Vertical Markets

Police ‘service of last resort’

by Mark Rowe

Police forces are having to pick up the slack as cuts in other public services increase pressure on them, according to Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Thomas Winsor, in his annual State of Policing report. Those pressures he lists as:

– the failures of other public services, especially in respect of children’s and adolescent mental health, too often making the police the service of first resort, long after the chances of effective prevention have been lost;
– the growth in cyber-crime and online fraud;
– increased police awareness of crimes against vulnerable people, including the elderly and the sexual exploitation and abuse of children, requiring the devotion of higher specialist police resources; and
– the fragmented state of police information and communications technology.

He said: “The police are considered to be the service of last resort. In some areas, particularly where people with mental health problems need urgent help, the police are increasingly being used as the service of first resort. This is wrong. The provision of mental healthcare has reached such a state of severity that police are often being used to fill the gaps that other agencies cannot. This is an unacceptable drain on police resources, and it is a profoundly improper way to treat vulnerable people who need care and help.

“The obligation of the police is to prevent crime. This is not only because this makes society safer – both in reality and in perception – but also because it is far cheaper to prevent a crime than it is to investigate and arrest the offender after the event. The same is true of mental ill-health, which is not a crime. It is an old adage that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, and this is particularly true when the cure fails and an emergency intervention is required to protect the safety of an individual in distress and, often, people nearby. By the time depression or some other mental disorder has been allowed to advance to the point that someone is contemplating suicide, or engaging in very hazardous behaviour, many opportunities to intervene will have been missed by many organisations. When that intervention takes place on a motorway bridge or railway line, or when someone is holding a weapon in a state of high distress, the expense to all concerned is far higher than it should be. The principal sufferer is the person who is ill, especially when it is realised that his or her suffering could have been much less or even avoided altogether.”

For the 131-page report visit http://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmic/wp-content/uploads/state-of-policing-2016.pdf.

Meanwhile Staffordshire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Matthew Ellis has written to the north and south Staffordshire mental health trusts asking if they are prepared and have provisions in place to accommodate those who need a ‘place of safety’. The Staffordshire Report on Policing and Mental Health, commissioned by the PCC in 2013, set out the impact the issue was having on policing and the potential for and actual harm to those in their ‘care’.

The report was used by the then Home Secretary Theresa May to stimulate important changes nationally in the way police and NHS work together on mental health.

Mr Ellis said: ‘The changes prompted by the report we did in Staffordshire had a major impact with a huge reduction by more than 80 per cent in the county of people held in cells as a place of safety and more than 50 per cent nationally. I expressed my horror when I first found out people were regularly held in cells, when no crime had been committed, simply because they were suffering with mental ill-health.

‘It was a shock it was taking place in 21st century Britain and now I’m really concerned the very real benefits gained since are in danger of being lost. We cannot afford to go backwards. The new legislation actually offers added incentive towards reducing even further the use of cells in this way. But I want assurance from the mental health trusts that they have plans in place to respond.’

Pictured: police station, Hackney, north London.

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