Saturday 31 March 2012

Police Privatisation



We are all now aware that West Midlands Police and Surrey Police have issued an EU wide invitation to companies to tender for policing services. If you look at the tender it covers everything from :
  • Managing Performance
  • Bringing Offenders to Justice
  • Patrolling Neighbourhoods
  • Dealing with incidents, major and minor
  • Leading the Service
  • Managing Public Engagements 
  • Managing Resources
  • Protecting the Public
It is quite clear that almost all policing services are up for grabs by the private sector. We are being told that not all of these areas of policing will be included in any contracts. The broad range of services is being advertised for tender so the expense of tendering does not have to be repeated should the need arise. Oh really!

One example would be that private companies would supply investigators working under a detective to attend and investigate crime. Some forces already work this model except that the team under the detective are permanent and employed by the police. Surrey already do this and they have one of the worst crime detection rates in the country. I can see where this is going. A poor detective will have a huge crime workload and each day an agency will provide different staff to turn up and carry out enquiries. No continuity. Little idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the investigators. The public will get a very poor service with a reduced chance of their crime being detected.

Another example would be patrolling neighbourhoods. Security staff would take over from PCSO's and some neighbourhood officers. These would be on minimum wage with no pension costs to the police. What kind of service would the public get from these staff? Where does the accountability lay? What happens when it all goes wrong?

The two architects of this scheme are Chris Sims Chief Constable of West Midlands and Mark Rowley former Chief Constable of Surrey and now Met Assistant Commissioner. This has been over a year in the planning and now the new Chief Constable of Surrey, Lynne Owens, has been handed the baby on behalf of Surrey. Chris and Mark are the sort of leaders Tom Winsor thinks we are lacking in the police. Chris is an Oxford graduate and Mark Cambridge. They have both shot through the ranks spreading their wisdom and ideas, never hanging around long enough to be held to account for the chaos they have left behind. They obviously have the vision and leadership that the police service needs.

Mark Rowley

Lynne Owens is a far more practical and pragmatic beast. She has no intention of following the agenda she has been left by Mark Rowley and is backing away from the project as fast as she can without openly criticising her predecessor.


Chris Sims

Chris Sims must have realised by now that he is on his own with this project. Good luck to West Midlands Police! Privatisation could however provide all sorts of management and consultancy opportunities for retiring ACPO officers, but I am sure Mr Sims will not fall into the trap of champagne dinners, health spas and free lunches from former ACPO colleagues Lord Condon at G4S and Lord Blair at Blue Light Global Solutions.

For years we have been cutting the fat out of the police service. There is nothing left. There is a permanent smell of ammonia as the muscle of the organisation is now being broken down. There is an assumption that privatisation will bring about savings and efficiencies with it's more effective management. In my experience, when you bring 'civilianisation' or privatisation into the police, the roles become more inefficient. By the time the company has taken it's profit cut from the budget there will simply be less to spend on the service and the public will suffer with lower levels of service and standards with less accountability.

13 comments:

  1. Some states in the US have tried to make some of the prisons private...with really bad results. They're run to make a profit, so low pay, bad food, etc. Anybody with common sense and not just trying to avoid the real problems can figure this out. To enforce the laws and keep the public safe (as safe as possible anyway) you need a group of dedicated, professional and well trained people. Not some guy who decides one day: "I think I'll go do police work since it looks like fun on TV."

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  2. I had understood, when I were a nipper, that the prime functions of the state were to protect its citizens: by protecting the borders from invaders (by providing an effective Navy, Army and Air Force), and then protecting them internaly by providing an effective and impartial police force and prosecutors, judicial system and prison service.

    Somewhere along the line this government has forgotten this lesson, or maybe never learnt it, and the outcome we can fear: defence run down to vanishing, police undermined, their status as Crown Servants eroded and probably abolished and with it the impartial and fearless service we expect.

    Please can someone take Winsor to the Tower and then call the judges to despatch him. There msut be something in our Common Law that they can do, if no one else will.

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  3. I had understood, when I were a nipper, that the prime functions of the state were to protect its citizens: by protecting the borders from invaders (by providing an effective Navy, Army and Air Force), and then protecting them internaly by providing an effective and impartial police force and prosecutors, judicial system and prison service.

    Somewhere along the line this government has forgotten this lesson, or maybe never learnt it, and the outcome we can fear: defence run down to vanishing, police undermined, their status as Crown Servants eroded and probably abolished and with it the impartial and fearless service we expect.

    Please can someone take Winsor to the Tower and then call the judges to despatch him. There msut be something in our Common Law that they can do, if no one else will.

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  4. For the thinking policeman, why is it you don't know how to use the apostrophe correctly?

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  5. For Kimpatsu
    Thank you for pointing that out - it didn't bother me enough to want to leave a comment myself at first. But I would like to say that I think you in turn should have addressed Mr.Ferenda as "The Thinking Policeman" with capital first letters indicating a title and a proper noun, according to your own meticulous English.

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  6. There's a few of these idiots on the internet who spend their whole time correcting grammar rather adding anything to the debate.What do they get out of commenting apart from a nice smug feeling inside?

    Back to the topic-beginning of the end for the police.Even if the Tories lose the next election Labour are so in thrall to big business they won't repeal it.

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  7. "-beginning of the end for the police." Pull yourself together with a dash of Wartime stoicism, Jade D.

    "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

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  8. At Jaded...
    If you had bothered to do your research, you would know that Mr. Kimpatsu is the one who has a reputation for pointlessly correcting grammar and spelling. I was simply turning it against him.

    As for the topic of the post itself, if I was indeed more knowledgeable of the U.K. justice system and law enforcement, or even the politics, I would have commented. But alas, I am but a simple-minded and ignorant Canadian high school student with an interest in blog discussions that lead to about as much action as the political subjects of the blogs themselves.

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  9. My comment was aimed at Kimpatsu.He is a repeat offender.

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  10. Then we are in concurrence.

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  11. I would say this: since the major reforms of the civil service in the 19th century, the U.K. had a very good public sector. At the same time it had a poor private sector, which was masked by the fruits of empire but became very obvious when the empire declined. The inadequacy of the private sector was a real problem with real economic consequences. It is curious that over the past 30 years or so the solution, which seems to be widely accepted, is to model the public sector on the private and not the other way round. This is a great mystery to me but it seems to be so.

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  12. Anonymous @0003 - There are various reasons why our manufacturing base collapsed in this country over the last 100 years. Cheaper overseas labour and the decline of the Empire were significant factors. The introduction of the Labour Party has also been significant. Every time we have a Labour Government they tax business beyond competition and have proven themselves totally incapable of running the economy.
    The Conservatives generally run the economy responsibly but just cannot stop trying to interfere with and ruin the public sector.
    We need a Government that can manage the economy and understands the public sector cannot be run as a business. The Liberals do not fit the bill and would spend us into more debt than Labour. There is no party representing the views of millions of people in this country.

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  13. I don't mind the private prisons.
    Even though they seem to be more cosy for the inmates.

    But private police forces are not the way forward.

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