Comment: New cops on the block
Elected police commissioners will soon be introduced, but the government must flesh out their precise role in the police force.
By Rick Muir
Last week the government’s police reform and social responsibility bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons. Despite widespread resistance among chief constables it is now certain that the first directly elected police and crime commissioners will be chosen by voters next May. These figures will replace police authorities and have the power to hire and fire chief constables, set force budgets and agree a strategic policing plan for their force.
There is no doubt that this marks a radical change in the governance of the police service. Since the 1960s accountability for policing has been deliberately dispersed between local authorities, the Home Office and the police themselves. This ‘tri-partite’ arrangement was intended to create checks and balances to avoid local political corruption, but in reality it weakened local accountability and strengthened the position of the chief constable. As crime rose and public satisfaction with the police declined ministers responded by trying to hold police forces to account centrally by imposing a plethora of performance targets. Although at first this did improve performance in a number of areas it also latterly created a box ticking culture in the police service, reduced local flexibility and demoralised frontline officers.
The government is right to have scrapped these targets and to say that if we are no longer going to hold forces to account centrally, then we need to strengthen local accountability. Introducing a single elected commissioner is not my preferred model because it concentrates too much power in one person’s hands and in many large forces creates a very remote form of accountability. Elsewhere I have argued that councils should be given a stronger role in commissioning local policing.
Nevertheless we are where we are: police commissioners will be introduced and so we should now focus on how to mitigate the risks and maximise the potential benefits. If the model works, the benefits should be much clearer lines of accountability for local police performance and a greater say for local people in police priorities.
What risks remain with these reforms? First, the government needs to flesh out more fully which decisions are for the chief constable and which are for the elected commissioner. The operations/policy distinction has always been a grey area in British policing because we have never had an agreed definition of the meaning of ‘operational independence’.
Clearly it is exclusively for the police to take decisions about enforcing the law in individual cases – which crimes to investigate, who to arrest and so forth. And clearly it is for the elected politicians to approve the budget and set the strategic priorities for the force. In between these extremes however there is a vast grey area. Is the use of tasers an operational matter or a policy matter? What about the policing of demonstrations? The government has said it will agree a Code of Practice with Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), which is welcome. This will not be able to cover every eventuality but should instead set out the broad principles underpinning the relationship. Ultimately, of course, a lot of this will depend on the personal chemistry between the commissioner and the chief constable.
Second, we need to make sure that the work of the commissioners is joined up with that of other local agencies. By creating a separately elected figure at force level there is a danger that joint working at district, borough and county level may suffer. Where the new elected city mayors are introduced there is the potential for a clash of personal mandates. In both South Yorkshire and Cleveland, for example, the commissioner will have to contend with two directly elected mayors, represented on the new police and crime panels that are to scrutinise the commissioner’s decisions.
Equally important is the inter-face between the police and the rest of the criminal justice system. Justice secretary Ken Clarke has rightly made reducing re-offending a key priority but currently no-one in the criminal justice system has ownership of this problem. Police and crime commissioners could conceivably start to get involved in offender management in the future, both in and out of prison. However, I would argue that they must work closely with local authorities, because they hold more of the levers for reducing re-offending than the police do.
Finally, we must remember that there is a distinction between accountability and responsiveness. The former is essential for getting value for money and driving force wide performance, but the latter is what concerns the public most. And improving that is more likely to be a matter of workforce re-configuration and getting neighbourhood policing right, rather than anything to do with directly electing police commissioners.
Rick Muir is associate director for public service reform at the Institute for Public Policy Research.
The opinions in politics.co.uk’s Speakers Corner are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners.
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