Police in England and Wales have lost public trust over the last decade, with confidence in policing declining across several measures since 2015. Five years on from the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving London Met police officer, Met commissioner Mark Rowley says he understands why women still do not trust the UK’s largest force.
Everard’s murder and the lack of police investigation into violence against women and girls more generally is just one example of why trust has dipped. Other reasons include use of stop-and-search that disproportionately affects black people, and independent reviews finding that police organisational culture in the Met and other forces is institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic.
The government recently released its plans for the most significant overhaul of policing in decades. The proposals include changes to the sizes of forces, a new system of police licensing, and improving oversight and accountability for police.
This is an opportunity for policing to move away from the “warrior culture” that drives a wedge between police and local communities. As I have explored in my research, warrior-like policing culture – characterised by aggression, violence, sexism, racism and homophobia – is present in forces around the world, including in the UK.
The UK has made strides to increase transparency and accountability nationally, with publicly accessible barred police officers lists and using body-worn cameras.
The government’s proposal to reduce the number of forces in England and Wales from 43 to around 12 could be a chance to purge the most harmful aspects of this culture. Larger police forces are typically more diverse, and have more robust complaints and oversight systems. For example, New York and other US cities have civilian complaint review boards, which allow members of the public to review police misconduct complaints and be involved in improving policing.
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It could also be a chance to replace this warrior-like culture with “guardianship policing”, a policing model that prioritises police legitimacy through community respect, partnership and working with the public to combat crime and violence. This could include creative new solutions to local crime problems – like adopting public health solutions to issues like knife crime, which are health, not punishment, focused.
Improving accountability
Under the proposals, all police officers across England and Wales will be required to hold and regularly renew their Licence to Practice. While the College of Policing will set the standards, this is an opportunity to develop more robust, fair and accountable training and licensing requirements.
Too often, police standards and training are designed and delivered by current and former officers without input from the communities they serve. Members of the public could offer perspectives on their own experiences of crime, and also of poor policing, to better inform police of the consequences of their work.
The government also wants to give the police inspectorate new legal powers to better support and incentivise problematic forces to improve. This means the inspectorate could take action where they find deeply embedded misogyny, racism, homophobia or other worrying misconduct. However, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the police misconduct complaints watchdog, also needs increased enforcement powers so they can directly hold problematic people and forces to account, which they cannot currently do.
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But even under the proposals, the police inspectorate and IOPC will still handle too few cases. Currently, police misconduct is mostly handled internally within forces, and often results in little action. The inspectorate and the misconduct watchdog should therefore also be empowered to sue problematic forces for systemic problems, which they still will not be able to do under the proposals.
Another possibility would be to give courts the power to create and enforce consent decrees. Common in the US, these court-ordered settlement agreements mandate changes to troubled police forces, which are overseen by a court or independent monitoring team. These are the types of reforms that would give systemic misconduct investigations real teeth.
Politicising the police
The reforms present some real opportunities to change policing, but are also fraught with potential for misuse.
For example, giving central government more control over policing, including restoring the home secretary’s ability to fire chief constables. This could be helpful in instances of large numbers of police misconduct complaints or low police legitimacy levels in certain forces. But if a home secretary can fire police chiefs on a whim – because they don’t their like politics, because they work too closely with local communities, or because their initiatives are not punitive enough – that is problematic.
Gareth Llewelyn Evans/Shutterstock
Policing policy should be driven by evidence, not by politics. The risks and implications of overly-politicised policing and security decisions are worrying, because they can mean peoples’ needs are not addressed.
To this end, it is promising that the government is replacing elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). PCCs were controversially introduced in 2012, with proponents arguing they provided greater police accountability and innovation. Yet critics assert they added additional police bureaucracy, tied the hands of police chiefs in addressing local crime, and are more subject to political pressures.
The proposal to replace PCCs with Policing and Crime Boards under mayoral or local council control could allow for better coordinated, more innovative solutions to local crime and security problems. Or, it may effectively just be keeping PCCs, but under another name.
