The Home Office
Who is responsible for poor state of policing in South Wealden?
Although this country is nominally a monarchy, it is also said to be a democracy, in which power resides in the people and is exercised by them indirectly by means of elected representatives. I am therefore, with others, responsible for the poor state of policing in South Wealden, which is why several pages of this website are devoted to trying to improve the quality of the police. Although power is devolved to politicians, public opinion is still of vital importance in influencing the behaviour of those politicians.
Day to day power is in the hands of the government, and the areas of power which concern the police are the responsibility of the Home Office. Accordingly, on its website the Home Office describes itself thus: "The Home Office is the Government department responsible for ensuring we live in a safe, just and tolerant society. We are responsible for the police in England and Wales, national security, the justice system and immigration." The Office is headed by seven politicians, but the chief of those, the Home Secretary, assumes responsibility for the work of the Home Office, so from a practical point of view it is he who is to blame for the poor state of policing in my area.
The Home Office website provides a profusion of links to different aspects of a very complicated organization.
One concerns "Independent inspectorates and ombudsmen", who I am told "are independent parts of the organisation that inspect and report on the quality of the police, prison and probation services." The one relevant to my case is of course the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is the subject of another page of Policing the Police.
There is a Police Reform Unit, "responsible for improving the performance of all police forces, and the implementation of reform." That might merit further investigation, as its remit includes "provisions of the Police Reform Act 2002".
Paul Evans is head of the Police Standards Unit, which "exists to deliver the Government's commitment to raise standards". How the Unit does this, or if it does this, and how it relates to the IPCC, I have yet to discover.
Paul Wiles is director of the Science and Research Group. Within that Group is the Research Development and Statistics Directorate (RDS): "We provide information that helps Ministers and policy makers take evidence-based decisions, and also help the police, probation service, the courts, immigration officials and fire-fighters to do their jobs as effectively as possible.
With this Directorate one can perhaps go beyond the rhetoric of good intentions and see a little of the foundations on which the Home Office bases the way in which it deals with the police. Being interested in dishonesty and corruption in the police, I looked for documents which might include material on those subjects.
The earliest publication I considered was the 65-page Understanding and preventing police corruption: lessons from the literature by Tim Newburn, which appeared in 1999.
The Foreword by the Head of Policing and Reducing Crime Unit tells us who has been tackling police corruption: "The Association of Chief Police Officers Taskforce on Corruption . . . has taken the lead at a national level." So the police, who are directly responsible for the corruption, took the lead in policing the police. I do not think that a satisfactory state of affairs.
The very first sentence of the study itself might also cause one concern. It starts: "A series of public scandals over the past few years, albeit apparently involving a small number of officers . . . ." It seems to me odd that Professor Newburn should start a study of police corruption by off-handedly implying that it is not a very serious problem, particularly as a few sentences later he says, "It is not an aim of this report to provide an assessment of the current extent or nature of police corruption in the United Kingdom."
A few paragraphs further on, the first and fourth of a number of "key findings" should dispel any impression that corruption is not a serious problem: the first finding is that "police corruption is pervasive, continuing and not bounded by rank", and the fourth that "police corruption cannot simply be explained as the product of a few ‘bad apples’ ".
Professor Newburn reviewed many studies of police corruption, particularly work from the United States of America and from Australia as well as from the United Kingdom. Two Australian investigations found problems which reflect my own experience of policing in South Wealden: "inadequate education and training of officers, particularly with regard to ‘ethical training’; insufficient or poor management; a ‘police code’ or culture which showed contempt for the criminal justice system; disdain for the law and rejection of its application to police; disregard for the truth; and abuse of authority."
Although the fourth chapter of Professor Newburn's study is devoted to methods of "Corruption control", the title to the fifth and final chapter, "Conclusion: Toward ‘ethical policing’ ," should perhaps have included a question mark, as we are told towards the end of the chapter, " ‘Ethical policing’ is, however, not a solution to the problem of corruption." Professor Newburn is critical of people who offer what seem to him simplistic approaches to dealing with the problem of corruption, but then only himself offers the lame "Vigilance and realism must be the watchwords of the police administrator seeking to control corruption."
Professor Newburn is or was a professor of urban social policy, so perhaps he is or was a sociologist, and therefore professionaly entitled to fence-sitting and a lack of moral judgement.
His phrase "police administrator" raises the question whether a police administrator is a police officer who administrates or a non-police-officer who administrates the police, or whether the distinction is unimportant. The sentence should have been worded to make it clear that the police themselves are not in charge of the matter.
Parliamentary concerns about police misconduct had led to new misconduct procedures being introduced in April 1999. An Evaluation of the New Police Misconduct Procedures - Home Office Online Report 10/03 - by Paul Quinton was designed to evaluate the effect and effectiveness of the reforms after they had been in force for two years.
As regards the impact of the new misconduct procedures on the "disciplinary process", the study concluded that, "Overall, there was no evidence to suggest that the reforms had prompted any significant changes." Operational officers had very limited knowledge of the changes in procedure, and "generally viewed the new misconduct procedures in negative terms."
Mr Quinton's recommendations to police complaints and discipline departments start by saying that they should "use the procedures within a broader, holistic approach to misconduct based on proactivity and problem-solving – these should be monitored and evaluated." Table 6 throws light on the meaning of Mr Quinton's pronouncement. The table consists of two columns headed "Narrow procedural model" [narrow being a deprecatory epithet] and "Wider holistic model" [holistic evidently meant to be commendatory, though for many people its connotations with medicine may be unfortunate, and those unaware of its etymology might connect this early twentieth-centry neologism with religion].
An examination of the first section of Table 6 suggests that Mr Quinton is merely asserting the obvious. "Legalistic framework" is a sub-heading in the narrow model, and "Problem-solving framework" is its counterpart in the wider model. It goes without saying that a system of law is part of a system for solving problems, and that it could not be otherwise. In the narrow column we then have "draws on a series of legal rules", and in the wider column "draws on detailed analysis of the problem". How could one implement legal rules without a detailed analysis of the problem which they are supposed to help resolve? Then the narrow "use of an adversarial, administrative process" has a counterpart in the intolerably vague "development of central and local interventions": whether these should be non-adversarial and should avoid being administrative is not specified. The effect of the whole table is, sadly, to undermine somewhat the importance of the items in the "narrow" column, while adding nothing whatever to the sum of human knowledge.
Mr Quinton concludes with a chapter of conclusions and recommendations. They concern the Home Office and police forces in what appears to be an enclosed system, with no reference to the public whom they are supposed to be serving.
The 57-page Home Office Online Report reference 11/03 by Joel Miller is entitled Police Corruption in England and Wales: An assessment of current evidence.
I did not read beyond the first few pages. The report starts with a Summary which tells one, ‘The research principally involved interviews with PSU staff and some supplementary statistics.’
PSU staff work in the professional standards units of police forces. I referred my own complaints about the police to the IPCC because I thought that the way that my complaints had been treated by Sussex Police Professional Standards Department was dishonest.
Dependence on evidence from professional standards units may be partly responsible for an assertion in the Summary which could give the reader who does not read beyond the summary a very inadequate impression of the seriousness of the problem of corruption: “However, intelligence over a one year period from some forces involved in the study indicated that between about half and one per cent of police staff (both officers and civilians) were potentially (though not necessarily) corrupt.”
This is obviously utterly untrue. It is clearly impossible to know the full extent of a condition which is to a larger or smaller extent hidden, but the potentiality for corruption in police employees, given the powers police officers have, the people with whom they associate, and the data to which staff have access, is 100%, involving everyone. The suggestion that no more than one person in a hundred in police employment is in any way corrupt I also find incredible.
Part of Mr Miller's problem with his subject is indicated at the start of the fourth paragraph of his Introduction: "In practice, police corruption is difficult to define." No, Mr Miller, it is not difficult to define. Just look in the dictionary, instead of collecting views from other writers who have tried to appropriate the term to their own blinkered approach, so that for instance a police officer who commits burglary while on duty is not seen as corrupt.
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary provides several pertinent definitions which most people who are not researchers or too young to understand would agree on. I quote the first four:
1 Putrefaction; decay, esp. of a dead body. Formerly also more widely, decomposition of any kind, of organic or inorganic substances.
2 Moral deterioration; depravity; an instance or manifestation of this.
3 A corrupting influence; a cause of deterioration or depravity.
4 Perversion of a person's integrity in the performance of (esp. official or public) duty or work by bribery etc.
The word putrefaction provides a vivid metaphor for the condition of police corruption. A more literal alterrnative is given by "perversion of a person's integrity in the performance of duty". If a police officer lacks integrity, if he or she is dishonest, some degree of corruption is involved.
The Home Office Online Report of 11/03 by Joel Miller was followed by The Home Office Online Report of 12/03 by Paul Quinton and Joel Miller, called Promoting Ethical Policing, so named perhaps because the authors were conscious of Professor Newburn's attitude towards ethical policing in Understanding and preventing police corruption. Promoting Ethical Policing repeats, sometimes verbatim, material from Mr Miller's earlier study, but this time evidently with the aim of offering guidance to the Home Office about strategies for combating corruption.
The full title is Promoting Ethical Policing: Summary findings of research on new misconduct procedures and police corruption. The first section of this short document tells how as a result of "concerns about the police disciplinary process, the Home Secretary introduced new misconduct procedures in 1999", with the aim of improving "the effectiveness of the disciplinary process".
Section 1 of Mr Miller's report evaluates the impact of the innovatory procedures, based on the experience of eight forces over two years.
The findings included the following:
1. " Impact on the disciplinary process: Overall, the evidence did not suggest that the reforms had prompted, during the first two years, any significant changes in the disciplinary process".
2. " Impact on C&D departments: [I did not know that such complaints and discipline departments existed] Their knowledge of the changes was "limited", and "Officers generally viewed the new procedures in negative terms." Mr Miller's conclusions were that "the new procedures have had relatively limited impact", and that the Home Office and C&D departments should take certain steps to improve matters. Though generally sound, the approach is somewhat soft, with little about sanctions, and ends ridiculously by saying that C&D departments should "continue to secure police and public confidence in the disciplinary process."
That verb continue is very ill-chosen: if police and the public had confidence in the process, there would be no need for change.
The second section, "Police corruption in England and Wales: an assessment of current evidence",
spends two and a half pages going through commonplace aspects of the subject, none of which seems especially "current", and concludes with listing twelve "approaches" to the prevention of corruption, starting with "promoting an ethical police culture". I think that a more effective strategy would be to emphasise that dishonesty in officers and ancillary staff is intolerable in a police force, and would be dealt with very firmly.
Mr Miller does not share my view. which he sees as "reactive" rather than "proactive": "Disciplinary procedures, because they are directed towards recorded incidents, are essentially a reactive tool for dealing with misconduct." Mr Miller is not just stating the obvious: he is also making a value judgement. He goes on: "Whilst procedures are clearly important, proactive methods are likely to be more effective at addressing wider casual [sic] factors and on-going problems."
The "proactive" approach would aim to prevent and reduce police corruption.
If Mr Miller's approach were to be approved for application to society at large, we would cut down considerably on the vast sums spent on the police, courts, and prisons, and increase the pay and numbers of clergyman so that they could preach to us all about ethical living.
I next looked at a Home Office Statistical Bulletin, Crime in England and Wales 2004/2005. For someone interested in dishonesty and corruption in the police, this 178-page document appeared to have nothing of interest. The word corruption does not appear once, the word honest occurs only in the negative and adverbial form dishonestly, in definitions of fraud and theft, and if any crimes were committed by police officers in that year, they do not seem to have been singled out for recording in this publication, even though "This report is the main annual volume in a series of publications produced by the Home Office on the latest levels and trends in crimes in England and Wales."
The 14-page "Crime in England and Wales: Quarterly Update to September 2005" published early in 2006 again "presents the most recent figures on crime levels, from two different sources: the British Crime Survey (BCS) and police recorded crime." Crime by the police is not featured at all.
Currently (April 2006) the Home Office has made a new code of professional standards for the police available for a three month public consultation process. When launching it, Hazel Blears said, "The new Code of Professional Standards will ensure that every police officer understands the high standards demanded of them by the public in the modern police service."
The Code itself (printed here) is so brief, simple, and clear that only an extremely lazy or uncommonly stupid police officer could fail to understand it: but understanding of the Code is not its purpose. Its purpose is to impose a code of conduct on police officers: it states as fact what is not always the case, e.g. "Police officers are honest". The important factor not mentioned in the publication is the sanctions to be imposed when serious lapses from the Code are evident.
Dishonesty in police officers brings the whole system of law into disrepute, so honesty is not a subject for negotiation with police officers, or for devaluation by being subsumed under a "holistic" approach.
