Effective, community policing, is often the bedrock of public confidence. Without the confidence in their local police, there is often a corrosive effect, stripping away reporting, fostering disdain and inviting division. This is why it is welcomed, that the Prime Minister has announced as of last week, that the government is planning to deliver a key manifesto pledge to roll out the neighbourhood policing guarantee, aiming to ensure every community will have dedicated and specialist neighbourhood policing teams. The aim for the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, is that 13,000 more offers will be placed into neighbourhood policing roles by 2029, a marked increased of more than 50%. As per the Home Office press release, the measures aim to deliver a few commitments:
Each neighbourhood will have named, contactable officers to tackle the issues facing their communities, helping to restore trust that policing is working to keep people safe and meaning no community feels ignored when they need help.- Every neighbourhood in England and Wales will have dedicated teams who will spend their time on the beat with guaranteed police patrols in town centres and other hotspot areas at peak times such as Friday and Saturday nights.
- There will be a dedicated antisocial behaviour lead in every force, collaborating with residents and businesses to develop tailored action plans to tackle record levels of antisocial behaviour, which is blighting communities.[1]
The hope is that this couples with the government’s new Police Standards Performance Improvement unit to ensure police performance is correctly measured.
Policing has, for many years, along with other public services, taken a immense amount of burden with a stripping of resources. Austerity meant that many police forces simply struggled to cope with ever increasing demand. It is therefore welcome, that local, community policing is back on the policy agenda. It however, begs consideration, how is community policing effective, why does the Home Secretary think the heartbeat of policing tradition ‘seeing bobbies on the beat,’ and how is anti-social behaviour affected?
Policing by consent
The model by which we police in the UK is built on the fundamental principle of ‘policing by consent,’ a concept given from the Peelian principles of policing, named after Sir Robert Peel. Authority is not immaterial and is given and maintained. In this case, police authority is given to the police in this county through the consent of the public, meaning that if this support was ever withdrawn from the public, the police would theoretically lose its authority. The Home Office explains that the concept of policing by consent “refers to the power of the police coming from the common consent of the public, as opposed to the power of the state”.[2] It is important to stress that this is not individual, that no individual can withdraw their consent, it is rather the public.
If the public, not the state, grants the police their authority, then any loss in confidence from the public means the loss of public confidence is surely a crisis for a policing model built on consent.[3]
Public Confidence and Data
This, therefore, means that the continued loss in confidence in the police over the years since austerity, mean a continued crisis in policing and therefore crime and anti-social behaviour prevention, and intervention. Our own YouGov survey has highlighted that only 1 in 4 people who report ASB did so to the police, with a striking 57% not reporting ASB to anybody. This alone singles a continued loss in confidence in our public institutions, causing a continuing cycle of pain, whereby victims do not report due to loss in confidence, and therefore data does not represent the reality of the situation, meaning resources are not implemented optimally.
Policing confidence has fallen sharply rather dramatically in recent years, the Office for National Statistics’ Crime Survey for England, and Wales, was notable in that a majority did believe their local police were doing a good or excellent job. On the other hand, the numbers indicate a sharp decrease, from 63% in 2015/16 to 56% in 2019/20. Further surveys conducted by the polling organisation YouGov showed a further indication of a loss in public confidence in the police, a YouGov monthly tracker “Are the police doing a good job” highlighted that over the course of 2020 an average of 70% of respondents thought the police were doing a good job relative to 21% who though they were doing a bad job. Nevertheless, by April 2024, these figures were 47% and 44%, respectively.
More data from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) elaborates on this point further, with a ‘perceived failure of the police to tackle crime’ being the driving reason for negativity towards the police, in one data set, it was noted that ‘failure to tackle crime/lack of presence was rated at the top of reasons for negativity towards the police force. [4] In official government research, it was also found that relationships between the community and their local police are likely to affect levels of confidence, such as knowing police personnel by name or sight, being a likely indicator for a raise in public confidence. [5]
It is evident therefore, that a tangible presence, in communities, with well-funded and local police, drives public confidence and security. And, we also know, that the effects of a loss in public confidence, particularly on frontline services to deal with corrosive elements such as anti-social behaviour, leads to a circle of chronic underreporting, which affects the leveraging of useful data to better co-ordinate and evaluate policies. Lastly, we also know that the very authority of British policing lies in the public’s trust in their police force, and that without this the consent to police the public becomes increasingly strained and withered.
These new announced measures, therefore, are greatly welcomed, and are hopefully a start of a reinvigorating of the great British policing tradition, in order to better combat anti-social behaviour.
Click here for the link to the government announcement.
To discuss this piece, along with any other policy related news, please contact:
Harrison Box, Policy Officer
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-measures-to-put-neighbourhood-bobbies-back-on-beat
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-consent/definition-of-policing-by-consent
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9281269/
[4] https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/IOPC-public-perceptions-tracker-report-2022-23.pdf p.14
[5] Merry, S., Power, N., McManus, M. and Alison, L. (2012) ‘Drivers of public trust and confidence in police in the UK’. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 14(2), pp. 118 to 135.
