Interviews

Call for arrest training

by Mark Rowe

Citizen Police Academies should be set up to train the public – using a mixture of police officers and voluntary groups with relevant expertise – on how to play their part in the fight against crime. They would be taught everything from how to perform citizen’s arrests safely to how to avoid danger when walking home alone.

That is according to a think-tank. It says that most Britons would carry on walking past a gang of teens who were drinking and verbally abusing passers-by. Nearly two thirds of the public (64pc) said they would not intervene. Only 27pc would step in.

A YouGov poll, commissioned by Policy Exchange, and published in mid-December as part of a major report into the future of policing also found:

Londoners are least likely to confront the abusive teens. Fewer than than one in five said they would intervene
Scots are the most likely to step in with nearly a third of people saying they would intervene
The difference between those saying they would intervene in the North of England and London is as stark as the difference between men (31pc said they would) and women (22pc said they would)
A Freedom of Information request by Policy Exchange also shows that citizen’s arrests in the Met Police area have halved in two years from 3,755 in 2009-10 to 1,816 in 2011-12. Large swathes of crime and disorder are not reported to the police, according to the think-tank. Around 9.5 million offences (as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales) took place in 2011-12 and yet just four million offences were reported to the police in the same year.

The Policy Exchange report, Policing 2020, which looks at the landscape of policing over the next ten years, calls for a return to the 19th century founder of the Met Police Sir Robert Peel’s core principles of crime prevention.

It proposes:

The formation of Crime Prevention Officers (CPOs). CPOs would replace neighbourhood police officers who make up around 15pc of total police force personnel. They would be more highly trained and equipped and be made directly responsible for crime prevention in their area and held to account through monthly meetings with their local Commander.

The polling also found that the public support the police working with independent organisations, such as private businesses and social enterprises, to free up police officers’ time:

Three quarters of people supported the idea of independent organisations providing IT support and carrying out administrative functions
56 per cent of people thought they should be able to answer calls from the public
47pc backed them being able to police crime scenes compared to 38pc who opposed the idea

Edward Boyd, author of the report, said: ”The police will always play the central role in the fight against crime, yet the public still has a part to play. It’s quite understandable that most people feel reluctant to be a ‘have-a-go’ hero and it is important that they have the confidence to intervene and know when it is appropriate. Citizen Police Academies are one way of helping the public feel more confident about their role in preventing criminal activity.

“We also need to increase the police’s focus on preventing, rather than simply reacting to crime by creating specific Crime Prevention Officers who are held to account personally for crime levels in their area.”

Speaking on the subject for the Association of Chief Police Officers was ACPO lead on futures, Hampshire Chief Constable Alex Marshall. He said: “The importance of thinking ahead about the future of policing is agreed across the service. The College of Policing, ACPO, the Superintendents’ Association and the Police Federation are all working together to create a national policing vision for 2016, which will be developed and implemented with Police and Crime Commissioners. The Peelian principles remain central to the service’s vision for the future. Our aim is to reduce crime and equip frontline practitioners with the right skills and modern technology.

“Neighbourhood policing teams play a key part in crime prevention, an aspect of policing which this report emphasises. Their understanding of local issues and relationships with communities mean that they are able to target local problems, reduce crime and disorder and protect people. They are also warranted officers who have the powers to make arrests and bring criminals to justice.

“The work of neighbourhood teams is one reason why links between police and the public are strong. There has been a clear upward trend in the rating of police performance over the past nine years. In 2011/12, 75 per cent of adults surveyed had confidence in their local police and 72 per cent felt that the police understood issues that affected their community.

“Our consensual model relies on citizen support and involvement in policing, which helps people prevent crime and disorder where they live and gives them a stake in community safety. There are a healthy number of models for citizens volunteering their time to support policing, through the special constabulary, neighbourhood watch, police support volunteers or street pastors. These are encouraging trends and the service hopes to build further on them in future.

“Going forwards, Chief Constables will work with PCCs and the College of Policing, which provides a new opportunity to take forward innovation in policing, working alongside the academic world to provide an evidence base for what works, and building on the professionalism of the British approach to policing.”

Meanwhile, the think tank said that more than 88,000 criminal cases – one in 10 – that were charged were later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2011/12 due to a lack of evidence or because prosecution was deemed not to be in the public interest. This cost the taxpayer more than £25m, wasted valuable police time and had an extremely detrimental impact on the victims of crime.

A paper by Policy Exchange explores the role and responsibility of the CPS. It says the prosecution service should retain its powers but calls for more transparency and accountability when it comes to measuring the organisation’s successes and failures.

New statistics contained within the paper found:

The annual budget for the CPS amounts to over half a billion pounds yet it’s handling the smallest caseload of the past decade.
The official conviction rate masks deep failings in the CPS’ performance in court. When prosecutions reached trial, the CPS had successful outcomes in only 63% of Magistrates’ Court cases and in just over half of its Crown Court cases (55%).
In 2011, one third of cracked or ineffective trials in England and Wales were the result of the prosecution failing to offer evidence, not being ready, or a prosecution witness being absent
Of the 367,067 cases given to the CPS for pre-charge decisions, one in four were dropped, most frequently because of insufficient evidence. This feeds an undercurrent of mistrust between the police and the CPS which sometimes spills out into the media.
The report also suggests the need for a revised Public Interest Test that that accurately reflects the public’s view of when a prosecution should be dropped. In 2011, the CPS decided not to prosecute 109 out of the 139 suspects who broke into Fortnum & Mason during the student protests in London in 2011, on the grounds that they did not want to ‘criminalise’ the young people involved

The report says that there is an urgent need for the CPS to become more professional, more accountable and more visible. Recommendations include:

Guilty pleas should be excluded from the headline performance metric for convictions achieved by the CPS at trial.
The proportion of cracked ineffective trials attributable to a prosecution failing must become a key performance measure of the CPS.
The CPS should allow the police to prosecute the majority of cases for which the police have prosecutorial powers, such as motoring offences and some low-level summary cases.
The police should have the ability to appeal to a judge or panel of magistrates if they think the CPS were wrong to have dropped a case in the public interest.
Karen Sosa, author of the report, “The CPS has made great strides over the last 15 years, but it must continue to improve in order to ensure that the public is served by a competent and effective prosecution service.

“Dropped prosecutions, unsuccessful prosecutions, and cases abandoned pre-charge continue to plague the CPS, to the dismay of the public and the police. In addition, Chief Crown Prosecutors are too often invisible in their local communities, and the Director of Public Prosecutions is only tenuously accountable to Parliament.”

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