Dr John Topping
‘Policing and the Process of Confidence in Northern Ireland:
More Than Community Metrics’
Northern Ireland Policing Board
Lunch Time Seminar Series Number 2
27th February 2012
OK, so good afternoon everyone. Indeed, I want to start off by saying thanks to the NIPB for inviting me down today to discuss the issue of community confidence and policing – especially in front of such an expert audience, which makes it rather daunting for myself. But I suppose in terms of the short time I have today, and without wishing to unduly interfere with peoples’ lunchtime digestion, what I want to examine is the issue of confidence, specifically related to the policing in Northern Ireland. And certainly confidence as a goal within PSNI and the service they deliver has taken a centre stage under Matt Baggott in terms of both the new 2020 policing strategy, along with the so-called quarter of a million ‘moments of truth’, or in otherwords, contacts between PSNI and members of the public every year. But what I want to do, is really attempt to look beyond what are currently broad-brush contentions and assumption as to confidence in the police, and, through examining a range of research and empirical realities, suggest alternative measure and understanding of confidence which go beyond the metrics and measures consistently set forth by both the PSNI and the NIPB. So in terms of what I’m going to talk about, firstly I want take a look at the contextual dynamics relating to the policing environment. Secondly, we’ll explore some of the empirical evidence relating to confidence in policing both locally and internationally. And finally, I’ll go on to suggest some alternative measures for confidence in policing in Northern Ireland which might more usefully capture the process which comprises confidence.
So what I want to start with as part of this discussion is a quote from the Chief Constable back in 2010, which I’ve heard in many forms of police debate where he has been involved, which simply states: ‘for every negative encounter a person has…there will be required 14 positive encounters to redress that balance…’ And while I’ll return specifically to this contention later on, really what we need to do is dig a little deeper, and explore some of the wider dynamics which underpin this notion of police contact and encounters with the public not just generally, but specifically within Northern Ireland. Because in terms of what constitutes building confidence, it can only be conceived where we understand the policing landscape thoroughly as part of what we’ll come on to see is a process related to confidence, rather than seeing it as simply an individualistic output or metric.
And certainly, an important starting point for any debate on community confidence is through examining the current state of policing by PSNI, really as a marker of where the police sit as part of community-level confidence in policing – and especially through community policing, or policing with the community. And at an operational level, and beyond some of the very positive developments under the Chief Constable and undoubted pockets of good practice on the ground, community policing as a means of engaging, tailoring and anchoring PSNI’s service is not being delivered in the widespread fashion that the PSNI and NIPB would suggest, specifically with Loyalist and Republican communities – a well worn issue which I will not rehearse again, but which is nonetheless a fact on the basis of a number of pieces of research. But, this is not necessarily or solely the fault of PSNI, because today’s discussion is not about ‘having a go’ at anyone. It is about understanding clearly and concisely the parameters to community confidence. So in this regard, we need to firstly recognise that successes in community policing in terms of working best where it is needed least, do not negate the realities of perceived or actual deficits faced by marginalized Loyalist and Republican communities, which has manifested itself in terms of limited, and in some cases, waning confidence in the PSNI to deliver ‘normal’ policing. So that is our first point of reference where NIPB statistics and PSNI discourse do not necessarily meet with the reality of policing faced at the community level as part of our context to community confidence.
But in many ways, this limited, or lack of confidence within certain communities and areas in relation to policing is symptomatic of broader issues related to the fact that policing change over the past 10 years has tended to centre on the politics of getting policing right. And in this respect, public understandings of confidence have remained the property of the politicians and policing institutions in isolation from the community level, in terms the policing institutions using these sweeping assertions to do what they (rather than what necessarily communities), think is in the best interests of the community. And we’ve become stuck with those understandings of confidence.
On a second point, we can also look to the DPPs and their role within the confidence process. And again, while there are excellent pockets of good practice, beyond their well documented inability to attract community participation or move beyond what has been described as ‘bean counting culture’ rather than confidence building, a whole decade of community confidence in policing has been defined through statistical aggregations and measures, characterized through the DPP role. And I suppose to digress slightly, the new PCSPs must step up to this challenge and develop indicators which really relate to confidence in not just the police, but policing at the community level. But returning to the main issue, this is another point of departure in terms of our picture of confidence, policing confidence in relation to the ‘success’ of the DPPs clashes with the realities of community experiences on the ground. But again, this is not about blaming or point the finger, just some objective, contextual mapping of the dynamics underpinning our notions of confidence in policing outside the parameters of the policing institutions.
Thirdly, as part of a more process rather than product-based approach to community confidence in policing, while much time and effort has been devoted with PSNI and the NIPB to engaging with communities – whatever they may look like –whether Loyalist, Republican, ethnic minority, LGBT, as of course they should – little, if any attention beyond isolated pockets has been paid to the process of confidence building in term police engagement with the vibrant civil society structures which exist through community of Northern Ireland. As recognised through Patten, the Office of the Oversight Commission, my own work – the strength of civil society, and specifically those groups and organisations concerned with broad policing issues, whether first line response, education programmes, intervention, mediation, public order, parading, interface violence, environmental issues, restorative justice – is not only a unique feature of the broader policing landscape, but also needs to be a necessary feature as part of a more inclusive approach to building community confidence in the police. Indeed, such ‘thinking’ on the development of processes to building confidence have largely been absent from the policing debate, with the exception of CJINI’s recent inspection of the WBCSF. And this impacts directly on community confidence because of the fact their contributions are being overlooked; and their important bridging role for communities previously distanced from formal policing and CJ mechanisms is not being acknowledged. So this is another factor to be considered as part of the wider process to confidence in policing at the community level.
And finally, as part of this very brief topology of our confidence landscape, we also have the conflicted narratives related to the ongoing dissident terrorist threat. And while the physical threat to PSNI and others cannot be underestimated, in terms of confidence, research and recent conversations had at the ‘Change and Challenge’ policing conference hosted at UUJ are pointing to community concerns about the potential return to a securitization agenda; the purchasing of more land rovers; and defining policing success by reductions in terrorist activity. Because on one hand, political and policing rhetoric is dominated by contentions of peace, normality and the need for communities previously distanced from the state and the police to move into a new beginning. Yet on the other hand, it is precisely those communities, mainly urban Loyalist and Republican communities, who are absorbing the costs of such colourful accounts of peace and policing – which ultimately impacts upon their confidence in ‘normal’ policing.
So, what then you may ask am I saying at this point in terms of conflicting notions of the confidence process related to community policing, to policing structures, civil society and the dissident threat as a snapshot of confidence taken from a community angle? Well, what I want to do at this point is return to the quote I noted at the start of the discussion by the Chief Constable related to the 14 positive contacts as providing a remedy for negative police contacts with the public. Because, there is in fact, as far as I can discern, no empirical basis to substantiate this claim. And this is not to pick at words or needlessly question ideas of the Chief Constable, quite the opposite. But, the Chief’s well rehearsed notion is really symptomatic of the fact we have no real research or institutional grasp of what confidence really means for communities across Northern Ireland. Because aside from the official statistics which paint one reality of policing confidence; and beyond the research I’ve outlined, there is a whole area of policing and criminology relevant to the debate which has yet to be seriously discussed, or even understood. And certainly, as we move into another new era of community safety under the DoJ into 2020, we need to be very clear on such issues to provide a solid foundation for future developments in policing.
Because firstly, if we examine the notion of positive contacts, I think the antecedents for the Chief’s quote came from a study by the policing academic Wesley Skogan back in 2006 on asymmetrical encounters between the police and the public. And really the crux of this extensive research was that negative encounters between police officers and members of the public have 14 times more impact than positive encounters. But crucially, positive encounters between the police and public are not statistically significant from zero. And across time and countries, this is consistent with similar studies and evidence related to public confidence in government agencies more generally. And even if we took the Chief’s notion to its logical conclusion, on the basis of the 9592 allegations and complaints made against PSNI to PONI in 2010/11, it would require PSNI ‘to do’ 134,288 positive actions just to break even as it were. So what I’m saying is that we need to considerrealistic, practical options around community confidence.
Secondly, and probably more importantly for understanding what we don’t fully understand about community confidence and policing; and in terms of the brief confidence topology I provided - what criminological research points to is the fact that confidence in the police is actually shaped by general attitudes (influenced through contextual issues as outlined above), which in turn affect peoples’ evaluation of encounters with police at an individual level, not the other way around. So what I’m saying is that the drives within PSNI and the NIPB for individualistic community measurements and confidence indicators, on the basis of this evidence, are at best, an inaccurate record of confidence, especially when we don’t understand wider factors which do influence attitudes to policing.
And away from the Northern Ireland specific issues, research also points to three key factors at a community level which influence perceptions of confidence in policing, but which we currently don’t capture. And those are: crime and disorder problems, fear of crime, and neighbourhood satisfaction levels. So in this sense, while the Board’s current satisfaction surveys may provide an approximate indicator of confidence over time, without a) these key indicators; and b) the disaggregation of confidence in policing down to the council output area, our current measures of confidence are fundamentally limited, compounded where current measures extrapolate confidence in the police findings from random household samples. Indeed, this is before we even get into weighting about confidence in policing based on the individual characteristics of people actually surveyed, including personal and vicarious experiences of policing, age, and socio-demographic status. And some of you may ask why such factors actually matter. Well, when we dig down a little dipper into the process of confidence, British Crime Survey data actually suggests that people with no recent contact with the police have more favourable attitudes to the police. And, for the purpose of this current debate, this is absolutely vital. Because NIPB surveys over the past number of years have consistently produced surveys where 72-75% of respondents in those surveys have indicated they have had no recent contact with the PSNI. So on that basis, current confidence figures must be treated with an extra caution.
So then, having considered a range of issues and research related to confidence in policing, albeit in the short time we have today, where then does this leave us in terms of the confidence picture? And in spite of what on face value may seem a gloomy picture, it is actually quite positive for PSNI. Because looking at the factors which research points to influencing confidence in policing, many of these are actually outside the control of the police, whether embedded neighbourhood factors, past experiences of policing – whatever those neighbourhood dynamics happen to be. And I think this is the interesting bit, as I’ll come back to in the conclusion. Because Patten never envisaged that policing would end up based upon bureaucractic metrics of police confidence as we currently have. Rather, Patten was always about policing more broadly conceived. So in this regard, while during the first decade of post-Patten policing there was always a feeling that if policing could be gotten right, the rest of pieces of the Northern Ireland jigsaw would fall into place; the next decade, towards 2020, must be about turning our focus away from the PSNI as the nom de plume for many of the country’s ills, and turn back to policing more broadly conceived, where a wide range of stakeholders with responsibility for policing in it’s broadest sense will all contribute to the process of confidence at a community level – not confidence in the police in isolation.
However, at present we are perversely and paradoxically constrained by the sheer volume of police-focused confidence measures – from the NIPB, DPPs, PONI, NICS and PSNI – which neither give us a sophisticated enough picture of confidence in policing to any significant social, geographical or demographic level of granularity; nor gives us, or is weighted to, factor in the variety of community and individual processes which impact upon confidence and perceptions of policing, pretty much regardless of what the police do.
So, really in considering the current state of what we know about confidence and in moving towards some sort of concluding observations, what I want to do is take a step back from all that I’ve talked about so far this lunchtime. And I suppose at the core of what I’m saying today is that while we all know what makes ‘good’ policing in terms of policing with the community and a service-orientation, we need to start with what we can’t control, along with what we don’t know, in view of the fact what we do currently know about confidence is not the full picture. Indeed, legacy, segregation, counter-terrorism, deprivation, marginalisation and politics but to name a few, are factors that the PSNI cannot control, but which impact upon confidence in their organisation. Distributions of confidence in the police across the country, socio-demographic variables of those who participate in surveys, the dynamics of fear, crime and disorder and neighbourhood conditions influencing perceptions of policing across the country are things we don’t understand with any degree of accuracy
So I think within this conundrum, we have two options. Firstly, we can invest in starting to measure, map and understand such factors as part of a much more full appreciation of what community confidence actually looks like to useful levels in Northern Ireland. And while this would undoubtedly be a costly exercise, arguably the cost of continuing with current measures may be higher in the long run for the delivery of policing, and relationships with communities where 79% confidence in PSNI is patently not the reality. However, a second, more radical option would be to move in the other direction entirely, and dispense with confidence measures in the police altogether. And on face value, this may actually sound quite heretical, not to mention going against the Board’s legislative obligation to monitor the PSNI. But again, logical argument rationalizes such an approach.
Because when we create a new label for an activity, such as confidence, the culture out of which policing has come over the past decade automatically creates a set of measures and bureaucracy for this label. And as we’ve seen, those don’t measure confidence don’t work very well. So, if we start to measure confidence as the‘outworking’ of policing encapsulated through community perceptions of fear of crime, neighbourhood satisfaction and crime and disorder down to meaningful levels, then we have the basis for something. Because significantly, this sort of thinking will sit well with the DoJ’s new community strategy; with the DoJ’s KPI number 5 on levels of police engagement with local communities and levels of confidence in policing, alluded to in the Draft Programme for Government; and the approachto confidence in policing through the DoJ’s statistical reports on confidence in policing drawn from the Northern Ireland Crime Survey (NICS), itself based upon 16 socio-demographic variables. Because it is these sort of measurements which give us much more rounded and accurate of idea of confidence in policing. Indeed, we can take the example of the NICS, and specifically that data related to the DoJ’s KPI 5 and what is described as ‘engagement’, defined as the extent to which people feel local police and other agencies:seek people’s views about the ASB and crime issues that matter in this area; and are dealing with the ASB and crime issues that matter in this area – rather than looking at perceptions of the PSNI per se.And here, we can see significant variation between confidence in the police and policing (at 78%), notwithstanding the problems with confidence in the police as I’ve already alluded to; and confidence in engagement (at 38%). Because at this point, we have to remember that engagement in terms of how it is defined by in the NICS relates much more closely to the perceptions of conditions people live in, and how that is being dealt with by PSNI and other agencies, which is clearly a more useful measure of confidence than random, individualized perceptions.