyny and homophobia are present within its organisational processes and systems in order to move forward. 

8. The Met is in danger of losing its way – consent is broken 

The Met’s key values, the College of Policing’s Code of Ethics and the Peelian principles all provide clear standards and direction for how the organisation should operate and how it should police London. However, these values and principles have not been front and centre of the Met’s strategic or operational approach either internally or externally. It has been disfigured by austerity and the decisions that were made during that period, alongside changes in the crime mix and societal expectations. The Met has been losing its way and the worst aspects of its culture have impeded its ability to recognise this. 

The Met has become less effective and is less trusted. Public confidence has dipped below 50%. Fewer Londoners agree that the Met treats everyone fairly, and the proportion of people believing that the Met does a good job for London has also fallen. 

Public attitudes and the findings of this Review are also evidence that the Met has become unanchored from the principles of policing by consent. Consent is not passive but relies on the police operating with transparency, to be willing to explain their decisions and their reasons for it.

Prison Numbers To Rocket

With Labour deciding to enter into a Dutch auction with the Tories as to who is going to be tougher on criminals in the lead-up to the next general election, news comes in from the statisticians as to likely future incarceration rates. It has to be remembered that the Tories often like to portray any new prisons as 'job opportunities' for any intended location and increasingly are doing their best to keep more people inside and for longer as a way to 'protect the public'. This from Russell Webster neatly summarises the likely direction of travel:-   

Our Prison Population Could Be Over 100,000 by 2027

Projections

The latest official prison population projections published yesterday (23 February 2023) by the Ministry of Justice and the Office for National Statistics demonstrate the uncertainties at the heart of our criminal justice system. The headline figures are confusing, to say the least:

• The prison population is projected to increase, with a central estimate of 94,400 by March 2025

• The estimate for two years later, March 2027, is within a huge range of 93,100 to 106,300.

Complications

In the first few years of the projection period, the projected rise in the prison population is primarily due to an increase in receptions of determinate sentenced offenders. This is because courts are assumed to dispose of more cases than they receive in order to clear the additional trial backlog that arose during COVID-19 restrictions and the Criminal Bar Association strike action.

The total prison population is projected to continue to increase over the full projection period. This is partly driven by rising police officer numbers which are expected to increase charge volumes and therefore increase the future prison population.

There are several sources of uncertainty for long-term prison population, particularly around future levels of demand entering the Criminal Justice System (CJS).

The publication presents three prison population projections to assess the impact of differing potential upstream demand scenarios. All three projections reflect what the statisticians call “plausible scenarios for future police and prosecutorial activity”. All three scenarios take account of expected increases in police officer numbers and project higher long-term prison demand, but vary factors such as charges per police officer, the crime mix entering the courts, and average custodial sentence lengths. You can see how the different projections unfold in the chart reproduced from the report below.

Scenarios

The scenarios are not intended to reflect the full range of demand risk for the CJS, but rather to estimate the plausible range of police and prosecutorial activity – a large driver of future prison demand over the mid to long-term. The statisticians are keen to emphasise that the projections do not represent the highest and lowest possible prison demand or the full range of uncertainty surrounding the projections.

There are several additional sources of uncertainty including the speed with which the CJS recovers from the pandemic – Crown Court backlogs remain very high. Other uncertainties relate to future crime types (in particular which types of crime police prioritise) and the volumes of crime and how many are processed through the CJS.

The plethora of recent policy changes (many of which relate to extending maximum sentence times and reducing the likelihood of parole) have not all yet been implemented and therefore make it hard for statisticians to model their impact on prison numbers.

The three scenarios which result in this very imprecise projection of the prison population being between 93,100 to 106,300 by March 2027 are:

High upstream demand – police and CPS crime mix and charges per officer start to return to pre-COVID (2019) levels, resulting in a large increase in the volume of cases coming into court. Additionally, Average Custodial Sentence Lengths (ACSL) return to 2019 levels.

Low upstream demand – police and CPS crime mix and charges per officer stay at lower levels observed in 2021 and do not return to pre-COVID behaviour. Similarly, ACSLs reflect 2021 levels.

Central upstream demand – crime mix remains as observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. While there are some increases in charges per officer, it remains below pre-pandemic levels. Additionally, ACSLs reflect levels observed from 2019 to 2021.

When trying to make sense of these very large rises in our prison population (there were 83,687 people in prison last Friday 17 February, itself a jump of 1149 people in the previous four week period), it is important to remember that, along with Scotland, England & Wales already incarcerates a large proportion of its citizens than any other Western European country.

Russell Webster

'Go No Comment'

I wasn't going to publish anything today, but I've changed my mind. In recent years it's become fashionable to talk about the need to recruit new entrants with 'lived experience' which is basically code for those with an offending history. Well, the following that came in yesterday should therefore be of interest and concern to us all:- 

I find it ironic that the police are still charged with vetting. Given that their own processes have failed to stop rapists, domestic abusers, thugs and voyeurs joining various forces….

Looking around now it’s hard to see anything of value in the CJS. Prison numbers remain far too high, racism is endemic, politicians make appalling decisions and rehabilitation feels like a thing from the distant past. Voluntary groups are underfunded, accommodation is dreadful, benefits are pernicious and even now people are released from prison homeless. It doesn’t really take a great leap to see why people continue to offend. Alongside this the cost of living keeps rising and the rich simply peel off more and more. The Labour Party is equally clueless. As I cast my gaze around I often ponder what life would have been like if I had been born in the 1990s rather than the1960s. 

Given my background I doubt I would have been able to achieve anything really. When I was younger I shoplifted, stole Ford cars (easy locks), got into trouble with an air rifle (accident) left school with 2 CSEs, worked in a factory, got sacked and then started my education. It was all free. Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister. I had all my university fees paid, got a PO job and well that’s it really. The fact is it would be impossible to take that path now without amassing some serious debts. 

On my course we learned about Marxism, power and social control. Probation has always been about social control so stop kidding yourselves. It’s just more overt these days. I grew up with criminals, I saw houses raided, police sticking the boot into neighbours and appreciated early on how the state flexes its muscles when needed. Probation these days is an extension of that power. It monitors thoughts, ideas, politics and passes information about political extremism and even identifies asylum seekers for the Home Office. I mean really….how low can you get. I wouldn’t have seen probation as a worthy career. It’s no better than the police and prison service.

And that’s a real problem. Why would anyone tell you anything? If I was unfortunate enough to have to see an officer I would never tell the truth. Contrast that with my experience when I first started. What surprised me was I was how willing people were to tell me all sorts of things that were really very private and personal. It took me ages to cotton on that they actually trusted the probation service in ways that they didn’t trust the police or the prison service. 

I still have friends who remain well known to the police and from time to time finish up in front of a harassed officer for a report. My advice these days is lie, don’t trust them and tell them nothing. Smiley pigs are still pigs. All the trust has gone, and that will never return. So to conclude, what would I have done if I had been born later? Education is expensive, even if you finish up paying for it, the probation is service is what these days? Smiley pigs, and an embarrassment to its history. No thanks I would rather have developed my car skills [and] fucked off with an ACOs posh car.

MoJ Dissembling? Surely Not!

I see that Danny Shaw has written a blog piece on a bit of smoke and mirrors the MoJ are in the habit of using:-

The fallacy of falling reoffending rates

“Hugely significant.” That was the description given by Antonia Romeo, the most senior civil servant at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), to the decline in reoffending rates in England and Wales over the past ten years. Among adults, they have fallen from 30 per cent in 2010-11 to 24 per cent in 2020-21. For those aged 10 to 17, the drop has been even more marked, down from 40.9 per cent to 31.2 per cent.

Giving evidence at the Commons Justice Committee, Romeo suggested that the reduction was because officials in her department had done “a lot of work…on reoffending and what works to get people not to reoffend any more." She said: “This is getting them into a job and accommodation, managing the Through the Gate process, and getting them off substance misuse.”

The Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has been even more effusive. When figures were published last October showing a two percentage point drop in reoffending levels in 12 months he tweeted: “This shows that our investment in drug rehab, training in prisons and offender employment is working and helping make our streets safer.”

Does it show that? Look closely at what reoffending rates really measure and it’s clear that the reduction is nothing to boast about - it’s simply a reflection of a wider failure to deliver justice. That’s because the reoffending rate is a misleading term. It is not worked out by counting what proportion of offenders commit a further crime; it’s based on how many are caught and sanctioned.

Tracking the cohort

The MoJ calculates it like this. Every three months it adds up the number of people who within that period have been: cautioned, reprimanded or issued with an official warning by police; given a non-custodial sentence at court, such as a fine or community order; released after serving a prison sentence. This ‘cohort’ of offenders is then tracked.

If, in the following 12 months, anyone in the cohort commits an offence for which they are convicted, cautioned or given a police warning they are officially classed as a reoffender. The penalty or conviction counts only if it’s issued within the initial 12 months or a six-month period afterwards. Some offences, like breaches of court orders, don't count. The number of reoffenders is then divided by the overall number of offenders in the cohort to produce the reoffending rate.

So, the reoffending rate is really the re-conviction or re-cautioning rate. It all depends on the offender being arrested and given a police warning or successfully prosecuted in the courts. As such, reoffending rates vary according to the effectiveness of the 43 police forces, the Crown Prosecution Service and the criminal courts.

But don’t take my word for it - even the MoJ acknowledges that the methods are imprecise and understate the reality of reoffending. “Measuring true reoffending is difficult,” says the department’s ‘Guide to Proven Reoffending’, issued in 2017.

“Official records are taken from either the police or courts, but they will underestimate the true level of reoffending because only a proportion of crime is detected and sanctioned and not all crimes and sanctions are recorded on one central system. Other methods of measuring reoffending, such as self-report studies, are likely to also underestimate the rate,” the document says.

Detections and sanctions

To understand the extent to which reoffending rates may have been affected by the performance of police, prosecutors and the courts, just look at overall levels of crime detections and sanctions compiled by the Home Office as part of their 'outcome' figures.

The methods changed in 2014-15, so that’s the earliest comparable date. That year, 15.5 per cent of crimes recorded by police led to a suspect being charged or summonsed to appear in court. A further 4.6 per cent resulted in a formal out-of-court disposal, such as a caution.

Over the next seven years, as has been well documented, the charge and caution rate plummeted. In the 12 months to the end of September 2022 it was 5.5 per cent and 1 per cent respectively.

So, over a seven-year period there was a 3.6 percentage point reduction in caution rates and a 10 percentage point decrease in charging levels. Without a charge, of course, there can’t be a conviction, so convictions, as a proportion of all crimes, will also have fallen substantially.

You can probably see where this is heading. With such a dramatic decline in cautioning and charging rates, it’s no surprise that reoffending levels (measuring the proportion of offenders who have been cautioned or convicted again) have fallen too. In 2014-15, the MoJ calculated the overall reoffending rate to be 30 per cent. The latest figures, covering a cohort of offenders in January to March 2021 who were tracked for the following 12 months, show the rate fell to 24.3 per cent, a 5.7 percentage point reduction in reoffending.

Timeliness is also a factor. Criminal cases are taking longer to resolve because of record court backlogs which started growing in 2019. It takes around 180 days, on average, for an offence to be dealt with by magistrates compared with 150 days in 2014-15. For Crown Court cases, it’s gone up from 250 to 350 days. That means an increasing number of offenders who committed a further crime will not have been counted for the purposes of the reoffending data because they weren’t convicted within 12 months or the six month follow-up period.

Bleak reality

If overall charge and cautioning rates had been broadly stable, then this “hugely significant” reduction in reoffending rates, as the permanent secretary put it, would indeed be hugely significant. It would suggest that external factors, such as improvements in rehabilitation, employment and accommodation support, were playing a part - but there is no evidence that they have. The evidence simply, and bleakly, points to the fact that fewer offenders are being caught and brought to justice, while delays in the criminal justice system are masking some reoffending that would previously have been included.

It’s time ministers and officials acknowledged this. They should start by re-labelling ‘reoffending’ rates to avoid confusion and misinterpretation: they are re-conviction and re-cautioning rates. Better still, they should look for an alternative way to measure the true level of reoffending through a combination of anonymous surveys of offenders, information from probation staff, arrest figures, and re-caution and re-conviction data, adjusted to take account of overall caution and charging trends.

The fall in reoffending rates is, sadly, not the ray of light the Ministry of Justice was hoping for and no one should be misled into thinking that it is.

PS: Isn't it odd that for the purposes of reoffending data, an offender's time in prison doesn't count? The official reoffending clock starts on release from jail or at the moment the court orders an offender to serve a sentence in the community. So, when comparisons are made between reoffending rates for those who've served prison sentences and people given community penalties they never take account of the time spent in custody. That doesn't seem right. One of the benefits of prison is that while locked up a person is not committing crimes in the community: surely the reoffending figures should reflect that.

Danny Shaw

The Case For Strong Leadership

Along with much of the general public, I suspect the appalling case of PC David Carrick has given us much to reflect upon, especially as many in probation of course work closely with police colleagues. Clearly something is seriously wrong, especially at the Met, but there's also the danger of government being tempted to impose knee-jerk action in response to understandable public concern. Surely a better option is to have strong and authoritative leadership from within? (If only, I hear probation staff say!) Well, here is a Chief Constable, with 29 years previous service in the Met, who has written a blog on LinkedIn and I think is worth being read widely.  

Professionalism in Policing: Minding the Gaps

This week, I am angry. Angry as another high-profile case of a police officer abusing his position to hurt women in such a calculated way, darkens the news. I won’t repeat the sentiments of my colleagues. David Carrick was a criminal with a warrant card. But it’s easy to say he wasn’t one of us. He was. And that’s why it feels so shameful that he was free to abuse women for so long without the alarm bells being heard. At times like this, I find myself awake at night wondering how we can strengthen our approach, stopping the likes of PC Carrick from the very moment an allegation is made.

Today – just as the day I joined – I’m humbled by the passion, bravery and dedication that flows through this unique profession. But it can be tempting to believe that those who choose a career in policing are inherently altruistic, but the reality is that officers and staff are shaped by the society we all live in. That’s why vetting and constant vigilance will always be required of us, and complacency and the ‘benefit of doubt’ must be confined to our history. Policing, at its finest, reflects the very best of society and works with the tacit consent of the communities we serve.

A big part of this conversation is culture. If people believe that a behaviour is tolerated, an individual protected or victim or witness marginalised, it will continue to exist. It is no coincidence that these officers are in some way ‘known’ in the organisation. In BTP we re-routed on this journey after the murder of Sarah Everard. And as I prepare for my eleventh Accelerated Misconduct Hearing, I can feel the shift in how seriously we take professional standards, but it’s something we have to work at every day. From creating an internal environment where people can speak up confidentially, to swift and credible action and transparency throughout our decisions. It’s how we earn the trust of our people and in return they share concerns that would otherwise never have been spoken, or heard.

Since joining BTP, I’m encouraged that internal reporting of wrongdoing has increased by 63% yet I know that sadly there is still more to be heard. Many are historic cases that colleagues felt they couldn’t challenge at the time. But when an organisation commits to supporting victims, the tide turns and our relentless pursuit in building a modern and inclusive workplace which has no place for wrongdoing is proof of that. The courage shown by our colleagues helps us greatly, as more and more are supported through strong allyship.

For those who do come to our attention, the difference between a silly mistake and predatory, discriminatory or abusive behaviour is actually pretty obvious. We are a force that provides the space to learn, where it is appropriate to. In fact, 12% of our cases are resolved through reflective practice – the highest of any UK police force and against a national average of 3%. When used in the right cases and with common sense, it inspires meaningful development and cultural change. Equally, there are plenty of cases that require a formal sanction – or even dismissal. You can’t learn not to be a sex offender or domestic abuser, not on my watch anyway – we simply don’t want you in the job. And we will take swift action to see to that.

But what about the criminal matters that come to the attention of police, but somehow don’t always result in quick-time action? That’s a little more complex – but high time we sorted it out.

If I was to commit a crime, get arrested and give my details, there is no obvious system check that would flag that I’m a police officer if I didn’t choose to tell them. Yes, you read that correctly. On arrest, my DNA and prints would be taken and checked against national forensics databases. Even though I’ve provided my biometric samples to the police (my employer), the datasets are not run together to identify a match. As it stands today, I could be arrested by the police and nobody but me would know I am the police. In my view this is a priority issue for our attention. Otherwise, others could fall through the cracks and go on to do harm.

So what’s the solution?

Bold leadership. Better intelligence and information sharing, tighter regulations and conditions, and prompt action. It’s about time we understood and closed the gaps. It’s what the public expect, and I don’t think we need to await a review to tell us that. Whether that means reviewing the remit of biometric data or police workers have an appropriately defined presence on the Police National Database (PND), the point is if any of us come to police attention the right people must be alerted immediately. The Home Secretary’s announcement that all Forces will conduct their own PND checks is to be applauded – but we can also take it further. Those checks are only as good as the day and time they are undertaken. We need this to be immediately picked up at the point of arrest. It gives us a better chance of taking swift action, protecting the public and restoring confidence.

Then it’s how we piece everything together for a consolidated view. If a career in policing is like a tunnel, we should be able to walk in from the past and out towards the present, passing every event like an obstacle adorning the walls: every commendation, appraisal, letter of thanks, period of sickness. We should also be able to see every complaint, every grievance outcome, performance sanction or moment of reflective practice. And if we pause and look back, what is it that obscures the light? Patterns of complaints over the course of a career can indicate a more serious underlying issue and, in a similar way to trauma, we don’t see the impact over time clearly or quickly enough.

We must also take a hard look as to whether our misconduct processes and systems deliver the results we need them to and what, if anything, needs to change. So, for example, if an officer who is investigated for a serious sexual offence is not proceeded with criminally, the matter is then considered from a misconduct perspective. Misconduct proceedings exist for a different purpose than criminal proceedings namely to secure public confidence and there is a lesser burden of proof. However, the misconduct regime does not come with the same investigatory powers as criminal proceedings such as seizing personal digital media, searching a property or persons, obtaining comms data checks and being able to use surveillance tactics in the same way etc... I believe we need to start a debate on regulatory reform.

Finally, we need to stand up for what we believe in if it’s in the public interest. During the pandemic, one of my PCs harassed a lone female jogger for her phone number and told her she was "too curvy to be Asian". Inexplicably he was given a final written warning by an independent panel and allowed to keep his job. For me this is totally unacceptable. I can’t have someone who I believe poses a threat to women, working for the British Transport Police. So, we are taking the panel to a Judicial Review. We can’t hide behind the decisions of others, if we don’t agree we must stand up and make that clear. After all, we are here first and foremost to protect the public.

As I publish this blog, I will be finalising a letter to my Secretary of State (for Transport, copied to the Home Secretary) to offer some of these suggestions, along with other specifics, to assist us to adapt as a police service – so the missed opportunities around the corner are not missed. I believe the workforce would support this, because nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop. There are so many angry good cops right now who care more about keeping people safe than you would ever believe. So, if through the anger stirred up this week, we can make some procedural change and close the gaps, then let’s all get behind it.

Policing is defined by the character of our people. That is the truth I want us to embrace. I firmly believe that policing can re-earn the trust of those we are here to protect, but it will take the courage and concerted effort of us all.

We can do it and we must do it, quickly…

Lucy D'Orsi QPM
Chief Constable at British Transport Police

Sound Familiar?

Thanks go to the reader for pointing me in the direction of this article on the Conversation website and which many working in probation under civil service command and control might find has a familiar ring to it:- 

Police officer resignations have risen by 72% in the last year – we asked former officers why

Policing has long been known as a “job for life”. With low rates of leaving and high rates of loyalty, a career of 30 years or more was very much the norm. However, times have changed.

Government figures show that the number of voluntary resignations from the police service in England and Wales has increased by 72%, from 1,996 in 2021 to 3,433 in 2022. Voluntary resignations now account for 42% of all police leavers, compared to 33% in the previous year.

A decade ago in 2012, there were 1,158 voluntary resignations, accounting for just 18% of all leavers. In just ten years, voluntary resignations have increased by 196%.

In 2016, the National Police Chiefs’ Council referred to “healthy churn as positive”. But after several years of increasing resignations, retention is now one of the biggest challenges in policing. This problem can’t be tackled without a better understanding of why officers are leaving – whether it is due to dissatisfaction with the job or the organisation, or part of a planned move towards a second or “portfolio career”.

For the last few years, we have interviewed nearly 100 former police officers across England and Wales who have voluntarily left the service. We wanted to know more about their reasons for leaving – negative public perceptions of policing, the nature of the job itself or other reasons entirely.

Our findings show that officers are not resigning due to the often challenging and stressful occupational role of being a police officer but rather because of internal, organisational issues. Much like the issues facing any other workplace, retired officers complained of poor leadership, lack of promotion or progression opportunities and a lack of voice.

Officers felt that they weren’t valued or even known by their line manager, and described relationships with their managers as poor and distant. It is not surprising that some viewed yearly appraisals as “a waste of time”. This creates a cycle where officers don’t feel comfortable raising issues or challenges they have with their line manager.

Some also described a lack of appropriate role models in the senior ranks. This was particularly true for female officers with children who returned from maternity leave, often part time. As one officer said:

The really senior females that are married with children … they seem to be always far and few between.

Not being able to learn from or seek support from a leader who has navigated a similar journey left officers feeling that the job was not for people like them.

Organisational injustice

Officers described a sense of unfairness around promotion opportunities, and lack of guidance on how to achieve career goals. As one said:

Everyone’s so busy sorting themselves out that development … it’s all driven by you.

Officers were exasperated by the use of temporary promotions as a way to deal with resource issues, predominantly at sergeant rank. Some described the promotion process as cutthroat, and being about ambition, not ability.

Others said that the process rewarded nepotism, and said that higher-ups promoted people with similar qualities to themselves, creating a barrier to diversity in senior ranks. Officers described having to choose between seeking promotion and specialising in particular roles, as there were no opportunities to do both.

Those we interviewed felt they were viewed as “just a number” by their police force, and that their voices were not heard. Participants did not feel they could share their opinions or be involved in decision making on issues that impacted their day-to-day role.

They also felt major decisions like where they were posted after a successful promotion, returning from absence or due to restructuring within the force, were out of their hands.

This lack of voice was also evident in “group thinking” within the organisation. Officers said that attempts to challenge dominant thinking and practices were met with defensiveness, exclusion or being told to “shut up and get on with it”. The policing organisation is rightly facing calls to root out the damaging aspects of its culture and to encourage officers to speak out about poor behaviour.

The head of the College of Policing Andy Marsh has warned of the dangers of a “culture of defensiveness” – police forces being unwilling to change their practices. Our evidence however suggests that even if officers are willing to do so, their voices may not be heard.

Exit interviews

Most of our interviewees believed their decision to resign was the right one but that didn’t hide their disappointment, regret and sadness in leaving:

I was gutted, absolutely gutted, because I was really proud to be a police officer.

These feelings of an absence of organisational support are made worse by the lack of meaningful exit interviews. A number of officers described their participation in our research interviews as being “cathartic” and providing “a bit of closure”, as exit interviews are not routinely offered by police forces.

Only 35% of officers we spoke to were offered an exit interview, with only 26% of officers completing one. None felt they were offered a meaningful opportunity to discuss their reasons for leaving. They viewed the process as a “tick-box exercise” and perceived management as uninterested, with little information being actually recorded.

Understanding why there has been a 196% increase in voluntary resignations from the police service in England and Wales in the last decade may be a painful undertaking for many forces, but without that information, retention may only get worse. Starting those difficult conversations and providing leavers with the voice they lack within the force is the first step to solving the problem.

Jemma Tyson, Sarah Charman,

University of Portsmouth

The Need For A Better Plan

Even though the Probation Service has pretty much disappeared from public view behind the Civil Service wall of bureaucracy and secrecy, those in the know are fully aware that things are not at all in good shape. Effectively, there appears to be tacit agreement between key stakeholders to just cover their ears and shout 'la la la la la' as loudly as possible and hope everything will be just fine. 

Unless something serious happens, I don't think this situation will alter any time soon, but in the meantime it's interesting to see that the the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, even though not mentioning probation directly, is giving some serious thought as to the whole criminal justice landscape and the mess it's currently in:-     

A few weeks back, we published an article on our website by Whitney Iles, Khatuna Tsintsadze and Charlie Weinberg, the latest in the ‘critical care’ series they have been writing for us.

In the article, they criticised what they called “performance activism”, a tendency in the voluntary sector towards lots of activity, but “very little change on the ground”. While we don't really achieve anything, they argued, we are left “feeling good about our efforts”.

One of the things I have been wondering in the last few weeks is whether, in criminal justice, performance activism is itself a symptom of a frustration with the inertia of current criminal justice policy-making, its ‘stuckness’.

The prison system appears mired in almost permanent crisis. The police face a major crisis of trust. The court system is wrestling with an enormous backlog of cases. Injustices such as unfair joint enterprise convictions, the Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence, or racism throughout the justice system, are sometimes acknowledged. But nothing seems to change. Months may pass; the same issues, the same basic problems, remain.

Unsurprisingly, many of us probably feel trapped by the monotony of repeated criminal justice failure, unsure how, or if, we will ever escape it. A flurry of activity, even if it achieves little, can feel better than no activity at all.

I and colleagues at the Centre work are currently working on a new organisational strategy, to help guide the direction of our work through to our 100th anniversary in 2031. As part of that, I've been thinking about the problems of performance activism, and what might be behind it.

I've written this short piece to start bottoming out these issues. I'd be interested in any thoughts or reactions.

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How do we escape the monotony of repeated policy failure? How do we instead do something genuinely new and transformative?

Consider the Prisons Strategy White Paper, published in December 2021, in what already feels like a different time.

It promises more prisons, on top of existing plans to expand current capacity to around 100,000 places. “We need a pipeline of accommodation beyond our current build programme”, the White Paper states, “and we will begin preparatory work... to set ourselves up for future expansion”.

There’s nothing particularly new here. In modern times, relentless prison growth has been the monotonous background noise of prisons policy since the eve of the Second World War, as I explained in this Prison Service Journal article from a few years back.

Its effect has been to scupper progress on meaningful reform. Whatever the merits of a number of other proposals in the Prisons Strategy White Paper – improving prison education, doing more to get ex-prisoners into jobs, and enhancing resettlement support, for instance – they will likely be negated by growing prisoner numbers.

A couple of weeks ago, Whitney Iles, Khatuna Tsintsadze and Charlie Weinberg wrote about “performance activism”, a symptom of a “lack of long-term thinking and political bravery”. With performance activism, we see “very little change on the ground”, while we are left “feeling good about our efforts”.

Current responses to initiatives such as the Prisons Strategy White Paper – talking up the perceived positives, while discretely shaking our heads about the obvious negatives – risks falling into this performance activism trap, I think.

Some might argue that this is what you get when too many grant funders favour short-term ‘impact’ over long-term ambition, and commissioning models reward nimble public relations, while punishing principled public challenge. I have much sympathy with such views.

But it also reflects the lack of long-term thinking that Whitney, Khatuna and Charlie wrote about, which all too-often leads to organisations falling into one of two, equally problematic, positions.

First, in seeking to influence the policy process, and to demonstrate impact, we can too readily accept the problem as defined by government, offering ‘solutions’ that tend towards reproducing in the present, and into future, the failed policies of the past. When this happens, we end up being defined in. We become part of the problem we claim we are trying to solve.

Alternatively, in seeking to escape the monotonous circularity of policy failure, we might too easily reject the grind of day-to-day influencing. This can result in powerful critiques and inspiring visions. But they are often critiques and visions easy to dismiss as utopian, and equally easy to ignore. This is the problem of being defined out. We stop having anything useful to contribute to the discussion.

What it means to navigate a course between these two, equally unhelpful, positions, to make possible an escape from the monotony of repeated failure, is something I and colleagues at the Centre are exploring, as we finalise a new strategy for the organisation.

In the context of the Prisons Strategy White Paper, it means, I think, developing coherent and credible alternatives to the seemingly relentless drive to ever more prisons, and charting a path to the world as we might wish it to be, while taking seriously the realities of the world as it is.

Richard Garside