Walking the walk – but can bobbies on beat cut crime?

Published on Wednesday 28 January 2009 20:54

LIKE clothes and facial hair, Scotland's police service is going through something of a 1970s revival. By that, I don't mean PC Plod is suddenly decked out in platform shoes and stroking his well-groomed beard while staking out a drugs den in his panda car.

But the phenomenon of the "bobby on the beat", which seemed to go so out of fashion decades ago, is suddenly very much in vogue.

Cast your mind back to the Scottish Parliament election in 2007. A bidding war broke out among the main parties over who would pay for the most extra police officers.

The SNP, with a little bit of help from the Tories, managed to find the money to pay for an additional 1,000 officers to create a more visible blue line in Scotland's communities. The parliament's justice committee held an investigation into community policing, while individual forces have turned the clock back to create old-fashioned beats in crime hotspots.

Now Strathclyde Police is pressing ahead with plans to pay for nearly 100 additional bobbies on the beat – by slashing the number of senior management posts.

But will this obsession with extra police patrols actually reduce crime or simply appease a public and, by extension, the political establishment, which thinks more beat bobbies will guarantee – to use that well-worn phrase – a safer Scotland?

Some studies have suggested that, in fact, having extra officers on the ground does little to deter offenders from committing robberies, assaults and other crimes.

In the early 1970s, the Kansas City Police Department in the United States conducted a unique experiment aimed at testing the widely-held belief that more cops meant less crime.

Patrols were varied within 15 police beats. Routine preventive patrols were eliminated in five beats, with police only going in to respond to calls from the public (known as "reactive" patrols). In five "proactive" beats, patrols were intensified by two to three times the norm, while normal, routine patrols were maintained in five "control" beats.

The experiment sought to find out whether citizens would notice changes in the level of police patrols, whether different levels of visible police patrols would affect recorded crime, and whether fear of crime would change. The results came as something of a shock.

Citizens did not notice the difference when the level of patrol was changed.

Even more significantly, increasing or decreasing the level of police patrol had no significant effect on burglaries, car thefts, robberies or vandalism. These are the very crimes that are traditionally considered to be prevented by random, highly visible police patrols.

Academics who like to take their lead from evidence-based research believe this study, at the very least, asks serious questions about the efficacy of increasing police patrols.

Professor Nick Fyfe, director of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research, believes increasing the number of bobbies on the beat is more likely to make people feel safer than to significantly reduce the chances of them becoming a victim of crime.

"A lot of studies carried out, particularly in the US, have shown that changing the level of patrols in one area doesn't seem to have a significant impact on levels of crime," he says. "But they do seem to have an impact on people's perception of crime and their feelings."

Prof Fyfe points out that much crime happens not in public streets but behind closed doors – for example, abusive husbands beating their wives, or bedroom fraudsters hacking into computer systems to steal people's identities.

Having more bobbies on the beat will do nothing to tackle these sorts of crimes, he says. Rather, it is often less serious, but highly "visible" offences, such as vandalism, breach of the peace and housebreakings, that may be deterred by extra patrols. But Prof Fyfe emphasises the word "may".

Many other factors can reduce the influence that extra police patrols will have on levels of crime, such as the fact that much of it is committed by people who are drunk, or on drugs, and therefore less likely to rationalise that increased patrols in a particular street or neighbourhood will make it more likely they will be caught.

Questions are also being asked about whether the country's chief constables may be overloading front-line officers in response to political and public demands at the expense of policing as a whole.

In Strathclyde, some 7.7 million will be saved over the next few years by cutting the number of senior officer posts by 131. The axe will fall on officers from inspector-level to chief superintendents.

About two-thirds of the money saved will be reinvested in new constables and sergeants to boost those very high-visibility patrols that experts suspect may not be that effective in reducing crime after all.

Could the determination to increase officers on the ground prevent more specialist areas of policing – such as countering fraud and fighting terrorism – from gaining the extra resources they need to respond adequately to the level of threat posed?

Paul Martin, MSP, Labour's community safety spokesman, is worried that the loss of senior posts will mean a draining of experience at a time when the number of highly-skilled, experienced officers leaving the force is at an all-time high. "That level of expertise is vital," he says.

"The justice minister says he wants to retain experienced officers who are nearing retirement, but getting rid of these senior posts seems to fly in the face of that."

Some rank-and-file officers are worried that the restructuring in Strathclyde, where more managerial responsibilities will be handed down the hierarchical chain, will result in less quality leadership.

That is an issue also raised by Prof Fyfe, who points out that an obsession with numbers will not secure a better police service. "It's a much more complicated picture," he says. "More front-line patrols can achieve a number of different objectives. There are many other issues that can act as a deterrent, such as CCTV. There's a whole body of people who can provide a deterring presence, such as community wardens."

For the Scottish Government's part, it quite reasonably points out that putting more bobbies on the beat is something that should be delivered – because the public craves it.

A spokesman said: "The public rightly expect the maximum level of resources to be devoted to front-line policing and making our communities safer, and that is exactly what the SNP government is delivering."

BACKGROUND

THE notion of bobbies on the beat is a seminal part of policing history in Britain. But their fortunes have fluctuated wildly over the years.

Their origins can be traced back to the creation of the Edinburgh City Police force in 1805 and the sweeping changes introduced by Robert Peel a quarter of a century later.

Generations of officers were deployed on beats, and there used to be a constable within 15 minutes' walk of any point in a main city. Police officers first, they were also figures in the local community, as portrayed by the television series Dixon of Dock Green.

The perceived loss of localised policing began to creep in as officers were increasingly based in stations and patrol cars, a move largely started by the reforms of the late Lord Jenkins, when home secretary, in the 1960s.

By the 1980s, forces found themselves subject to increasing statutory obligations. The need to have the likes of specialised forensics officers and drug protection units meant a redirection of resources that further reduced the number of traditional bobbies on the beat. The age of centralised, specialised, managed policing had arrived.

Now, though, with police in Edinburgh and Glasgow upping their numbers, the policy of bobbies on the beat is undergoing something of a resurgence.

The latest move has come from Steve House, the chief constable of Strathclyde, who wants to add nearly 100 more constables at the expense of middle-ranking and senior officers.