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The report, A new force, finds that the 43 forces currently operate as fiefdoms, run by Chief Constables who are only accountable to weak Police Authorities. The cost is high: expenditure on policing has increased by over £4.5 billion (43%) in real terms since 1997. Policing cost per capita is higher than every OECD country where figures are available (except Scotland) and 20% higher than the US.
Police forces, with an average of 3,564 officers are too large to effectively combat local crime. Evidence suggests that smaller forces (closer to 100 than 1,000 officers) are more efficient at dealing with low level offences.
There is a lack of national coordination on serious and organised crime allowing gun, drug and people trafficking gangs to flourish. This issue was highlighted in the landmark 2005 Closing the Gap report but then dropped following widespread objections to twelve “superforces”. Cooperation failures identified in the Soham murder inquiry have still not been fixed. The Home Office resorts to bribing local police forces with earmarked grants (an estimated 60% of funding comes through this route) to make minor changes.
Through interviews with both rank-and-file and senior officers, Reform has found that the Metropolitan Police already acts as a de facto national lead force and is to some extent filling the gap. It manages additional police resources around the country and coordinates counter-terrorism and e-crime.
The danger of this makeshift structure is that it is opaque and unaccountable, being run though a series of ACPO (Association of Chief Police Office) sub-committees. ACPO, which already has major power over policing policy and procedures, is a limited company exempt from FOI requests. It is run by a self-perpetuating oligarchy of senior police officers who will gain more power over major police appointments in the new Policing and Crime Bill.
A major change in accountability and transparency is needed to tackle national and local crime:
· The Metropolitan Police should have a mandate to lead on national and regional serious and organised crime. Counter-terrorism hubs, funded by the Home Office, operated by local police forces and coordinated by the Metropolitan Police present an exciting model for how effective national crime fighting could work.
· Regional police forces should be split into up to 95 city, town and county forces (at the behest of local electors). Reform’s research shows that the current police structure would allow this to take place fairly simply. In 11 places such as London and Gloucester– forces match local government boundaries. In 25 places, the police Basic Command Units match local government boundaries such as West Yorkshire and Avon & Somerset– so accountability could be aligned. Only in 5 locations, such as North Wales would a more extensive restructure be required.
The report’s key findings are:
· The Home Office micro-manages policing, obliging forces to spend money on particular staff or equipment. One example of this was the recent rollout of a new national radio system, where forces that needed to replace their ageing systems were offered money by the Home Office to do so – but only if they opted for the Government’s preferred system. One estimate suggests that up to 60 per cent of the money spent by police forces – as much as £7 billion – consists of these earmarked grants.
· The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) is leading the development of a new national police database, but the first phase of this is still missing tens of millions of records, meaning that police in one region have no way of knowing if a suspect has committed crimes elsewhere. The NPIA has no power to compel forces to adopt the new Police National Database.
· There is no single IT system that forces can use; each of the 43 forces must pay to develop their own. Savings could be made in this and many other common areas – collaboration between Kent and Essex has generated savings of £2.8 million since 2007.
· The social and economic cost of serious organised crime, including the costs of combating it, is estimated to be £20 billion.
· The price of cocaine has halved in the last decade. UK authorities seize only 12 per cent of heroin on the market.
· Trafficking of women has risen from 1,420 in 1998 to an estimated 10,000 cases a year.
· Street gun crime in London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands is being fuelled by increased flows of firearms into the country through criminal gangs.
· There were 256,000 cases of online financial fraud in 2007, up 24 per cent on the previous year.
· The Metropolitan Police is improving its performance in serious and organised crime. It disrupted 324 criminal networks in 2007/08 compared to only 41 in 2004/05.
· The Government has acknowledged that SOCA is a white elephant. When the Home Office last year re-established the e-crime unit they had previously abolished (at a cost to the taxpayer of £7m), it was sited at the Metropolitan Police, not with SOCA.
· The 2005 Closing the Gap report by HM Inspector of Constabulary identified that poor information sharing and cooperation between forces has caused crime that crosses regional boundaries to through the serious crime “gap”. It declared that “the 43 force structure is no longer fit for purpose” and proposed the creation of “strategic forces”, which laid the ground for Charles Clarke’s now abandoned “superforce” merger plan.
Elizabeth Truss, Deputy Director of Reform, said: “The threat of crime is changing and growing. But the police response has been hampered by the obsolete structure of 43 regional forces. England and Wales need a national lead force on serious crime such as gun crime, drugs and people trafficking. SOCA is the wrong answer to the right question. The Met Police is the de facto national force and needs to be formally responsible.”
She added: “Data shows that small police forces catch more criminals than larger ones. The current 43 forces should be split – into a total of around 95 – so that police forces can properly reflect their local communities.”
Click here to read the whole 'A New Force' report.
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