Accountable coppers

Rick Muir (London, IPPR): Police accountability is back on the political agenda. In its draft Queen’s Speech the Government announced that it would allow ‘directly elected representatives’ to oversee local police forces. The Tories too are in favour of greater accountability, promising to abolish police authorities and replace them with a directly elected commissioner for each force.

The case for greater local accountability is strong: despite unprecedented increases in police funding public satisfaction with the police has fallen. Whereas in 1996 64 per cent of people felt that the police did a good or excellent job, this had fallen to just 48 per cent by 2005. Those members of the public who have direct contact with the police as victims of crime tend to rate police performance poorer than members of the public who have not had direct contact with them (the opposite is the case with schools and hospitals).

There are a number of factors behind declining levels of satisfaction with the police service, but by far the most important is the fact that people believe the police have become less responsive to local concerns. Part of this is due to the decline in the number of officers out on the beat - something which the Government is now addressing through its neighbourhood policing programme.

Another important reason for poor responsiveness is that local people have very little say over how their local police forces are run. Decisions about which crimes are to be prioritised and where officers are to focus their efforts are made by the chief constable of each force, with very little opportunity for local people to have their say.

The chief constable is supposed to be accountable to the local police authority, made up of councillors, magistrates and appointed members. However, police authorities provide a very weak form of accountability: hardly anyone knows that they exist, their members are not directly elected and they cover very wide areas meaning that they are remote from the views of local residents.

Local accountability is further diminished by the fact that community policing priorities are now effectively dictated from Whitehall. The police now have to follow performance targets set by the Home Office, which reduces their ability to respond to local needs and circumstances.

So, what is to be done? In our new report ippr argues that there are a number of credible options, each bringing its own benefits and challenges. For example, directly elected commissioners at force level would combine a clear electoral mandate with effective powers to hold the chief constable to account. Giving these powers to a single visible leader would ensure the public know who is responsible for policing and could hold them to account accordingly.

However some forces, such as Thames Valley, are extremely large – introducing an elected figure for each force would leave decisions being made at a very remote level.

An alternative would be to abolish police authorities and give local authorities the powers to set police priorities. This would introduce much more local responsiveness and forgo the need for a new set of elections and institutions, but would require radical changes to national policing structures.

We argue that it would be best not to impose a ‘one size fits all’ model across the country: what might suit a small rural force like Warwickshire might not suit a large city like Liverpool or Birmingham. Far better to let local areas develop their own bespoke solutions.

Some commentators are concerned that increasing local accountability risks ‘politicising’ policing. Inevitably giving a greater role to elected representatives means that policing priorities would be subject to the pressures of political contestation. However, the real dangers of politicisation would come if elected figures were taking day to day policing decisions, which may well open policing up to corruption and partisan bias. On the contrary under all of the options we propose the doctrine of ‘operational independence’ is left intact: the directly or indirectly elected representatives set the policy framework, which is then applied on a day to day operational basis by senior police officers. This is no more political than the current system under which national priorities are set by the Home Office, also headed by elected politicians.

Whoever is put in charge it is vital that they are given real powers: they need a role in the appointment and appraisal of senior police officers, they need some control over police resources and they need legal powers to set local policing priorities. The last thing we need is a new layer of ‘talking shops’.