There are longstanding questions about the organisational health of the police service in terms of culture, corruption, and abuse of power. The very fact that tackling workforce corruption is one of the ten PEEL assessment categories is testament that not only has this been a historical issue, but that ongoing scrutiny is required to monitor and address such concerns.
In light of the recent Wayne Couzens, Hussain Chehab, and David Carrick cases, it is clear that further action is required. These are not isolated incidents and nor are they confined to particular regions or police forces. Every instance of such behaviour does substantial damage to both the reputation of the police service and the confidence the public holds in its ability to uphold high legal, moral and professional standards.
HMICFRS’ recent report ‘An inspection of vetting, misconduct, and misogyny in the police service’ highlighted a number of high profile incidents which demonstrate what has been described as “failure to learn lessons”. Having examined a number of areas including recruitment, vetting, reporting and sanctioning of misogynistic and predatory behaviour, and internal procedures for gathering and managing intelligence, the report made 43 recommendations across five areas for improvement.
One of the critical areas of concern highlighted by HMICFRS was the vetting process for police personnel. As part of the review, a sample of 725 vetting files were inspected. These comprised 548 recruitment vetting (RV) files and 177 transferee or re-joiner files; no management vetting (MV) files were inspected. The team responsible for evaluating these decisions unanimously disagreed with 68 (9.4 percent) decisions in total. A further 63 cases were identified for which the team felt insufficient detail was available to corroborate a decision.
Whilst it was noted in the report that the small sample size and the methodology of the vetting file review meant that “it would not be appropriate to presume any statistical significance from these figures”, the relatively large number of decisions which HMICFRS could not endorse is still cause for concern. A number of the cases highlighted found “officers and staff with criminal records, or suspicions that they had committed crime (including some serious crime), substantial undischarged debt, or family members linked to organised crime”. In others, there was evidence that “officers and staff had given false or incomplete information to the vetting unit”.
The recommendations I make will, if adopted, undoubtedly make the processes for vetting more robust. However, given the historical failures of forces to ensure that those who would abuse the powers delegated to police officers and staff, it is recommended that HMICFRS maintains considerable scrutiny and oversight of such decisions for the foreseeable future. It is recommended that HMICFRS reviews a sample of 10 percent of all appointments per police force on an annual basis, screening for appropriateness and consistency. This should continue until a satisfactory reduction in decisions deemed inappropriate. Doing so protects both the public and the reputation of the police in the long term.
In addition to the overall efficacy of the vetting process, the report highlighted “a growing consensus” that currently renewal periods for vetting are too long. At present, guidance for such intervals provided by the College of Policing, known as Vetting Authorised Personnel (Vetting APP) recommends renewal for MV every seven years and renewal for RV every ten years. The Harris Review 2022 also highlighted this as a concern, calling for an increase in police resources to facilitate full renewal vetting checks at least every three years. This recommendation, in part, was endorsed by HMICFRS who stated “there does not appear to be strong evidence to say exactly what the renewal period should be”, but that “shorter renewal periods would be more appropriate”. As such, recommendation 14 of their report is that “by October 31 2023, the College of Policing, in consultation with the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for vetting, should change the Vetting Authorised Professional Practice to prescribe intervals substantially shorter than ten and seven years for the renewal of recruitment vetting and management vetting respectively.”.
Also of concern is HMICFRS’ findings that, within one force over a 12 month period, half of all misconduct proceedings against police officers involved an officer in their first two years of service. This, coupled with the significant influx of recruits to the police service as a result of the Police Uplift Programme, means that the contemporary inadequacy of vetting procedures poses a significant risk of future misconduct. As such, it is recommended that police officers are subject to an annual renewal of vetting for the first two years of their service. Whilst both the Harris Review 2022 and HMICFRS’ report recognise that the introduction of more regular checks would be resource intensive, both also argue that the context within which such changes have been proposed make them justifiable. Equally, it provides further weight to the notion that future investment in police forces should include business support and administrative functions as core competencies of the service.
No matter how rigorous the vetting process, it cannot be considered a panacea for preventing police corruption. As noted by HMICFRS in their report, “Vetting can be viewed as a safety net, but an imperfect one. There will always be a danger of unsuitable applicants slipping through.”
There must also be robust controls to ensure that transgressions committed either by police officers or personnel of the police are dealt with effectively. At present, the Police Reform Act 2002 and the Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020 stipulates that behaviour which presents cause for concern must be referred to a chief officer who performs the role of appropriate authority (AA).
Under these prescriptions, the chief officer may delegate this responsibility to a suitably qualified officer who must be of inspector rank or higher; this is a widely adopted practice. The final decision if a case is to be investigated and to what extent falls to this AA. Therefore individuals operating in this capacity act as gatekeepers for whether an allegation or concern is treated as misconduct, gross misconduct, or is dealt with through procedures of lesser severity such as the reflective practice review process. In principle, there is nothing wrong with this approach. In practice, HMICFRS found evidence that “initial assessments by some appropriate authorities reveal leniency, apathy and too much tolerance of prejudicial and improper behaviour”. For the majority of the 236 cases assessed during the review, decision-making was found to be of appropriate standards. However, five case studies highlighted evidenced decisions that could have serious consequences for vulnerable people. For example, in 2021 a male officer on patrol, unsolicited, showed a female colleague an explicit image in which his genitals were exposed. This was recorded by the AA as misconduct rather than gross misconduct, thereby precluding the possibility of dismissal as a consequence.
HMICFRS notes that this is inconsistent with examples of other comparable cases. In another case study from 2021, a male officer met a female burglary victim at her home and subsequently contacted her using his personal Whatsapp account to request a date. A complaint was made and, while the AA involved recognised such behaviour as potential abuse of position for sexual purpose (AoPSP), the situation was assessed as ‘misconduct only’ and was not referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). The report lists a number of other examples following the same or similar themes. There is too much at stake in such situations for decisions of this nature to be allocated to one person, and the inconsistencies highlighted here are evidence that the current approach is not working.
Officers, or members of staff, who pose a risk to vulnerable people must be subject to an investigation commensurate with their behaviour. As such, it is recommended that AAs are replaced with appropriate authority panels (AAPs) comprising a minimum of three people, one of which is independent of the investigating force. At this point, it is important to note that being subject to a higher-level investigation does not automatically result in more severe consequences; professional standards departments (PSDs) may reassess cases at their discretion. However, ensuring that cases of gross misconduct are identified properly in the first instance and investigated as such will support an improvement of police culture in three key ways. Firstly, it will build the analytical capability of forces by ensuring that personnel’s professional standards histories are accurate. Secondly, it will mitigate the risk of harm to vulnerable people by ensuring that sanctioning decisions are proportionate to the severity of personnel’s behaviour. Thirdly, it will encourage people to come forward with crucial anti-corruption intelligence. As noted in the report, “overly lenient assessments undermine staff confidence, discourage the reporting of wrongdoing and harm the police service’s reputation”; forces’ ability to identify and address inappropriate behaviour is contingent upon disclosure.
Who to Manage and How
Some offenders are more problematic than others, both in terms of the volume and levels of harm caused by their actions. Building on a substantial body of literature. Recent research by Liggins, Ratcliffe and Bland has shown that “there is potential to target a small number of repeat offenders for harm reduction strategies” using crime severity metrics such as the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI) in addition to the volume of crime. The study, evaluating data sourced from Northamptonshire Police Force against the CCHI, found that “80% of crime harm that is identified to an offender is linked to a felonious few of just 7% of all detected offenders”.
Figure 14: Proportion of identified offenders responsible for 20%, 50%, and 80% of cumulative offender identified crime harm, by year. Source: Liggins, Ratcliffe, & Bland, 2019.
Consistent with previous studies by Bland and Ariel and Barham et al., the study concluded that with each event, the likelihood of a subsequent offence becomes more likely. For first time offences, the event shows a 37 percent likelihood of a second offence. By the twelfth event, the conditional probability exceeds 88 percent. However, the scale of harm engendered by each event also tends to decrease with each offence. This ultimately results in a 95 percent turnover rate for the most harmful offenders year-on-year. In terms of policy implications, this suggests that earlier intervention which seeks to understand and address the root cause of the criminal behaviour is critical to offender management. However, this is contingent upon more police forces utilising multi-year analyses of crime data to understand how their offender base is segmented. As noted in the study, “the question of offender management time is a critical resource issue”, irrespective of who does it - police, probation, or even the prison system. However, “the present analysis could be profitably undertaken in every police force in England and Wales and refreshed annually or even more frequently” to the benefit of society.
Crime as a Diverse Public Health Problem
There is mounting evidence that solutions to recidivism cannot be applied as one-size–fits-all and must be tailored by demography. This is also informed by the idea that crime is more closely related with health and its wider social determinants than it is with individual proclivity towards deviance. In 2018, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) released a report concerning emerging evidence that a whole system approach (WSA) is required to support female offenders and prevent reoffending in this demographic. This was rooted in evidence that women “can have poorer outcomes and distinct issues which require a tailored approach”. Female prisoners are more than twice as likely than male prisoners to report needing help for mental health problems (49% and 18% respectively). Furthermore, female prisoners are more likely to report having been taken into care, experienced abuse, and witnessed violence in the home as a child. Imprisoned mothers are also more likely to be living with their children prior to being taken into custody (around 60% of women compared to roughly 45% of men). These disparities may be partly rooted in wider social factors such as men being less likely to disclose mental health needs. However, that does not diminish the fact that this segment of the prison population has distinct needs which require specific solutions. There is also evidence to suggest that being sent to prison has significant negative outcomes for women in particular, with the rate of self-harm for female prisoners being nearly five times higher than for male prisoners, for example. As such, the WSA seeks to find solutions which prevent incarceration where a positive alternative can be found.
Case Study: WSA in Greater Manchester
The intervention was introduced in 2014 for women offenders and women at risk of offending in Greater Manchester. The project aimed to provide gender-responsive approaches for women across Greater Manchester at three key points in the CJS: at the point of arrest, sentence, and release from custody. A multi-agency approach supported the delivery of the project, with a network of nine women’s centres (“the Alliance”) working closely with a number of key CJS agencies.
Women were referred to one of the women’s centres which acted as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for their needs, dealing with a range of issues including mental health and wellbeing, domestic abuse, finance and debt, accommodation, substance misuse, physical health and children and family.
In every area of need, at least 70% of the service users had their need met or some progress made whilst being supported by the Alliance. Additionally, whilst the MoJ report notes it cannot be concluded that “the WSA has had a direct impact, there has been a reduction in the number of adult women arrested, prosecuted and in the number sentenced to custodial sentences in GM (Greater Manchester) since 2014. This amounted to:
A 13.5 percent proven re-offending rate compared to 24.3% in England and Wales (January-March 2021)
A 45 percent decrease of adult women arrested in Greater Manchester between 2014/15-2016/17
A 17 percent decrease of adult women prosecuted between 2014/2015-2016/2017
A 40 percent decrease in the number of adult women sentenced to immediate custody since 2014
Whilst these results are tentative, they suggest that approaching criminal behaviour as a matter of public health and using prison as a last resort (where appropriate alternatives exist) may yield significant benefits to vulnerable community members.
Another demographic which has been recognised as needing a tailored approach is children and young people. As with the approach developed for women, it is argued that “custody should be a last resort in dealing with offending behaviour in young people” Public Health England identifies a number of risk factors which increase the likelihood of offending and reoffending, including
Individual risk factors:
Early malnutrition
Behavioural risk factors
Alcohol or drug misuse
Traumatic brain injury
Language difficulties
Family risk factors:
Abuse
Emotional or physical neglect
Household alcohol or drug misuse, mental illness, or offending
Family violence or breakdown
School and peer group risk factors:
Poor educational attainment
Truancy
Exclusion from school
Gang membership
Low expectations from teachers
Community risk factors:
Deprivation
Poor housing
Unsafe areas
Poor social mobility
High crime rate
High unemployment
Racism
As can be observed, there are a substantial amount of risk factors for criminal behaviour in children and young people, each of which requires its own set of interventions with corresponding evaluations. These are complex problems which truly require a multi-agency approach if progress is to be made in protecting children from exposure to crime and, in turn, both the Youth Justice System (YJS) and the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Many of these risk factors also speak to a deeply inequitable society, with social challenges such as deprivation, poor housing, and high crime rate being distributed unevenly amongst ethnic groups in society.
In terms of interventions which have already been trialled, one of the most successful approaches is a police-led diversion scheme where officers seek to use cautions instead of arrests, restorative actions, and referrals to other supportive services where appropriate. A systematic review of studies into police-led diversion programmes by Wilson, Brennan, and Olaghere found that the odds ratio for reoffending in diverted youth compared to youth experiencing traditional processing was 0.77, indicating a significant decrease in reoffending rates.
Two key factors can be observed in common with the above approaches. Firstly, interventions which seek to prevent offending and reoffending often impact more significantly when criminal behaviour is approached as a matter of public health. Secondly, successful approaches tend to focus on diverting people away from the CJS which, in many cases, has been proven to be harmful to vulnerable groups.
School exclusions as a key site for risk
In taking a preventative approach to crime, limiting exposure to criminal behaviour and child criminal exploitation (CCE) should be a focus for the government. School exclusions in particular are starkly inequitable and expensive, both at the economic and human cost level. There are a number of ethnic groups who are excluded either significantly more or significantly less than white British pupils.
Figure 15: Ethnic groups with a higher rate of permanent exclusions and suspensions than white British school children Autumn term 2021/22. Source: Office for National Statistics.
The same is true for children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and children with special educational needs, whether or not they have been provided with an education and health care (EHC) plan.
Figure 16: Exclusion and suspension rates by FSM eligibility and SEN provision. Source Office for National Statistics.
Just for Kids Law notes that exclusions are often engineered by exploiters, who victims into carrying drugs or weapons into school which often leads to exclusion. Furthermore, exclusion from school, whether on a temporary or permanent basis substantially increases the likelihood of a child’s exposure to (further) CCE. The 2017-18 annual report released by His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales noted that a staggering 89 percent of children in custody reported exclusion from school. It is of particular concern that the most recent annual report has not reexamined this figure. This should become a recurrent feature in every annual report by His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales. The 2018-2019 iteration indicated that 53 percent of children held in secure training centres and youth offender institutions were from a black and minority ethnic background, compared to 18.3 percent of the national population. This has been described by The Institute of Race Relations, amongst others, as the Pupil Referral Unit (PRU)-to-Prison-Pipeline (PPP). Originally developed in the United States of America as the Schools-to-Prison-Pipeline (SPP), the concept describes how the disproportionate exclusion of particular demographic groups reproduces the punitive paradigm of the prison system and criminalises young people of certain backgrounds. It can also be observed that the overrepresentation of children eligible for FSM or with SEN translates into the YJS. Whilst available data is less recent, 44% of those sentenced to less than 12 months in custody in the academic year 2012/2013 were known to be eligible for FSM. 45% were recorded as having SEN without a statement and 28% with a statement.