This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Crime Of The Century - A Chilling Look At Crime Statistics In The UK


3.POLICE OFFICERS HAVE THEIR SAY Source Document: http://www.polfed.org/Losing_The_Detectives_complete_report_jan08.pdf LOSING THE DETECTIVES: VIEWS FROM THE FRONTLINE


Prior to the publication of this report in January 2008, The Joint Central Committee (JCC) of the Police Federation of England and Wales was becoming increasingly concerned by a barrage of reports it was receiving from the Detectives' Forum and Joint Branch Boards around the country that the resilience of General Office CID was being severely diminished and that there was a debilitating shortage of trained and experienced detectives. The reported consequence was that some serious crime was not being properly investigated and detected.


The JCC therefore commissioned Dr Michael Chatterton to conduct an independent study into General Office CID to examine the issues of resilience, workload and training and to identify the consequences. This follows an earlier report 'Response Policing in the Modern Police Organisation - Views from the Frontline' (Chatterton and Bingham, 2006).


There is much common ground between the two reports: both identify the detrimental effects of the sanctions detection regime and the excessively rigid and bureaucratic approach to targets and performance management. A combination of these is having a pernicious and perverse effect on police operations. They are:


• Diverting police priorities from serious crime to chasing minor offences; • Criminalising members of the public who are not criminals in the accepted sense; • Giving the public a false sense of security that serious crime is being detected with increasing effectiveness by the police;


and


• undermining the discretion necessary for the impartial discharge of the office of constable.


The report deals in great detail with the diminishing resources within the CID elements of police forces in England and Wales.


For our purposes, we will focus on extracting paragraphs from the report that illustrate the difficulties and challenges that have arisen from Performance Management and the consequent effects on the integrity of crime statistics, recorded crime and police detections.


The concern of SMTs with meeting sanction detection targets results in a concentration of police resources on ‘high yield’ crimes and ‘quick win’ sanctions and in ‘housekeeping’ practices which are becoming more dubious as targets are stretched to unreasonable


36


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122