Rocky start for the policing pledge

Are chief constables fighting a losing battle in their attempts to regain the confidence of the public?

By Jon Silverman

At how many interview panels for the post of chief constable has the term “policing by consent” been uttered ? For a generation – since the Scarman report into the Brixton riots in the early 80s – it has been an untouchable shibboleth subscribed to by politicians and practitioners alike. But deep into the first decade of the 21^st century and in the face of a Government-led assault on all of the major public services, it has been looking more than a bit shop-worn.

Enter the mint-fresh label of “responsive policing” to take its place. But we’re not just talking about swapping one bit of jargon for another. This is a culture shift on which New Labour is pinning a great deal in its attempt to boost flagging public confidence. The early signs are not over-promising.

In December 2008, every chief constable in England and Wales signed up to the Government’s Policing Pledge. The Pledge is a set of ten commitments to deliver a style of policing which treats the public as a valued customer with consumer rights that include, amongst other things, having 999 calls answered promptly, being kept informed of the progress of an inquiry and knowing who to contact for updates. For a service which, in the words of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) is “action orientated” and “ task driven”, this requires rather more than a few glib promises which could be honoured without breaking sweat. Yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion – derived largely from that same HMIC’s first report on the operation of the Pledge – that that is what many chief constables assumed they were signing their names to.

Grading the forces on delivery of the Pledge in scores ranging from “Excellent” to “Poor”, the number deemed excellent is a round zero. Eight of the 43 achieved the status of “good” and 33 “ fair”. Two – Cumbria and Suffolk – fell into the category of “ poor”.  Posing as “mystery shoppers”, the inspectors attended meetings with the public, visited police stations and sent emails to neighbourhood police teams to see how well the 10-point Pledge was being delivered. Amongst some pockets of good practice, they found that many police stations were not open when advertised; that, in one force, nearly one in five emergency calls were abandoned a week after being passed to other departments; and some neighbourhood teams did not even bother to send officers to attend public meetings.

On the exculpatory side, it’s worth noting that some of the inspections were carried out in April 2009, a bare three months after the introduction of the Pledge (for the haste, blame pressure from the Home Office to see an early confirmation of the success of its initiative). Moreover, amongst chief constables, there was an understanding that the Pledge was a set of standards to “aspire to” (in the words of the Association of Chief Police Officers) rather than targets, and thus a feeling that the early results should be judged as a work in progress.

Even so, polling carried out for the Home Office reveals two salient points. First, that the public believes itself poorly informed about the business of policing, compared to that of other major service providers such as councils, hospitals and schools. And second, that nine out of ten people interviewed view policing as a national service like the NHS and expect the police to adhere to basic standards of delivery across the country.

Therein lies one of the inherent contradictions which has left chief constables struggling to keep up with the pace of expectation – both from Whitehall and the communities they serve. Like a round peg in a round hole, neighbourhood policing has slotted neatly into the wider localist agenda espoused by all the main political parties. And the public, according to most opinion surveys, wants policing which has strong links to the local community and is responsive to local priorities.

Yet that same public objects to a postcode lottery in service delivery. As a result, a template of minimum national standards is being superimposed in the form of the Policing Pledge and there’s a deal of puzzled resentment in those forces which have come out “ badly” in the first HMIC inspection. As Chief Constable Julie Spence, ACPO’s lead on Citizen Focus, put it : “ This early analysis….does not show why policing Devon and Cornwall, for example, is a different challenge to policing Greater Manchester, or even why two neighbourhoods within the same force may be radically different.”

The pressure is being ratcheted up even further with the introduction of online crime maps which, for the first time, will enable people to compare the neighbourhood recorded figures for burglary, violence, vehicle crime and so on, with the stats from other areas. The Government is banking on this viral inoculation of “accurate” information to counter the lurid sensationalism about crime which seeps out of the pages of the newspapers we buy and the TV we watch. Well, it might, depending on how much trust people have in the figures. On the other hand, it might, as the Police Federation has speculated, help feed local criminal intelligence and exacerbate the very fear of crime which ministers are hoping to damp down. ( True to form, The Daily Telegraph sees another potential threat – that house prices could fall in crime hot-spots !).

Responsive policing is part of confidence-building, which is now the only overarching target the police must meet. And if successful, it could create a virtuous circle. As HMIC says, if the public is convinced that the police care about its concerns, there is likely to be a greater flow of information in helping to tackle crime, thus boosting confidence.

But the obstacles on this yellow brick road are mounting all the time. Budget cuts are biting hard and, following the unprecedented rise in police numbers earlier this decade, the number of sworn police officers ( that is, discounting police community support officers)  per 100,000 of the population is falling. A generational glut of retirements, a national shortage of detectives, the possible re-emergence on the political agenda of force mergers ( and certainly, greater regional collaboration between forces) all pose stern tests for policing. The service will need more than a crime map to navigate the post-election landscape with anything like confidence.

To find out more about this article, visit: www.direct.gov.uk/policingpledge

9 November 2009

Jon Silverman. Professor of media and criminal justice at the University of Bedfordshire,