Soft options versus hard reality: how the police have got it wrong

Those of you keeping up with the extraordinary case of Bernadette McManus in Tavistock might be interested to read just one of the many emails nby received after this crazy use of police time was revealed:

'....they [the police] probably went (as they usually do) for the soft cases like the one you highlight of Bernadette Mc Manus - single mum, no hassle from violent father/supporting relatives etc etc....

The correspondent goes on to to quote his relative (a teacher) as saying there are

'....some horrendous cases of child abuse seen from some of his pupils. They willingly stay on after school to avoid for a few hours the abuse they will get at home. So Plymouth CPS/Social Services have a lot to answer for...'

The pursuit of soft options destroys civilised cultures - and nowhere is this more obvious than with the UK police force. To tick boxes and show action, it seems that Devon County Council may well be engaged in reaching their quota of rehomed kids; if so (as the McManus piece suggests) they're getting every cooperation from Devon & Cornwall police.

There is ample evidence that Britain's police prefer charging the easy wins, high-profile 'pc' crimes and non-criminal cases....while neglecting the real threat to society of largely unrestrained lawless activity. And the most recent consumer research supports my position, not police spin.

In April this year, LSE researcher Ben Bradford concluded that

'Falls in public confidence over the last 20 years have been mirrored by growing dissatisfaction with personal contact [between police and public]'

A month later, figures issued by the IPCC showed a record level of complaints about the police, of which just over 25% related to the various forces not doing their job:

'One complaint in every four was for "neglect of duty" which covers officers being slow or ineffective...'

Fascinated by this finding, in September 2009 the BBCNews website instigated a comment thread on people's levels of satisfaction. More than three in five of the commenters expressed mild to great dissatisfaction with police performance, criticising a lack of focus on 'real' crime. The following succinct comment was broadly representative:

'No, they dont need more training, they need a culture change. They have lost the confidence of the public, thats why complaints continue to rise'

But just as our correspondent earlier noted how perhaps in Devon easy cases of abuse (if they indeed represent abuse at all) are followed up in preference to more messy ones, so too the police prosecution of driving/speeding offences nationally demonstrates far more commitment than their approach to crimes against person and property.

Last year (2008) 3.01 million speeding tickets were sent out in England and Wales, this from a total driving population estimated by the National Travel Survey at 34 million. All offences are automatically prosecuted, and (said the Telegraph earlier this year) the average conviction rate is around 80%. Since Labour came to power, the number of speeding tickets issued has exploded to more than five times its 1997 level.

But also in 2008 (says the Home Office) two-thirds of all police authorities reported lower rates of non-motoring crime detection. And while the Government trumpets a 24% rise in burglaries solved, the national rate itself is still below 10%. (Sources in at least one police force insist it is far lower.)

Nine years ago (according to the ONS) almost exactly 50% more robberies were solved versus today. 481,000 violent attacks and 41,000 sex offences went unsolved in 2008 alone. Youth homicide has doubled since 1997. Earlier this year, the Daily Mail noted that people

'...blame the police for being too tied-up in red tape to concentrate on solving crime. They are also forced to focus their efforts on so-called hate-crimes, such as homophobia or racism...'

We're back to Chief Constable Otter and his diversity specialism....in charge of Devon & Cornwall, which has a Caucasian percentage in excess of 94%, and just 2.7% of the UK population recorded as male homosexuals.

It is a strange police culture indeed which thinks tackling those who break speed limits is more important than catching those who break into houses. Cop websites continue to present this as an urban myth, but again the data don't support their view. Last year 1000 UK citizens died in speeding-related offences. This means that just one motoring offence in 3,400 results in a serious crime being committed.

By contrast, all burglaries are serious to a property owner: the loss of sentimental items and the feeling of having one's private space 'raped' are very real traumas. As only burglaries where enough is stolen to warrant reporting get recorded, we must assume that all of these are serious crimes by definition.

But too often, the police response to such data is framed in crypto social worker speak, rather than showing determination to control it. One such recent quote from Association of Police Authorities Chairman Bob Jones reacted to a 25% increase in 'bag-from-car-snatch' crime as follows:

'This is a worrying development, and one which police authorities will want to monitor closely with their forces, so that any correlation with the economic downturn can be established, and effective action taken to tackle this increase'

Why should any potential burglary or mugging victim be remotely interested in a senior policeman's clumsy attempt at cod socio-economics? It is the job, surely, of experienced social scientists and political strategists to assess cause and effect, not policemen.

There is no way one can firmly establish why the police seem to have awarded themselves a radical change in job definition; this would be akin to asking the child molester if he'd stopped having anal sex with minors. But police interviews I have conducted in both a personal and professional capacity over the last three decades lead me to conclude there are four key motivations:

* The desire to avoid controversy, having been demonised by the Left in the 1970s.

* The ambition to achieve promotion via toadying to the pc agenda.

* The chronic need for fine-funding, given successive real budget cuts from central government - despite rapidly rising technology and white-collar crime.

* Being massively distracted by two areas: maintaining public order in the face of poor youth discipline (heavily drink-related) and administration involving bureaucrat-generated paperwork requests.

This is lack of foresight on a grand scale. As a criminal in 2009 - be you banker, technology fraudster, mugger, burglar, car thief, drug dealer or homicidal maniac - you have in most cases far more chance of evading capture than being caught. And even if you are, the shambles which is the judicial system and our prisons will ensure you either never come to trial - or serve very little of your sentence.

They can grumble until the Keystone cops come back into fashion, but the police stand condemned by their own politicking and Home Office statistics. Citizens don't want the thin blue line to behave like third-rate psychiatrists and social workers: they want them to nick villains pour encourager les autres. And theyre right.

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