Britain has too much crime because it has too many police forces, apparently. But don’t fret, Britons, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis has had A Big Idea. Sir Mark Rowley, chief of the ever-showered-in-glory Metropolitan Police, has proposed a radical overhaul of the make-up of police forces. What does he think will fix the crisis in policing? Mega forces.
Sinister though this may sound, in effect it is a rejig. Rowley, the most senior police official in the country, suggests all current 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales should merge to create something like 12 or 15 “new bigger and fully capable regional forces supported by the best of modern technology and making better use of the limited funding available”.
The current system, he says, has not been “fit for purpose” for at least two decades, and inhibits communication and cooperation, damaging police officers’ ability to do their job. Indeed, he claims that “no one would design modern policing this way”.
In fairness, that may be correct. The current territorial map of policing did not arrive in one sudden stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. Wiltshire Constabulary was established in 1839, and Rowley’s own Metropolitan Police dates back to 1829. There are certainly enormous size disparities. Greater Manchester Police has around 8,500 officers, eight times as many as Warwickshire Police. Budgets also vary enormously.
But it is not always the case that bigger is better or more efficient. Police Scotland, created in 2008 from eight regional forces, is an unloved and unwieldy institution, trying to encompass a vast range of communities and crimes, and struggling to operate with detailed local intelligence and sensitivity. Equally, brutal efficiency of numbers may not be the overriding priority in every organisation. It sounds too much like Rowley is designing a structure which suits the police rather than one which suits the public.
There are certainly enormous size disparities. Greater Manchester Police has around 8,500 officers, eight times as many as Warwickshire Police. Budgets also vary enormously. But it is not always the case that bigger is better or more efficient, or that brutal efficiency of numbers is the overriding priority in every organisation
Policing in Britain has always been different from law and order in most European countries. When Sir Robert Peel as home secretary set up the Metropolitan Police in 1829, he laid out a number of principles: officers should police by consent, use minimum force and act impartially and independently of government. Fundamental to his conception of policing was the idea that law enforcement had to be accountable: “the police are the public and the public are the police”.
How this accountability is maintained has always been a struggle. The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 established elected Police and Crime Commissioners to exercise democratic oversight of local police forces, but they have not really worked as well as hoped; turnout at elections is usually very low, those elected have not achieved the kind of profile or influence they might and they generally register quite low down on most people’s perception of policing.
The concept remains vital. Moving to a dozen police forces covering more than 60 million people would mean each chief constable being responsible for a population of four million: how does a police force of that size maintain any sense of familiarity or engagement with those on whose behalf it polices?
It seems strange to champion centralising power, when centralisation rarely makes anything more efficient.
Bigger police forces do not necessarily mean more efficient policing
The underlying problem which Rowley, like anyone else, has to address but for which his prescription is deeply dubious is restoring public trust in the police. As head of the Metropolitan Police, Rowley knows as well as anyone how societally corrosive it can be when sections of the community do not see the police as being on their side. Over the past few years we have seen the bonds of trust fray to breaking point, and Rowley's floating the technocratic idea of force restructuring cannot conceal this essential crisis.
Relatively small-scale crime like shoplifting and theft, which nonetheless has a huge impact on people’s individual lives and perception of their safety, has been dangerously neglected. In many areas retailers complain that the police simply refuse to attend instances of shoplifting or make any attempt to apprehend the perpetrators. At the same time, heavy-handed enforcement of laws on speech and expression lead the public to question the priorities of police forces. In whose interests are they acting? When custodial sentences are handed down for some social media posts but not others, or officers spend time warning of "non-crime hate incidents", trust begins to fracture.
Rowley talks about being diverted from fighting crime, but speaks as if he were a passive observer, watching ministerial decisions and police conduct rather than advising and influencing. Other chief constables might reasonably look at the Metropolitan Police, where four of Rowley’s five immediate predecessors have left under a cloud, and wonder why he is now preaching the gospel of improvement across the country. Rowley may be the nation's most senior officer by convention, but his own house is hardly in order.
The crisis in policing, though it stems from many factors, is a moral and cultural one. The public have to believe, instinctively, that the police are on their side. Structural reform will not make that happen: instead, the police need to show it through their actions, from the newest constable to the Commissioner of the Met.
