| 1 | 1 | | What is wrong with the police? Why do they so often bend the rules in a way that |
| 2 | | leads to miscarriages of justice? Why is the public so distrustful of the police? |
| 3 | | The answers lie in a police culture, a personality that police officers adopt when they |
| 4 | | go to work. The main elements, according to Robert Reiner, professor of criminology at |
| 5 | | the London School of Economics, are a sense of mission, a desire for action, a cynical view |
| 6 | | of the criminal justice system (the police think it's too hard to get convictions) and a |
| 7 | | pessimistic outlook based on the belief that villains never change and mostly get away |
| 8 | | with it. There are other less important aspects of the culture: the police tend to be |
| 9 | | conservative, macho, racially prejudiced and suspicious of outsiders. They also have a sense |
| 10 | | of isolation from the wider community and strong solidarity with each other. |
| 2 | 11 | | People are not, on the whole, like this before they become police officers. The job |
| 12 | | creates the personality. It does so quickly, and the evidence suggests that commitment to |
| 13 | | the police culture is most powerful when officers have spent 7-10 years in the force. 'We |
| 14 | | are the professionals, we know best: is the prevailing attitude. |
| 3 | 15 | | Last week's report of the inquiry into policing, commissioned by the Home Office |
| 16 | | and chaired by Sir Patrick Sheehy, proposes ways of assaulting and submerging the police |
| 17 | | culture. It wants to get them to toe the line by hitting their pockets. Sheehy believes that |
| 18 | | this is the way to improve efficiency and effectiveness. |
| 4 | 19 | | He is wrong. He and his colleagues have underestimated the power of the police |
| 20 | | culture and show that they understand little about practical policing. Take, for example, the |
| 21 | | proposal that officers should be put on short-term contracts. The aim, presumably, is to |
| 22 | | eliminate those who show the 'wrong value system' and those who perform badly. The |
| 23 | | purpose of abolishing annual pay increases is similar. But how are these judgements to be |
| 24 | | made? What are the right 'performance indicators' for the police? |
| 5 | 25 | | Quantification of activity, whether of arrests or convictions, is problematic. Does |
| 26 | | volume count? How many drunks equal an armed robber? In any case, a large proportion |
| 27 | | of police activity is nothing to do w.ith crime. In 25 years of policing I helped people who |
| 28 | | had locked themselves out of cars and houses. I searched for and found missing children |
| 29 | | and geriatrics; I administered first-aid; I tried (though failed) to rescue people from |
| 30 | | burning buildings. I even once served as an off-street witness at a Register Office wedding. |
| 6 | 31 | | So what are the best ways of managing the police and deciding which ones deserve |
| 32 | | more pay, which deserve promotion and which deserve the sack? |
| 7 | 33 | | First, senior management should be opened up to people who are not career police |
| 34 | | officers, particularly from industry and commerce. Men and women from outside the force, |
| 35 | | perhaps with law and management qualifications, would bring a link with the public and a |
| 36 | | more critical eye, provided they had first had intensive training and education in policing, |
| 37 | | as they do in Sweden. |
| 8 | 38 | | Second, the lower supervisory ranks should be given more power to administer |
| 39 | | discipline. Only if unacceptable behaviour is nipped in the bud will the worst parts of the |
| 40 | | police culture be eliminated. And the added responsibility would go a long way towards |
| 41 | | moving inspectors and sergeants from being 'one of the boys' to being proper managers of |
| 42 | | police officers and police work. |
| 9 | 43 | | Third, the police must find better ways of assessing performance and ability and thus |
| 44 | | suitability for promotion. It is not true that, at present, promotion is only attained through |
| 45 | | length of service. Nor is it true that promotion is based on the number of arrests an officer |
| 46 | | makes. For many years senior ranks have been selected on their performance in |
| 47 | | assessment centres, examining professional knowledge, psychological suitability and |
| 48 | | management skills, in addition to their competence. These selection techniques should be |
| 49 | | developed. A more radical solution, common in many US police departments, is to use |
| 50 | | anonymous assessments made by peers and subordinates. |
| 10 | 51 | | The Sheehy report has some positive elements that will assist attempts already being |
| 52 | | made to professionalise the police. Other parts of the report will not. The police may no |
| 53 | | longer be able to claim they are a special case. But theirs is not just another job. It cannot |
| 54 | | be treated as if it were part of an assembly line. |
