According to Home Office figures for 2005, only 40% of people convicted of being in possession of a firearm received the minimum incarceration period laid down in the 2003 Criminal Justice Act (three years for 16-to-17-year olds, and five years for adults). It appears that defendants are claiming ‘exceptional circumstances’ (in other words, measures intended for those who simply forget to renew gun licences rather than miscreants on the streets) to try and eke out a downgraded sentence.
Rightly, Coaker wants to see more of those convicted receiving the full five-year term. Security Management Today (SMT) concurs wholeheartedly with that view.
The conference also confirmed that ACPO is demanding anonymity for witnesses to gun crime even prior to them making any sort of statement to the police service. Senior police figures believe this would help in breaking down the so-called ‘Wall of Silence’ often encountered post-crime (particularly among younger witnesses). This is a very real problem, nowhere better exemplified than in the aftermath of the tragic and senseless gunning down of Rhys Jones on Merseyside. Again, SMT agrees with this demand.
Also speaking this week (in Bristol at a ‘Citizen’s Jury’ event), Prime Minister Gordon Brown opined that he doesn’t wish to see guns become “accepted” by the general populus as they are in, say, the United States. “We want to see guns eradicated from every community in which they exist,” stated Brown, “and we must then set the boundaries very clearly – about guns, bullying, violence, knife crime and everything else.”
Many citizens feel sentencing in this country is rapidly becoming a joke and, it could be supposed, must be having a detrimental effect on morale within the police service. Officers spend many ‘man hours’ attempting to bring criminals to book. They’ll have a watertight case and then, in their infinite wisdom, Judges will often offer little more than a slap on the wrist (possibly driven, at least in part, by the fact that we are running out of prison space). We are all paying exorbitant taxes, so why can’t we build more penitentiaries to house dangerous criminals, many of whom are being let back out on to the streets to commit yet more crime?
It’s all very well for the Government to point the finger at the Judiciary, but surely its own House must be in order first?
Commenting ahead of the Police Superintendents’ Association’s Annual Conference (of which he is currently the president), chief superintendent Ian Johnston called on Brown and Co to scrap crime-fighting targets as he feels they are leading to “dysfunctional policing”. Johnston’s perception is that Whitehall-imposed performance measures that were first brought in a decade ago have “no credibility” within the police service, and do little or nothing to improve the public’s perception of how we presently attempt to combat crime in this country.
Many of SMT’s readers will recall a strikingly similar lament being uttered seven years ago at the very same event. Clearly, it fell on political ears ill-tuned to the real world.
Today, those areas of crime-fighting of vital importance to the public (namely deterrence and reassurance) are, to some extent, necessarily being abandoned. Specialist squads have been set up to tackle emerging crime trends, but at the same time uniformed police have been discarded in a vain attempt at improving (or should that be massaging?) the crime figures. Now, the beat police presence in the local neighbourhoods and towns has all but disappeared. You can’t measure the effectiveness of the beat officer and put it in a league table, which is presumably why this most crucial aspect of policing has been allowed to slide.
Back in May, police leaders criticised the Government for imposing its target-driven culture on them. A culture that has led to ludicrous decisions, with children being arrested for throwing cream buns at buses and a Cheshire pensioner hauled in to the local Constabulary’s offices for “cutting back a neighbour’s conifers too vigorously”. The word lunacy is not inappropriate here.
Are we not in danger of criminalising middle England? Years ago, such minor behaviour would have been dealt with by way of common sense and discretion. Instead, we are just creating more paperwork in which to mire the serving police officer and make space for David Blunkett’s ‘plastic Bobbies’, the PCSOs, just so that the Government can say it’s addressing the issue of uniforms on the street. From the Government’s point of view, PCSOs have to work, but the real statistics tell us they are not. Not by a long way.
Put simply, centrally-imposed targets are preventing senior police personnel from delivering the kind of policing we all want and, without a shadow of a doubt, deserve. Discretion must be restored to senior police officers such that they can make reasoned decisions relating to local crime issues.
Apparently, 75% of the senior officers who run 228 Basic Command Units across England and Wales have stated they feel central targets undermine their ability to provide a good, high standard of law enforcement. That being the case, it’s about time the Government’s performance framework was abolished.
Is this too radical a proposal? No. It would allow the professionals on the ground who are qualified to do so to make sound, reasoned judgements based in fact rather than leaving these crucial decisions to the target-mad suits in Westminster.
Our Boys in Blue must reclaim policing for the police.
Brian Sims, Editor, SMT (7.9.2007)