house of lords

Thursday 1st May 2008 Police and the Public in the 21st Century By the Rt Hon Baroness James of Holland Park

It is a pleasure as well as a privilege to be included as a lecturer in this series organised by the Lord Speaker in partnership with Queen Mary’s College, University of , to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Life Peerages Act 1958. The Lord Speaker in her inaugural lecture on 6th December gave a comprehensive and fascinating account of the history of this and subsequent legislation, and of the women who have played a distinguished and innovative part as Members of the Upper House. She set in her lecture a difficult standard for others of us to follow.

In choosing my subject I am not claiming to be an expert in the police service and my personal knowledge cannot equal that of many in this audience tonight. I have never served as a policewoman or been a member of the Police Authority, and my service as a bureaucrat in the Police Department of the Home Office and my time as a magistrate in London can hardly qualify me as an expert in the problems of policing. Nor, I am ready to admit, can my creation of that maverick commander of the , Adam Dalgliesh, even though a previous head of the murder squad admitted that he was a good cop while somewhat envying his hundred percent success rate in murder investigations. My title is Police and the Public in the 21st Century and it is as a concerned member of the public, but one with a respect for the police service born from personal experience, that I speak to you this evening.

Our attitude to the criminal justice system and to the police service of which it is a part is largely formed in childhood, influenced by early experiences and parental training and examples, and to an extent the social class to which we belong. I hope, therefore, that you will excuse the egotism of a few brief personal recollections. The into which I was born two years after the end of the First World War was so fundamentally different from the England of today that if a contemporary child could be mysteriously transported into our family home she would feel utterly disorientated and confused. A Victorian child, on the other hand, would probably feel that much was familiar, including gaslights, oil lamps, and meals eaten on an invariable predictable weekly rota restricted to vegetables and fruit in season. Only one product of technology, then called the wireless, would be totally unfamiliar. I was educated at a state primary school and then a local authority grammar school. Only one child I knew came from a family with a car. During my schooldays, from aged five to 16, nothing was stolen, no policeman ever appeared in school, no child came from a home broken by divorce. It was not in most areas a difficult society to police, and policing was indeed locally based. Police areas were small; the county town would have its force as would the county. Police officers were locally recruited and often came from known families. Chief constables, usually recruited from senior officers in the armed forces, were able personally to know most members of their force. They understood their community because they were part of their community. One of my earliest memories is of my father saying that if I were ever lost or in difficulties I should find a policeman. So from childhood the word was a synonym for a benign and powerful presence on whom I could rely. I wonder in how many British households that advice would be given today.

It is tempting to look back with nostalgia and see the inter-war years as a golden age. It was very far from that, and the Second World War was a catalyst for overdue reform in most of our public services, some carried out with more enthusiasm than wisdom. Our country today seems as remote from those interwar years as the 1930s were from Tudor England. The standard of living of most – but not all – of us has consistently risen. Science and technology have developed at an almost frightening pace, greatly

1 extending our horizons and opportunities, our comfort and physical well being, but confronting us with new and difficult moral and ethical choices, particularly in the field of the biological sciences. For many, modern life is materialistic, restless, stressful and over-burdened and morality has largely become a matter for each individual. The former strong pillars of society – the Church, the Law, the Monarchy – stand less securely as bastions of our nationhood. Those who are called to exercise authority in State, in Church, in schools and universities and in the family, do so in an age when authority has almost become a pejorative word. We are told now that respect has to be earned but, even when it has been earned, it is rarely given. Serious crime has become international. Criminals as well as the police have recourse to modern technology. The old complex, delicate but resilient web which held together people with common traditions and beliefs has in many of our cities been replaced by communities of widely differing faiths, traditions and language living side by side, often in a fragile tolerance. We do, indeed, walk on shifting sand. Policing can never have been more difficult than in our complex and rapidly changing world and there is a danger that the close links between local communities and the police, on which Sir Robert Peel originally built the force, will be fractured.

We too live in a decade when the general perception is that crime has greatly increased, but to what extent remains controversial. When I was at a dinner some years ago, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, in his speech, said that he was something of an expert on crime fiction, having just received the latest Home Office criminal statistics! Certainly figures about the extent of crime in England and Wales, which are inevitably out of date by the time they are published, can never be easy to interpret and are often challenged. There can be confusion, and not only in the public mind, about the different bases of calculating offences which range from those resulting in conviction and sentence, the number of arrests made, the number of crimes reported, and estimates of the number of offences which are not reported, usually because the victims have no hope of effective action. Horrendous crimes which receive wide coverage in the press, particularly in the tabloids, have a strong influence in determining the public’s perception of the level of crime. These cases, usually murder, particularly where children are either victims or perpetrators, confront us with age-old and insoluble problems about the nature of our society and the existence of evil, and threaten our cherished beliefs in innocence, goodness and love. But they are happily very rare and most people’s perception of the level of offences is based less on atrocious crimes than on their own experience and the experience of family and friends.

It is difficult to persuade people that we live in a more peaceable world and that crime is under control if our inner cities are made intolerable no-go areas by noisy and drunken louts every Friday and Saturday night, and when teachers, fire-fighters and even nurses in A and E departments are regularly assaulted. Youth crime is a particular worry. Most of us would agree that the home and a child’s earliest experiences are of fundamental importance in bringing up that child to be a responsible, law-abiding, happy and fulfilled member of society. Very few children from stable homes with a mother and father providing consistently loving care and discipline find themselves in the youth court. Social workers, however well motivated, cannot replace parents. And even when both partners are involved in a child’s upbringing, they can be so tired at the end of a working day that there is little time or energy to give children what they most value − the undivided attention of their parents. The police have to deal with the results of family breakdown but this is not a social evil for which they have responsibility or can be expected to remedy. It is central government that has a major part to play, but even the strongest and most concerned government cannot make people virtuous or abolish what theologians call original sin by Act of Parliament. If taxation is punitive and the cost of housing and the other necessities of life are so high that families can only manage if both parents work full time, we can’t be surprised if mothers and fathers who would prefer to put in fewer hours in the interest of their children are unable to do so. It is

2 irrational to pay tribute to the importance of the family if it is more financially advantageous for parents to live apart than together or to be voluntarily idle rather than in work.

And there are other fundamental changes which can alter our perception of policing and of the law which the service has the duty to uphold. We feel ourselves to be under almost constant surveillance. We are uneasily aware that the struggle to defeat international terrorism can encroach on fundamental rights which for generations have been the bedrock of our criminal law. And the law is now intruding into areas of our lives in which people may hold strong religious views, human sexuality, abortion, adoption, ethical questions arising from the advances in biological research and medicine which raise profound questions about the very nature of human life. A number of new laws are concerned with the interaction of words and intentions. Society can only judge the effect of words and actions; we cannot look into the individual human mind. How do we distinguish, for example, between free speech, the right to hold opinions however distasteful to others, which is at the heart of personal liberty, and the intent to foment hatred for a particular section of the community? Daily our police officers, particularly chief constables, are required to make decisions about the implementation of laws about which philosophers and ethicists might argue and which will require all that they have in sensitivity, courage and judgement.

Our society is now more fractured than I in my long life have ever known it, and increasingly there is a risk that we live in ghettos with our own kind, with a strong commitment to our local community but little contact with those outside it. Mutual respect and understanding and recognition of our common humanity cannot be nurtured in isolation. And in our relationships we are bedevilled by the cult of political correctness. If in speaking to minorities we have to weigh every word in advance in case inadvertently we give offence, how can we be at ease with each other, how celebrate our common humanity, our shared anxieties and aspirations, both for ourselves and for those whom we love? It would, I think, be unfortunate if the police became enamoured of this fashionable shibboleth which, in its worst manifestations, is increasingly being seen as a pernicious if risible authoritarian attempt at linguistic and social control. We need to be members one of another. But a sense of nationhood, of values understood and shared, cannot be conferred by the hoisting of a flag or a ceremony. It grows through generations, often arising from a common religious belief, from reforms struggled for and achieved, not without toil and sweat, from freedoms enlarged and preserved, wars fought and won, by respect for the main institutions of the state, by love of the countryside itself and of our architecture, music, visual arts and, above all, our language and literature. If a nation doesn’t instil in its young respect for the best of a country’s traditions and achievements, it cannot expect newcomers to respect them or value the tolerance, the love of liberty and respect for the law and each other which this tradition enshrines.

We live, too, in a culture of blame, and this can affect the police as it does all of us. Whenever there is a disaster, a mistake, an accident, the first response is to ask who was responsible, and when this is discovered we respond not by dealing with the person or authority concerned, but by new legislation or by drawing up regulations or instructions which politicians proclaim are designed to ensure that the deplorable event never happens again. The result is that people who are doing their jobs happily and efficiently are burdened with additional work – forms to be completed, instructions to be adhered to – which add to their workload and are more likely to decrease than to increase effectiveness. Our children must apparently be shielded from any possible harm. Gun clubs, consisting of law-abiding people, lose their right to their sport while criminals appear to have no difficulty in obtaining firearms. Our fear and hatred of paedophilia means that schoolteachers can no longer put their arms round a distressed child, apply sun-cream or a bandage. In this culture the safest course is always to obey instructions implicitly: that way, whatever disaster happens, we can’t be held responsible. Surely in the police force, as in other spheres, this militates against initiative and personal responsibility and, above all, that mixture of humanity and robust common sense which should be at the heart of policing.

3 There is little point in government promising money to recruit extra policeman if they are to spend their time in filling in forms. We, the public, share the universal concern about the burden of bureaucracy in all areas of our public life, particularly in the police service. Due process in law depends on accurate recording of information and its correct presentation in court, but for years there has been criticism of the time spent by police officers in paperwork and the recording of information. How can this be drastically cut, as it needs to be, while ensuring that the vital facts necessary both to preserve individuals’ rights under the law and ensure that crime is detected and punished, are accurately recorded? It is heartening that figures show a considerable reduction in paperwork – so much, indeed, that one is tempted to wonder at the vast waste of time the previous system must have entailed, but this is a problem which needs to be continually addressed. It sometimes seems that we have an army of well- paid unproductive officials whose only task is to interfere with those who have a proper job to do. They can usually be identified by the wording of the advertisements which seek to attract them. These make frequent use of such words as ‘facilitate’, ‘co-ordinate’, ‘promote’, and are written in managerial jargon totally incomprehensible to those of us who communicate in what is meant to be our common tongue.

And we, the policed, have a natural suspicion of official targets. Too many people have experienced their deleterious effects on the hospital service and on education. Obviously we need to evaluate progress, but crude figures relating merely to arrests can only too often encourage the apprehension of trivial offenders for minor offences which in the old days would be dealt with by the exercise of common sense instead of contributing to the total of crimes solved. And, of course, the demand for more information and more statistics about how far targets are met only adds to the clogging burden of bureaucracy which so militates against effectiveness and enthusiasm. In the last war my father-in-law, who served as an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps, was required regularly to submit a list of the diagnosis of every soldier treated. He told me that a sergeant with initiative submitted a list with the Latin names of such diseases as smallpox, typhoid and leprosy and received neither reprimand from headquarters, nor indeed any response whatsoever. It is not a strategy I would recommend but it did mean that the sergeant had more time to devote to his job, the care and treatment of the sick.

Our police, as they deserve to, enjoy a large measure of public support. The most recent public attitude survey, dated December 1995 and therefore, like most statistic-based research, somewhat out of date, shows that 82% of the sample included felt that their local police did a good job, the same proportion as in the previous survey of 1992. But as we may expect, these overall figures tend to hide variations across different social groups. The belief that local police did a very good job, for example, was only 17% among Afro-Caribbeans and 19% for inner-city residents, compared with 24% for white people and 23% for those living outside the inner city, differences which must cause concern. It is interesting how much satisfaction depends on whether respondents believed that individual police officers had listened to what they had to say and whether they had felt impartially and politely treated. 20% of people questioned could recall being annoyed at a police officer during the previous five years, the main causes being alleged poor conduct, unreasonable treatment and rudeness. It is important that recruits to the service realise that the way in which they respond to any member of the public will determine that person’s attitude to the service, probably for the rest of his or her life.

But civility and the willingness to act cannot be confined to one side only. If there is to be co-operation and respect between the police force and the community it serves, we in that community have a duty to play our part in the prevention and detection of crime. During a debate in the House of Lords as recently as 20th March 2008, tribute was paid to the valuable work of Crimestoppers, an independent charity which encourages people to ring in anonymously with information about crimes in their community. On average 17 people are arrested every day because of information received. This is the most direct

4 and effective public contribution to solving serious crimes, including notorious murders, and it deserves continued government support.

But voluntary organisations also have a useful part to play, particularly in enabling police officers to meet members of the community and to be known by them. In February 2008 the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary announced that every community in England and Wales would have a neighbourhood policing team by April 2008 to be served by a designated officer with knowledge of his patch. SirR onnie Flanagan’s review, published the same month, describes neighbourhood policing as ‘a crucial part of the police service’s response to the challenges it faces.’ This closer personal relationship with an individually designated officer is something most people would welcome and have, indeed, consistently called for. But if it is to succeed it will have to be effective, not only in the comparatively law-abiding and more prosperous areas, but in those communities which we see only too frequently on our television screens, where problems of unemployment and poverty and the violence and vandalism of young people with contempt for the law can make life unbearably harsh for the vulnerable and the law abiding majority, and where there is unlikely to be a strong tradition of respect, let alone affection, for the police. And because the qualities required of a good community policeman are so diverse, the selection of these officers will be particularly important. The man or woman who can best serve the community in this capacity is likely to have personal qualities as distinctive as, if different from, those who are attracted, for example, to the anti-terrorist branch. And relationships take time to grow. Trust is not given overnight, so we need to ensure that officers are left in their communities long enough to fulfil what we hope from this initiative, while at the same time not being deprived of their chance of promotion.

I was talking recently with a retired police constable friend, who might be described as ‘old school’, about proposals for enhanced community policing, to which he responded that this was the old home beat policing in which he had served for many years. He had become familiar with people in every street of his beat by the only effective method – walking the beat daily and talking to them. But that was in an age when people were more likely to be found walking the streets and there was no need for him to be supported by an officer who will attempt by his influence to deflect the young from involvement in terrorism. I find it difficult to imagine precisely how those officers will set about their task, or why young people who are apparently not influenced by responsible members of their own community or by loving parents are likely to be influenced by any outsider, but we must remain optimistic. I was saddened when my friend said what I have heard from other retired officers, that he would not join the force today. He said, ‘For me it was a vocation and now it’s become a job.’

A particular concern – perhaps the main concern of many of us in the community – is how we can recruit, train and keep the senior officers of the future. The personal qualities, attributes and skills required of a chief constable are now formidable. They include absolute integrity, intelligence, courage, moral as well as physical, and the sensitivity to relate to people from all walks of life. Above all chief officers require sound judgement and, while eschewing the arrogance of office, the confidence to be an effective leader of men and women and to inspire them with enthusiasm for the job and pride in its traditions and achievements. Such a combination of qualities is rare in any society and the men and women the service needs to attract are sought after in all areas of our public life. Only the Archbishop of Canterbury requires such a diverse list of personal qualities, and he has the advantage of being under the authority of a higher power than the Home Secretary. How can we ensure for the police service the best that is available, highly talented individuals not managerial clones? The recruitment and training of an officer class in the three armed services combined with opportunities for advancement from the ranks is one model, and the reputation of the British armed forces throughout the world is evidence of how well it has served and continues to serve us. I realise there are formidable difficulties in applying this to the police service

5 and it may well not be a practical or advisable path forward. But the need to ensure that the chief police officers of the future are recruited from men and women of the highest calibre is surely one of the most important problems which face us, and whether the service succeeds in attracting its share of the best will depend not only on the opportunities it offers for personal fulfilment and professional advancement, but on the public reputation of the police force and the respect it commands from the communities it serves.

The body responsible for ensuring that all areas are served by an efficient and effective local police force is the Police Authority. On its website the Association of Police Authorities sets out clearly what a police authority does and states in its first sentence that it is an independent body made up of local people. The Police Authority is therefore a democratic link with the community served. I doubt, however, whether many of us feel that the Authority impinges directly on our safety under the law or, indeed, name a single member of our local police authority. The Authority’s duties are specific and wide-ranging, but as a member of the public I would be interested to know how far their decisions are constrained by central government and how far they can be truly independent in the decisions they make, including the power to appoint and dismiss the Chief Constable and senior police officers, set local policing priorities, decide how much council tax should be raised for policing, and set local targets. Power always follows money and, while central government provides a greater share of the cost of policing, many of us suspect that there is increasing centralisation in this as in other aspects of our public services. The British tradition has always been to ensure that the responsibility for enforcing the law rests locally and to view with suspicion any move towards a centralised police force directly controlled by the government of the day. This emphasis on a high degree of local responsibility leading to co-operation by the community is perhaps more important than it has ever been in our increasingly complicated and fractured society.

Perhaps the time has come when we need to look at the whole structure of our police service to see how far it meets the challenges of our changing society. Policing has, of course, been subject to change in the last decade. Probably no aspect of our common life has been more subjected to tinkering, although those in education and the hospital service would probably claim that they have suffered more. Tinkering, of course, has its attractions. It is less drastic than overall change, less expensive and enables small defects of management or practice to be remedied as they become evident. But continual tinkering is frustrating to the police service and constant minor changes can be more irritating than effective. Perhaps with all change we should pay regard to some words of wisdom in the preface to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, a book which in childhood solaced me through many hours of long and boring sermons. In Cranmer’s words: For, as on one side of common experience sheweth, that where a change hath been made of things advisedly established (no evident necessity so requiring) sundry inconveniences have thereupon ensued; and those many times more and greater than the evils, that were intended to be remedied by such change. The purpose of all reforms should surely be to recognise and maintain, even if by different means, the virtues and successes of established custom, while reforming structures and practices which have been clearly shown not to meet the needs of the times.

Respect for the police service, however organised, depends on the country’s respect for the law which the police have a duty to enforce, and this in turn depends on public respect for the law-makers, for the institutions of the state and for the effectiveness and vitality of the democratic process. Nothing is more destructive of democracy than indifference or contempt. Today many people feel that respect for parliament has never been lower. Some of the criticism of Members of Parliament seems deliberately fostered and encouraged, and those who engage in this dangerous practice do a great disservice both to individual men and women, the majority of whom serve us with honesty and dedication, and to institutions, fallible as are all institutions, which remain our strongest bulwark against tyranny. But the figures of those who take the trouble to vote are depressing. Elections, particularly local elections, are

6 often regarded with apathy and for the first time in my lifetime there is genuine anxiety that the poll itself may not be free from corruption. The problem is among the most serious that we face. If a country comes to believe that a government has been elected partly by fraud, even if it has in no way colluded in that fraud, people will feel, and with reason, no duty to respect either that government or the laws it enacts. When considering whether our criminal justice system, of which the police service is an integral part, is fit for purpose we need to consider an even more difficult and demanding question: whether our democratic process as at present organised is fit for purpose.

Chief officers have the opportunity of recruiting dedicated and enthusiastic young people to the force and they have a responsibility to ensure that this dedication does not drain away into cynicism and what is commonly described as a canteen machismo culture. But we in the community have our responsibilities. Firstly, of course, to respect the law ourselves even when it is inconvenient or does not reflect our own views on how a problem should be addressed. Secondly, to co-operate with crime prevention measures to ensure that we don’t make life easier for criminals by our own carelessness or stupidity. And thirdly, to support the police in what after all is our common aim to make our world a safer and a gentler place. They are doing a job which, with every change in our society, every new law, becomes more complex and demanding, a job carried out, as is right, in the fierce light of public and media scrutiny. They deserve our respect and our gratitude. When I travel overseas as a crime writer, senior police officers often invite me to their police station or headquarters to discuss their methods and achievements. Perhaps, and not without reason, they think it salutary for a novelist who deals in fictional crime to have some insight into its reality. I know that they regard our police service, which has influenced so many others, as one of the best – most say the best – in the world. It is our responsibility as a nation, as well as the responsibility of the police, to ensure that it remains so in this turbulent, troubled and uncertain 21st century.

© P D James, 2008

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