IPPR calls for National Policing Agency
Cop IT cops it
Posted in Management, 27th November 2009 10:44 GMT
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Existing national police organisations and their IT systems should be transferred to a new body, according to a report.
The National Policing Agency would be created by merging the National Policing Improvement Agency and those parts of the Association of Chief Police Officers that currently coordinate or deliver national policing services. Both the NPIA and ACPO run national policing ICT systems on behalf of forces in England and Wales.
The recommendation is made in Arrested Development: Unlocking change in the police service, an Institute for Public Policy Research report published on 26 November 2009, which says that years of investment by successive governments has failed to significantly improve policing.
The National Policing Agency would have powers to ensure that police forces collaborate to tackle complex and serious criminal activity that crosses force borders, and to improve efficiency.
Information systems across the 43 forces in England and Wales need to be converged, says the document, so there is a core national system with common guidelines. Forces should not be able to invest in new systems that are incompatible with a national convergence strategy.
Better systems and processes can also improve the relationships between police and citizens, says the report. It calls for greater public access to police data and more use of social media to open up new lines of communication and collaboration between police and the public.
Social media can also enhance responsiveness, according to the document, by giving the public simpler ways of reporting issues to the police. The documents points to intermediary sites like www.reportmyloss.com which can help the police gather community intelligence more easily.
Although some forces are using new media in innovative ways, the findings show there is often a reluctance to communicate with the public in this way, and many forces retain a "top down mentality" about communication.
Rick Muir, a senior research fellow at IPPR and author of the report, said: "Unless the way the police are organised and governed is transformed, any substantive programme of reform will suffer the same fate as those that preceded it: opposition within different parts of the service followed by a government 'U-turn' for fear of a politically costly conflict with the police.
"The first reform priority therefore has to be to design a system of governance that is value for money, more coherent and less fragmented and that empowers local and national leaders to deliver change in the public interest."
This article was originally published at Kable.
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COMMENTS
@ AC The First
"If you phone the police they just give you a crime number and tell you to go away."
They tried to charge my boyfriend for wasting police time when he reporting a street robbery but declined to go back to the very spot at stupid o'clock.
Whatever new agency they set up, can it be one that prosecutes police officers et alia when they break the law, or attempt to break the law? No Officer, I don't have to give you my name and address, so fuck off.
Police communication with the public
Where's the problem? The public walk down the road, or get on a tube train, or sit quietly at home, and the police shoot them. That's communication for you!
Centralisation is the problem, not the solution
The increasing distance between public servants and the public they serve is the problem here. In the case of the police they have become increasingly centralised and increasingly remote. Fifty years ago there was a police house in every village and policeman in every village. Now, my town of 30,000 doesn't even have a permanent police presence. The station is closed at night, because, of course, no crime ever happens at night, does it? Officers have to come from 9 miles away.
A centralised police computer system (another massive public sector IT project, of course) isn't going to resolve the core problem with policing which in my opinion is that police are too far divorced from the communities they are supposed to serve.
This IPPR report is par for the course for them, unfortunately. New Labour apparatchiks to a man and woman (and, of course, funded by generous donations from the willing taxpayer), they believe that greater control over the public services will improve the quality of those services. Of course, the more they tighten their grip, the more services will slip through their fingers...
First Reform?
"Rick Muir, a senior research fellow at IPPR and author of the report, said: "Unless the way the police are organised and governed is transformed, any substantive programme of reform will suffer the same fate as those that preceded it: opposition within different parts of the service followed by a government 'U-turn' for fear of a politically costly conflict with the police."
So the First Reform should in fact be, come down on the cops like a ton of bricks, reminding them who they're bosses are, who they work for and that with power comes not only responsibility but more importantly, accountability. The situation should never be such that the police so strongly resist the orders haded DOWN to them by the electorate*, their job is not to question but simply obey and the sooner the police figure that out the sooner the public's faith in them will be restored.
Oh, and some real police work rather than this "Throw the book at 'im and see what sticks" approach please!
* - I'm well aware of the naivety of that statement but it is technically true, a bit, maybe....
Communicate with Police about issues
If you phone the police they just give you a crime number and tell you to go away.
I fail to see how providing more avenues for them to ignore you is going to make any difference.
Crimes against the person..... very low priority
Crimes against the Man/Establishment/Big Business... very high priority.
Somethings wrong here. Don't we pay their wages
Anon obviously. I'm just going to Vote!
Will you?.......
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