Over 70 delegates participated in the 30th Cumberland Lodge Police conference, representing all the sectors involved in policing: academics, charities, community groups and volunteers, politicians, the civil service, the judiciary, the private sector as well as serving police officers. In a time of financial austerity, it was natural that the conference should consider how to make efficiency savings in the police service. Nevertheless speakers and delegates also considered whether austerity is unacceptably altering the nature of policing in Britain. So the conference was poised between a consideration of practical changes that must be made in order to cope with tighter budgets and normative concerns about what the police service should look like irrespective of cuts.
The focus of the conference fell inevitably on the role of the public in policing. Sir Robert Peel’s principle that “the people are the police” was taken not only a guiding philosophical principle, but as a principle with an economic impact. If some services offered by the police are no longer affordable, then they must be shared with or delivered by other agencies – charities, private companies or even volunteers. So, one way or another, the public will become more involved in policing.
Using economic motives to force through changes in policing runs the risk of being seen by the police and by the public as providing police services “on the cheap”. Reflecting on the validity of this concern, the conference offered the following considerations on whether the proposed changes to policing are positive irrespective of budget cuts:
(1)The function of policing has, in recent years, shifted too far away from informal social sanctions. The public has been disempowered in the regulation of its own communities.
(2)There is an often unquestioned moralistic assumption that public services must be delivered solely by public servants.
(3)Exposing the status quo to outside influences in the form of private contractors or volunteers may result not only in innovative efficiency savings but also in an increased transparency in service delivery.
This is an extract of a report due to be published next week.
Dr Owen Gower
Senior Fellow
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