Letter of the Law
Civitas, 13 May 2011
Thousands of criminal suspects will be charged by post under a new Home Office scheme to cut police red tape. The announcement comes as part of a catalogue of initiatives designed to save 2.5 million hours of police time each year. However, whilst the need for bureaucratic reform is long overdue, plans to increase police responsibility may well prove impossible given the swingeing financial cutbacks faced by the force.
Under the current system, the Crown Prosecution Service makes the final charging decision, and suspects must return to the police station to be formally charged. However, the Home Office envisages that in future police officers will make this decision in 80% of cases, sending “a clear signal that the professional judgement of individual officers is valued and it is expected”.
The move complements measures announced by Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, which will allow the police to fine reckless or careless drivers and add points to their licence without the case reaching court.
And the reforms stretch further still. Determined to get “officers out from behind their desks and back on the streets”, Home Secretary Theresa May has unveiled a novel plan to allow police officers to charge suspects of “appropriate minor offences” via mail, removing the need for a visit to the station altogether.
It is no surprise that excessive bureaucracy continues to paralyse the police force. This year, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary reported that, in some forces, more than 90% of uniformed officers are unavailable on the front line at any one time. And the Home Secretary has recently exposed the extent of the form-filling culture that requires up to 70 separate forms to be completed for each incident of burglary.
Whilst the aims informing the reforms deserve some merit, their implementation is likely to prove problematic.
Firstly, there is the somewhat rudimentary problem of people not receiving the charge. In amongst tides of readily ignored bank statements and bills, another bland envelope tumbling through the door is unlikely to catch the eye. And that is if the letter reaches the correct address at all.
(More effective potential alternatives include notification by twitter – “Greater Manchester Police are now following you on Twitter, be afraid. Be very afraid” – or even via superinjunction – “Two men turn up at your house and arrest you, but cannot tell you what crime you have committed, who it was against or even what your own name is. You may refer to yourself only as ‘K’”.)
Secondly, the collective impact of the plans will be “a mere drop in the ocean” compared to the swingeing cutback targets. The total body of measures is estimated to save the work of some 1,200 individual officers, yet Labour has forewarned that up to 30,000 jobs may be lost. As Paul McKeever, chair of the national Police Federation, has stated, police budget cuts will inevitably have “real unintended consequences” , which “no matter of tinkering around the edges with bureaucracy and management process is going to alter”.
According to Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, “the three things needed to make these plans work are enforcement, enforcement, enforcement”. Unfortunately, this may be the one aspect of the plans that is most badly lacking. Until the Government accepts that the police force needs to become not only more efficient but also larger, the Home Secretary will have to wait for her “watershed moment in policing” to materialise.