1
Results of a survey on the state of the police service in England and Wales
Ben Bradford, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford
Jennifer Brown, Mannheim Centre, London School of Economics
Isabell Schuster, Mannheim Centre, London School of Economics
This survey was initiated by the Stevens Independent Commission into the future of Policing in England and Wales and conducted with the help and support of the Police Federation of England and Wales and the Superintendents Association. Results are based on an on-line survey of officers up to the rank of chief superintendent. Over 14,000 police officers responded, equating to one in ten of all serving officers.
December 2012
Key findings
The purpose of the police
· There was strong agreement among respondents about the crime fighting, crime prevention and reassurance purposes of the police.
Delivery
· Three-quarters (76%) of respondents felt the police treat the public with respect, which accords with IPCC confidence survey data indicating 75% of the public are happy with police-public contacts.
· 72% felt that the police overall are doing a good or an excellent job.
Legitimacy
· About half (54%) believed public opinion toward the police has changed for the worse over the last ten years, especially young people, motorists and those from the working class.
· Less than one quarter (22%) of respondents felt closely aligned with the stated values of their force.
· Police officers are concerned about the impact of police and crime commissioners:
· Over two-thirds (69%) of respondents thought PCCs not a good idea.
· Nearly four-fifths (78%) strongly agreed police service should be free of political influence.
Relationships
· Respondents did not believe they are supported by the present government (95%) or by the media (82%), or indeed ACPO (69%) and the judiciary (56%).
· There was widespread, although by no means universal, agreement that police relationships with different population groups (such as motorists, young people and the working class) have deteriorated over recent years.
Organization
· A plurality of officers who responded to the survey (43%) wanted to retain the 43-force structure, as at present, although 29% opted for some regionalisation and 18% a national police force.
Workforce and work relations
· More than half (56%) of the police officers who responded to the survey had recently contemplated leaving the service, with mid-career constables the most likely to have done so.
· One third of respondents (33%) were very worried about the threat of being forced to retire.
· Respondent’s sense that they are treated in a fair and equitable manner was linked to their sense of the legitimacy of the service and their commitment to it. Forces with officers who feel they are treated in a fair and equitable manner tend to be those that receive lower levels of complaints from the public.
· One-fifth (20%) of officers say they experience bullying at work all or some of the time. Forces where respondents report higher levels of bullying also tend to be those that receive more complaints from the public.
· Only one quarter (27%) of respondents thought a national college of policing a very good idea
Resources
· Respondents were generally opposed to the involvement of private companies in policing:
· Less than half (44%) thought private involvement in managing custody suites a good idea
· Over 80% thought private involvement in traffic accidents, interviewing witness or suspects, dealing with victims of crime a bad idea.
Results of a survey on the state of the police service in England and Wales
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Methodological note
3. The purpose of the police
4. Delivery
5. Legitimacy
6. Relationships
7. Organization
8. Workforce and work relations
9. Resources
10. Conclusions
11. References
12. Appendix
1. Introduction
This paper reports results from a survey initiated by The Stevens Commission, which has been tasked with examining the future of policing in England and Wales. It was inspired by Lord Stevens’ commitment to engaging as wide a range of views from police officers about the future of their service. Additional surveys are being conducted with police staff and also the general public.
The last root and branch examination of the Police Service was the 1960-62 Royal Commission. Conditions prevailing at that time were the growth of affluence; decline in deference; inclination to question authority; glorification of youth culture; civil protest; self-conscious African-Caribbean/Asian identity; and changes wrought by new technology; police scandals. Political scandals such as the Profumo affair created an atmosphere that suggested a remoteness of political life from ordinary people and fostered distrust in politicians. More specifically the Royal Commission was pre-empted by a number of police corruption cases and Parliamentary concern over the management of complaints about police conduct.
A similar atmosphere prevails today, with the context of policing affected by the banking crisis and the apparent low number of individuals identified for criminal prosecutions; the Leveson inquiry which was critical of the police investigation into the phone hacking scandals and a perception that may have been created of too close a relationship between press and police; the death of Ian Tomlinson during a G20 protest, the implications of the Hillsborough report on the probity of South Yorkshire officers’ statements at the time of the disasters, so called ‘pleb-gate’ affair of the Government Chief whip’s alleged comments to a police officer, the suicides of chief officers under investigation, and the recent sacking of a chief constable. Yet, while current concerns around the police resonate with the context of the earlier Commission, there are some important social and economic differences. To name just two, advances in information technology have dramatically changed people’s access to information and modes of social interaction and, rather than the relative affluence of the 1960s, we are now entering what many have characterised as an age of austerity.
Policing itself has moreover gone through significant change. At the time of 1962 Commission England and Wales had a traditional model of policing: single beats on an alternating shift, a pattern that had prevailed for more than 100 years. Since then there has been an increasingly rapid cycle of change, with the advent of policies such as unit beat policing, problem oriented policing, reassurance policing, neighbourhood policing, evidence-based policing – the list could go on. The management of the police has evolved through the application of new public sector management techniques, financial management initiatives, ‘value for money’, ‘best value’ and now austerity led management.
As in the case of the earlier commission, the Commission chaired by Lord Stevens is committed to hearing what the police themselves have to say about the present state of and the impeding changes to their service as well as enquiring into their own present assessment of their service and its management. It therefore commissioned this survey as one aspect of a wider enquiry into the views of serving officers across a range of subjects. Some questions in the 2012 survey mirrored items included in a similar survey fielded on behalf of the 1962 commission (in 1960). Throughout this report we draw comparisons across the two surveys, and we therefore have measures of the views of police officers separated by 60, sometimes very turbulent, years.
The current Commission is structured around seven key themes: purpose; delivery; legitimacy; relationships; organization; workforce; and resources. Each of these themes is picked up in this report, which comprises a preliminary account of a survey conducted with ranks of officers up to chief superintendent.
The Commission gratefully acknowledges the assistance and support of the Police Federation and the Superintendents Association in the conducting of the survey.
2. Methodological note
This report comprises data collected via an on-line survey (using Survey Monkey) sent to all serving officers up to the rank of Chief Superintendent during the last two weeks of September and first two weeks of October, 2012. The survey included both close-ended questions, usually with responses on Likert-type scales, and open-ended ‘free-text’ questions that allowed respondents to enter response in their own words. We report findings from both types below, although the main emphasis is on the close-ended questions.
In all 16,267 people responded to the survey. Of these, 14,167 indicated they were serving police officers. The remainder were members of police staff. For present purposes they were excluded from the analysis as this group are the subject of a separate survey, the results of which will be published in due course.
The response rate represents one in ten of all officers serving up to the rank of chief superintendent. The response rates are given in the Table 1.
Table 1: Officer numbers, 2012, and survey responses
Total number / Survey number / Response rate (%)Men / 98,352 / 11,410 / 12
Women / 36,014 / 2,686 / 8
BME / 6,673 / 602 / 9
White / 127,693 / 14,167 / 11
Chief Superintendent / 404 / 42 / 10
Superintendent / 942 / 105 / 11
Chief Inspector / 1,780 / 224 / 13
Inspector / 6,657 / 1,020 / 15
Sergeant / 21,457 / 3,057 / 14
Constable / 103,126 / 9,698 / 9
All / 134,366 / 14,167 / 11
The overall survey response rate was around 11%. Table 1 shows that there was some variation across demographic categories and ranks. Male officers were more likely to have responded than female; while BME officers were somewhat less likely to have responded than White officers. Response rates rose from Constable to Sergeant to Inspector, before falling back again as rank increased further.
In terms of the representativeness of the achieved sample, therefore, men are over represented (73% serving, 81% responding) and women under-represented (27% serving and 19% responding). By contrast, 5% of respondents were from BME groups, approximately proportional to the representation of ethnic minority groups in the service. As Table 2 shows, proportionately more officers at sergeant rank and fewer constables replied to the survey than are presently serving. Proportionately more inspectors responded.
Table 2: Officers by rank: as proportion of total police strength and as proportion of achieved sample
PercentagesProportion of serving officers / Proportion of survey respondents
Constable / 77 / 68
Sergeant / 16 / 21
Inspector / 5 / 7
Chief Inspector / 1 / 1
Superintendent / 1 / 1
Chief Superintendent / 0.3 / 0.3
It is important to note that with a response rate of around 10%, the achieved sample should not be considered to be representative of all serving police officers. Significant bias may have resulted from self-selection into, or out of, the sample, as well as other factors, and the results presented in this report should be treated as purely indicative. Nevertheless, the sheer size of the sample – one in ten of all serving officers – along with evidence presented below that suggests the survey does not cover only the views of the disaffected, implies that the survey results is a useful indicator of the opinions of police officers serving at this time of significant upheaval, both within the police and more widely.
3. The purpose of the police
An early task the Commission set itself was to examine the purposes of policing and to revisit the ‘Peelian principles’. While the provenance of these principles remains uncertain (Reiner 2012), they very clearly set out the functions of the police as preserving order and investigating crime but whose “principal object” was to be the prevention of crime (General Instructions, 1929:1). These instructions went on to explain that the “security of persons and property, preservation of the public tranquillity will thus be better protected than by the detection and punishment of the offender after he has succeeded in committing the crime” (p2). This dual role – dealing with crime and preserving order – to this day corresponds well with what is known about the public’s vision of the purpose of policing (Jackson et al. 2012a; c.f. Bittner 1974).
Governments in recent years have privileged crime fighting – that is, dealing with crime after it has occurred - yet, as Reiner points out, while he may have had rather little to do with the principles as they have come to be known, as shown above, ‘what is beyond doubt is that Peel emphasised ‘prevention of crime’ as the key role of the New Police’ (Reiner 2012: 8, emphasis added). Reiner further notes that the social service and crime control components of modern policing are encapsulated in the force versus service debate. Achieving a balance between these ends, which may be both complementary and in competition is arguably the key debate in modern policing (Loader in press), the survey therefore probed officer’s opinions about the purpose of the police as they see it.
Officers responding to the survey were very clear about what they consider to be the main purposes of policing with over 90% saying that each the following activities or factors are important or very important
· Maintaining order
· Investigating locally committed volume crime such as burglary
· Maintaining focus on serious crime
· Preventing crime
· Counter-Terrorism
· Dealing with anti-social behaviour
· Reassuring communities
Of somewhat lesser importance was the police mandate to protect civil liberties (69% said this was important or very important), and, particularly, the police’s roles in dealing with mentally ill people – only 28% of respondents thought this important or very important.
Interestingly when asked by Ipsos MORI poll on behalf of Police Federation 2011 which organizations are responsible for providing various services members of the public indicated their belief that a range of agencies should be involved; but also that there should be a clear lead agengy in each cases (see Figure 1). The police were the clear lead in cases of domestic abuse but less so with other vulnerable groups. It was striking that little if any involvement was thought appropriate from the private sector.
Figure 1: Public preferences for the delivery of services
Answers to the question: ‘Which of the organizations on this card do you think are responsible for providing the following services?’