Open Eye:Chat

Perceptions of policing

Thanks to Cheshire Constabulary's Mark Watson, who has been taking a look at Home Office perception data and shares the following:

'The Home Office recently published its statistical bulletin “Public perceptions of the police and local partners - results from the BCS year ending September 2008. Whilst reading the whole thing is reminiscent of watching paint dry (with the added ignominy of being simultaneously hit over the head with the empty tin) there are some genuine nuggets of insight in there.

The two major common factors amongst people across the country who agreed that the police and local councils are dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime issues in the area (our crucial "confidence" measure) are:-

Perceiving that the local police can be relied on to deal with minor crimes
Perceiving that the police deal with people fairly and / or with respect

…whilst the below four were only slightly less important…

Seeing a police officer or PCSO on foot patrol
Age of respondent (35 and over)
Not perceiving the crime rate in the local area to have increased a lot
Not having a high level of perceived anti-social behaviour

Apart from being over 35, not a (performance) number in sight.'

As always, thanks Mark.

Rounded Assessment: a summary

Richard Hill ( ACPO/GONW Liaison Officer) has produced a short summary document of the rounded assessment proposals and has very kindly given it to me to share with you. Download it here.

I was listening to HMI Kate Flannery giving a presentation this week, and she was at pains to point out that this  consultation document should not be seen as the finished RA product and that the development of 'rounded assessment' will continue for some time.

'Fitting the Bill' A one day conference on the future of policing in the UK.

On Tuesday 30 June (probably today as you read this!) I will be attending a conference hosted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) entitled Fitting the Bill: a one day conference on the future of policing in the UK.

It's a first for me, as the ippr have very kindly given me, as a blogger, a press pass to the event. So, I will be blogging about what is said and discussed. I will also be tweeting from the event. To read the tweets (those of you not yet signed up to my Twitter feed simply go to: twitter.com/openeyecomms).

The conference speaker list is comprehensive and includes Alan Johnson (Home Secretary), Chris Grayling MP, Peter Neyroud (NPIA) David Blunkett MP, Angela O’Connor (NPIA), Louise Casey, Kate Flannery (HMIC), Bob Jones (APA), Stephen Rimmer (Home Office), Rick Muir (ippr), Denis O'Connor (HMIC), Bernard Hogan-Howe (Merseyside Police), Alf Hitchcock (NPIA), Ian Johnston (Supts Assoc), Jan Berry and Ken Livingstone.

Subjects for discussion include: Policing and the public: accountability and public engagement, Managing performance without targets, Leadership and The future of policing.

Looks like a good day in prospect. I will try and keep you updated on Twitter.

Assessing Police Performance: Giving the public a voice

About a year ago Barry Loveday (Reader in Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth) wrote an interesting article, in the Police Professional magazine I think, outlining his views that the performance target culture had created a generation of middle managers at the expense of leaders. His contention was that the obsession with delivering central government performance targets required  little more than compliance and developed managerial skills at the expense of what the police, really needed, leadership and innovation.

Interesting than to see Peter Fahy, GMP's Chief Constable, arguing in the Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks ago that the government's culture of central control has produced a generation of middle and senior managers who are expert administrators with no instinct on how to how best to catch criminals.  He went on to explain that, in his view,  the police service is now hampered by an 'addiction' to targets  and that forces' ability to catch criminals is being undermined by perfomance targets and form-filling.

So, with that as the background context, now seemed a particularly good time to take a look at HMIC's new police performance inspection regime 'Rounded Assessment'.

The document which sets out the new regime: 'Assessing Police Performance: giving the public a voice' is currently out for consultation, with responses required by Friday, 26 June. Available here and in the sidebar under HMIC.

 Make no mistake, this one really is required reading, as it will define the performance inspection agenda for some years to come. It will most certainly occupy a place high in the thoughts of police authority and chief officer colleagues and, by extension, BCU command teams

Whilst the full document needs to be read and understood in detail, a couple of things worth highlighting:

As with the existing APACS, which it will replace, there will be five domains. These are:

Confidence and Satisfaction
Local Crime and Policing
Protection from Serious Harm
Value for Money and Productivity
Managing the Organisation

As far as is practicable, these five areas are mutually exclusive – ie, a particular activity or performance measure will feature in only one domain. The grading system applied to each domain will be excellent, good, fair or poor. Poor will be a very uncomfortable and very visible place to be. 

One of the key criticisms of previous performance inspection regimes has been the lack of context and professional judgement. Rounded assessment seeks to address this, and in each domain a professional judgement will be applied by HMIC to the range of quantitative and qualitative information available to arrive at a domain grade or score.

As always, one of the most difficult areas to  assess is Confidence and Satisfaction. The Confidence and Satisfaction domain will reflect the Home Secretary’s single target focus on confidence, measured by a BCS question (are the police and local councils dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in their area.)

HMIC's view is that in order to see the bigger picture and provide the best diagnosis of police performance, it may be helpful to set results from this measure alongside another BCS measure – the % of respondents saying they are confident/very confident in the local police. So far so good.

They then go on to suggest that 'Further understanding could be gleaned from robust local surveys on confidence and satisfaction'.  The problem with this is that currently only roughly a quarter of forces meet the  Home Office criteria for robustness in respect of their surveying.

The paper says that 'Statistics will be used sparingly, as research shows that the public is neither interested in, nor trusting of, statistics. We will focus on where the public is put at risk through poor performance, using easily understood graphics to convey key messages and explain relative performance to the public'

The critical thing to note about rounded assessment is that it is not designed as 'a practitioner dialogue'. It will be much more public-facing. Supporting this approach HMIC have already designed a public facing website to display the results of the inspections. It's striking how similar this website is in feel and approach to the Audit Commission's website which details the results of Comprehensive Area Assessment.

There is no doubt that,  driven by the old 'what gets measured gets done' adage, Rounded Assessment will significantly impact everyone's performance agenda. It will be interesting to see how the focus on these broad range of de facto targets affects future managerial behaviour. Peter Fahy has a clear view:

"Capturing the most prolific, the most dangerous, the most harmful is the best way to reduce crime, increase public confidence, and lift the souls of our staff. In my experience if you get this right there is a clear sense of purpose and, yes, a buzz in a team or division/department then the key figures will look after themselves."

Community payback: Where's your villain going to be breaking sweat and on what?

The results are out ! The public have voted. No, not Britain's got talent. More like 'Villains got jobs'.

The results of the public vote on how criminals should pay back to the community for their transgressions have been announced.

Essentially, a total of 18,000 people across England an Wales (rough population 53.4 million people) voted for what  they would like to see offenders in the 54 neighbourhood crime and justice pioneer areas across the country carry out first from a list of five projects per area.

The three-week vote through the Directgov website was part of the ‘Justice Seen, Justice Done’ campaign to raise awareness of Community Payback as a punishment for criminals, and was promoted in local newspapers and on local radio.

Every year over 55,000 criminals receive Community Payback – carrying out over six million hours of physical work on behalf of their communities to payback for their crimes. Look out for a bright orange waistcoat in the these areas.

Keep your eye on the Third Sector

Do you have your eye on the Third Sector (voluntary and community services)? Have you scoped how they are and could be assisting you ?

Their involvement in the active shaping and delivery of public sector services continues to grow and is being firmly promoted by the Government.

Following discussions with the Prime Minister, this week saw the launch of a new Cabinet Committee on the sector’s involvement in public service delivery

The Committee will consider the blockages faced by third sector organisations to securing and delivering specific public service contracts and agree actions for the removal of these blockages. The key thing to note is the cross cutting nature of the Committee. Ministers from the following departments have been invited to join the Group:

* Communities and Local Government
* Department for Children, Schools and Families
* Department for Work and Pensions
* Department of Health
* Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
* Home Office
* HM Treasury
* Ministry of Justice

With so many Departments involved and each keen to show their Minister how they are actively pursuing Third Sector involvement, expect a focus on this area of business.

Communicating for Confidence - but ignoring social media

The Home Office have recently released a series of four documents under the 'Communicating for Confidence' banner. Two of the documents provide a long and short version of 'practical things to do' and the other two provide the long and short versions of the 'insight and research' upon which the  communication suggestions are based. They can all be found in the sidebar under Home Office.

The documents may be useful at a practical level. What I found interesting was that all the documents together comprise roughly 174 pages. I have keyword searched  all of them and can find no mention at all of social media in general or facebook, twitter, myspace or any of the other major social media platforms in particular. The document does advise however that 'A website can be accessed by almost everyone, and is relatively inexpensive.' That's good to know !

Unfortunately, the omission and lack of recognition of the use of social media as a useful, practical, cheap and effective method of communication doesn't fill me with...well, confidence.

Neighbourhood Policing: None of the changes were statistically significant

Interesting. The latest evaluation of the Neighbourhood Policing Programme has just been published and it shows...well it shows that there has been no statistically significant change in outcome measures at BCU level.  that's what it shows. Or to put it another way, we think it works, we've invested heavily in it, we are inspecting the hell out of it, but we really don't know...yet.

The Home Office Research Report (here and in the sidebar under Home Office), most of it waaaay beyond my understanding) says that:

The Neighbourhood Policing Programme (NPP) was officially launched in April 2005, with every neighbourhood in England and Wales having a dedicated neighbourhood policing team by April 2008.

The primary aims of the NPP were to increase confidence and satisfaction, reduce the fear of crime and resolve local problems of crime and anti-social behaviour. Good outcomes all.

Results from the first year (‘Year 1’) of the NPP were inconclusive in terms of impact: although there were some positive changes in selected outcome measures, these were not statistically significant.

Analysis of the Year 2 data focused on the impact of neighbourhood policing on key outcome measures at Basic Command Unit (BCU) and Force level. Overall, there was some evidence that neighbourhood policing was beginning to have a positive impact on outcome measures at BCU level, but none of the changes were statistically significant. No positive changes were found at Force level.

Trying to explain the lack of significant outcome evidence the report argues that 'the lack of significant change may be a result of the early stage of implementation covered by the analysis (the second year of a three-year programme) when implementation of neighbourhood policing was neither comprehensive or consistent. This is reflected in the HMIC thematic report ‘Serving Neighbourhoods and Individuals’ which found that forces have not yet fully implemented the ‘problem-solving’ aspect of neighbourhood policing. It is likely that all three neighbourhood policing ‘delivery mechanisms’ (visibility, community engagement and problem solving) need to be delivered together in the right ‘dose’ before improvements are realised. So. It's a good thing but forces haven't got all the parts in place yet.

Or...it could be that the evaluation mechanism is wrong. The report states that 'Neighbourhood policing is deliberately designed to be responsive to the individual needs of local communities. As a result, it might not be possible to identify the impact of a diverse locally delivered programme such as this, using a national-evaluation approach. Another type of evaluation with a more qualitative, local focus may be better suited to measuring the impact of the NPP.

So. If I've got this right. Not sure if it works. Could be that forces haven't got it all together, could be that we need a different evaluation model. Meanwhile.....keep investing.

'Local policing and health care services remain insufficiently accountable to their local populations.'

Whilst it’s tempting to focus on things of direct and immediate interest to policing performance, like the Policing Pledge, there is a bigger picture and that bigger picture continue to evolve.

There was an interesting report published by the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee on 20 May, entitled: The Balance of Power: Central and Local Government

The report looks at the current role of local government, assessing where it could be more proactive in making best use of existing structures, and where change is required elsewhere, by central government and its agencies and by Parliament, to increase the scope for autonomous local government activity. Pages 30 -36 of the report take a look at ‘The delivery of local police, health and healthcare services: the role of local government’. I have put together an extract which can be found here. The full report is in the sidebar under DCLG.

The position of the Committee in relation to the localism versus national agenda is made clear: ‘During the course of this inquiry we have come to recognise the potential benefits of greater decentralisation in terms of outcomes both for local people and communities and for the democratic process’. It goes on ‘Local authorities should have the freedom to shape the development of their communities and the scope to unlock the full potential of local innovation’

The Committee asked a wide range of key practitioners (ACPO’s Sir Ken Jones gave evidence) whether local government’s role and influence needed to be strengthened in relation to local policing and health services. The answer from local government, and local government think-tanks, was “yes”

Andy Sawford, Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit, observed that in polls they had commissioned “both the public and councillors feel that there should be stronger accountability at a local level around policing and healthcare. Policing comes out as the number one issue that people want a say over in their community, and one where there is least opportunity for them to do it.”

A number of different local government and think-tank witnesses who gave evidence advocated a model where local authorities would commission local health and policing services from the local NHS or police authority. The Association of North East Councils felt that a commissioning model “under which the local authority would hold the budget for, and be responsible for the commissioning of, local health and policing services” would “be a bold innovation but it would take us a long way forward in securing democratic accountability”, and suggested that the model be trialled “in the first instance in a few authorities”.

The Chair of the local authority representative body, London Councils, was of the opinion that 'the way ahead is for commissioning to be carried out along with the budget for level one policing, particularly neighbourhood policing, in other words to be joined to the budget that local authorities spend, which is often quite substantial these days, pool those together and then for the local authority to commission the borough commander to deliver level one policing in our area'.

Not surprisingly, the Home Office take a different view. When Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker was asked for his response to the proposal that neighbourhood policing should move to local authorities, who would become commissioners for these police services, he was described as ‘taken aback’, appearing more comfortable envisaging local authorities in purely supportive crime prevention roles, observing that: “we see the involvement of local authorities in a crime reduction role”

Game on then, because the Committee felt that ‘local policing and health care services remain insufficiently accountable to their local populations. If local councils commissioned these local services, local accountability through the ballot box would be much stronger. At present, local councils are unable fully to assimilate local policing and health and healthcare services into their strategic vision for the locality. So long as two such important local services, arguably the most important for most local people, remain outside its scope, the full benefits of an empowered, autonomous local government cannot be realised’.

They expressed their concern that ‘neither the Home Office nor the Department of Health, on the evidence put before us, are ready to allow local authorities a real role in local policing and health and healthcare services. Despite recent changes that have brought in greater transparency and more consultation, the balance of power remains very firmly in favour of Ministers and the policing and health professionals over locally elected politicians. Whilst we acknowledge that there is much useful joined-up working going on in some aspects of local policing and health services, involving some joint commissioning, it is by no means sufficient to alter the overall balance of power’.

To make sure that the debate continues, they have recommended that the Department of Health and Home Office work with Communities and Local Government to establish a local authority commissioning model for local policing and health and health care, and, as a first step, the bringing forward of pilot projects in localities where there are matching boundaries and where some joint commissioning already takes place.

The Pledge: a promising start.

HMIC have recently completed their first round inspections of the police and pledge. They visited seven forces ( Avon and Somerset, Cumbria, Essex, the Met, Northants, South Wales and West Yorkshire) as well as undertaking reality checks and website reviews.

They have delivered a generally favourable state of the nation review, finding that there is strong leadership and personal commitment to the pledge at chief officer and operational level. They identify gaps in the communication (both internal and external) of the pledge and express concern that few forces appeared to be effectively monitoring the delivery of what has been pledged.

Overall then, a promising start. Some detailed points from the report:

All seven police forces visited had a clear direction from chief officers, together with a set of values that help underpin their commitment to provide a highly professional service. The forces all had clear diversity and equality strategies in place. The forces had also carried out a range of reviews to assess and improve access to services.

There were some good examples of getting through to harder to reach groups, but there was little evidence of the Pledge itself being translated into other languages; and formal consultation with minority groups or independent advisory groups on the Pledge itself.

The IPCC has identified incivility as one of the highest causes of customer dissatisfaction yet HMIC state that ‘We have not found very effective practice in responding to dissatisfaction, nor evidence of any considerable capacity to capture, analyse and learn from experiences to support organisational learning'.

Pledge point 2
Overall the work of neighbourhood teams is generally well explained on force websites

Pledge point 3
Assessing the amount of time teams spend in neighbourhoods is problematic.

Pledge point 4
There was evidence of a real commitment on the part of staff to get back to members of the public quickly. However, it is also true that this is a difficult area to monitor.

Pledge points 5 & 6:
Generally HMIC identified a very strong customer service ethos among staff who deal with
calls from the public on a daily basis. Their visits showed that staff have a good knowledge of the Pledge and an understanding of the key role they have to play in delivering it. All seven forces demonstrated that they have a well-developed performance monitoring regime within contact management centres and a strong commitment to improving performance was very apparent.

HMIC also found some good work being done in respect of advice and guidance to staff concerning vulnerable or upset members of the public. They identified some excellent processes within contact management centres to ensure that neighbourhood priorities were instantly flagged to the staff. However, areas of challenge remain, including: a force being confident in estimating the time of arrival for a response unit; ensuring that calls relating to agreed neighbourhood priorities are responded to within the 60-minute target; and appointment systems, where they exist, are somewhat embryonic.

HMIC state that ‘This is a critical area of work for forces as they develop their delivery of the Pledge and will be subject to further reality checking’

Pledge point 7
There was good evidence of meetings taking place but HMIC considered that there was still
a wide variation in terms of how the meeting was run. (There is clearly a training and skills issue associated with this point)

Pledge point 8
All forces have introduced crime mapping and some good practice exists, such as the e-cops electronic update in Cambridgeshire, in terms of providing updates on crime and policing issues. However, once again, this is an area for development, particularly with regard to consistency and sophistication.

A few forces which are particularly strong in terms of their approach to Citizen Focus policing encourage feedback from the public and use that feedback to improve their services. Critical to this approach is that the public can make their comments relatively easily, for example by using links from the police force home page, from quality of service pages or from the Pledge itself.

There are some examples of forces taking quick action to address any dissatisfaction or concerns. However, HMIC found that while all forces have well-established systems for dealing with what has been traditionally referred to as ‘complaints against the police’, there was little evidence of a systematic approach to managing general dissatisfaction. They found it ‘particularly challenging’ to find any robust evidence of forces acknowledging dissatisfaction with the service within 24 hours of it being reported. This will be a further area for testing during inspection.

About half of all complaint allegations relate to incivility, yet it was apparent from some focus groups run by HMIC that there was little local awareness about which issues were being raised by local people in terms of dissatisfaction – or how to resolve them.

Comprehensive communication strategies were evident in all the forces HMIC visited, however awareness and understanding of the Pledge varied. Contact management and Neighbourhood Policing staff were very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Elsewhere in the organisation, awareness levels were below acceptable.

HMIC’s advice: Forces would be advised to check their overall communications strategy and processes for monitoring delivery of the Policing Pledge.

HMIC’s conclusion: The Policing Pledge is a commitment to the public. Early signs from scoping work are encouraging; however, there is no room for complacency. Forces need to ‘step up a gear’ and focus their efforts to ensure that the Pledge becomes a reality.

The full report can be found in the sidebar under HMIC.

Police use of Web 2.0

I had an interesting meeting with Rick Muir at the Institute for Public Policy Research this week.

Rick is a Senior Research Fellow on the Democracy and Power Team at the ippr. They are currently doing a piece of work for the NPIA called policing 2.0  (which is essentially exploring the impact and uses of web 2.0 technologies in the police service).

Rick is trying to establish what has been, and is being, done so far (for example: use of online tools for police-to-citizen, citizen-to-citizen and officer-to-officer collaboration in crime reduction).

I have highlighted a number of things being done in places like Cumbria, North Northants BCU, Nottingham City BCU, Hull, GMP and West Midlands and have discussed some of the people and units using services such as Twitter, but, if you're doing good things and striding boldly into the use of 2.0 technologies, then I would encourage you to contribute to the report and contact Rick directly (please let me know too ! twitter.com/openeyecomms).

Rick can be reached through the ippr switchboard at 020 7470 6100 or directly on Twitter at twitter.com/rickmuir77

Public Purse McCarthyism

There can be little doubt in anyone’s mind that a new form of McCarthyism is alive, well and firmly entrenched in the psyche of the nation. Public Purse McCarthyism.

Times are hard and anyone seen spending money, or abusing the privilege of access to money, is to be vilified and castigated. It matters not that the spend may be justified and legitimate in a business sense, the mere appearance of the spend is cause, in the eye of the public, for irritation and offence.

The private sector led the way with high profile examples receiving blanket coverage.The corporate giants of motor manufacturing in America (GM, Ford, Chrysler) going to Washington to seek Government aid for a financial bailout totalling billions of dollars, but arriving in Washington on their corporate jets. In the UK it was bankers receiving massive Government financial aid, but still paying bonuses and dispensing lavish corporate hospitality.

If the private sector led the way, then the public sector, with the ongoing scandal over politicians expenses, has most definitely and comprehensively completed the job. As a consequence of the public mood there is talk of over 300 MP’s being deselected before the next election.

Quite simply, people feel that those in whom trust has been vested have abused their positions, and there is a sense of anger and mistrust. This anger and mistrust is manifesting itself in a mood of ‘public purse McCarthyism’. Public money which doesn’t need to be spent, shouldn’t be spent, and that which is spent had better be justified. No matter how sensible and justified the spend, it not only has to be justified it has to appear justified. The slightest doubt, the most minor questionability and those in the vanguard of ‘defending’ the public purse will vent and shrill.

So, why am I raising issues that you are all well aware of on this blog? Two reasons really: Freedom of Information requests and brand management.

With public leaders firmly under scrutiny (and a general election on the horizon), can there be a Chief Officer (or even a BCU Commander) in the land who doubts that journalists have already filed FOI requests to establish their expenses claims? To prove that the rot spreads wider into public service than just our politicians?

In my mind the question is not when will a Chief Officer find themselves in the glare of ‘public purse’ publicity, but rather who will be the first Chief Officer to face it.

Which leads me onto the second point, Brand Management.

Can there ever have been a time when the need to articulate corporate values, duty, and the nobility of public service was more obvious or pressing? With the public angry and tired of sleeze and the whiff of corrupt practice, isn’t now the time to talk about what the police service stands for, to express more clearly the ‘why’ of what we do, rather than just the ‘what’?

In marketing terms this means looking at the brand and its performance in the context in which it exists and making adjustments to meet the changes.

Yet, as I look around the police service, do I see that adjustment evidenced in the service’s media output? No is the answer.

What I see is essentially the same, routine stuff being churned out with little or no regard for the new context. Carry on regardless. Has any force adjusted its marketing strategy to reflect the new public mood? Is any BCU recognising the local implications and changing its media stance, actively and cognitively promoting values, duty and service as essential underpinnings of the confidence agenda? If they have, I’d love to hear about it.

Or is it a case of keep calm and carry on?

Views on the CJS?

Got any views on the Criminal Justice System ? Just a few, you say.... Well now's the time to get them off your chest. The Ministry of Justice recently published a consultation Green Paper ‘Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice' seeking your views on proposals for reform.

The paper sets out the Government’s proposals for transforming criminal justice from a system that does things to communities into (in their words) a true service that does things for and with communities.

Integration is the theme running through the paper (of both services and information provision) and Louise Casey’s footprint appears throughout. The vision of the paper is of ‘a criminal justice service in which all partners are focused on local communities and work together to tackle crime, deliver justice and provide high-quality services that inspire public confidence’.

The rationale is that if communities trust the system to deliver on its promises, they will be more willing to report crime; to come forward to give evidence as witnesses; to participate as volunteers and jurors or (maybe stretching the point here) to consider a career in the CJS.

The Green Paper proposals are centred on three areas:
strengthening the connections between communities and the prosecution and court services;
ensuring that justice outcomes are more responsive and more visible and,
improving communication between local people and their criminal justice services.

Crucial to the whole plan is improving the responsiveness and accountability of the CPS and the magistrates’ courts to the communities they serve. So Community Prosecutors will be introduced in at least 30 pathfinder areas for 12 months in 2009-10. The intention is that they will be more involved with their communities, more aware of local concerns and better able to reflect those concerns when making case decisions.

Community Impact Statements are also being trialled. The Community Impact Statement is a
summary of crimes committed in a local area which includes a section on the concerns of local people. The statement ensures crime and justice agencies are aware of the feelings of individuals and the wider community and enables practitioners to take into account the harm inflicted on both individuals and the community as a whole.

The level of detail in these will be interesting to see, as will the interpretation of ‘the community as a whole’. Whose data sets will be used, who will be compiling them and how representative will they actually be? Communities of interest, geography, or demography ? Does an overview of crimes committed in an area correlate with what concerns the community (whatever ‘the community’ means) or would ‘signal crimes’ that have been established as linking to the local confidence agenda be a more appropriate indicator for inclusion? Going to be an interesting one to watch. Community Impact Statements will be tested in at least 12 areas for six months and the results will then be assessed to inform national rollout.

Continuing the ‘lets involve the public’ theme, the paper proposes that people will be given more
opportunities to have a say on what work should be done under the Community Payback scheme in their area. The Citizens Panel concept, which provides the vehicle for local people to have a say in the work that is undertaken, is to be extended to the 60 Neighbourhood Crime and Justice Pioneer Areas by the end of 2009.

Apparently, nine out of ten respondents to the Casey Review questionnaire (there she is again) said they weren’t told enough about outcomes of arrests. The intention therefore, is to provide the outcomes of criminal court hearings on a public-facing website. The site will provide the final outcome of court hearings as this is considered the information of most interest to communities.

Staying ‘joined up’, the NPIA is working with the Office for Criminal Justice Reform to explore how information about aggregate CJS outcomes could be linked to crime maps so that they also show justice information at as local level as possible. A beta website, highlighting the outcomes of knife possession cases tried in the adult magistrates’ courts (supporting the current initiative on tackling knife crime) is available for the duration of the Green Paper consultation.

All in all, there are some pretty interesting things in the paper. As always, the devil is in the detail. The consultation runs to Friday 31 July 2009. You can contribute your views online here or by email to engagingcommunities@cjs.gsi.gov.uk  Go on, you know you want to...

Five go hunting...efficiencies.

One of the fun things about writing this blog is that the scanning you need to do to stay on top of unfolding events allows you to watch the strands of policy being woven into an emerging direction.

Three things have caught my eye in the last week, all of which appear to support a greater emerging focus on efficiencies.

The findings of the so called ‘five wise men’ of the Treasury, the extension of the ‘Total Place’ pilot schemes and the review of Local Strategic Partnerships by the Audit Commission. Join them together and you have a clear sense of travel. Maybe.

So, firstly to the findings of the Treasury ‘five wise men’. In short, they believe that there are still significant savings to be made by way of greater efficiencies in the public sector. The public sector has delivered 5 bn pounds of efficiency savings above the target for the last three years, but the five advisors (commissioned by HM Treasury for a year long programme examining operational spending in the public sector) believe there is scope for an additional 15 bn pounds of efficiency savings.

Each advisor examined the scope for savings in their area of expertise. Back office operations can deliver 4 bn pounds of savings a year and a further 3.2 bn pounds of savings a year on IT spending. This can be achieved through better management information, benchmarking and review of costs and better governance of IT-enabled change programmes.

Collaborative procurement can produce 6.1 bn pounds of savings a year through harnessing the public sector’s collective buying power by buying more goods in a collaborative way and driving more procurement spending through collaborative channels.

Property could result in savings of 1.5 bn of annual running cost efficiencies by 2013-14, rising to 5 bn pounds a year over a ten year period.

A further 20 bn pounds of proceeds from property sales, excluding council housing, may be possible over a ten year period.

They also believe that local incentives and empowerment have the potential for further efficiency savings.

Enter the second of the three issues, the ‘Total Place’ programme (you will recognise the increasing tendency for a focus on ‘place’, consistent with the ‘place shaping’ agenda and the sense of ‘place’ that underpins Comprehensive Area Assessment) part of Sir Michael Bichard's work on the Operational Efficiency Programme looking at the scope for efficiency savings in the public sector.

The ‘Total Place’ programme will map flows of public spending in local areas and make links between services to identify where public money can be spent more effectively. It has been trialled in two areas and now the programme is to be extended to 12 other locations. These are: Dorset/ Poole Bournemouth, Kent, Croydon, Lewisham, Luton/ Central Beds, Leicestershire/ Leicester City, Coventry, Worcestershire, Birmingham, Bradford, 10 Manchester LAs and Warrington, South Tyneside/ Gateshead/ Sunderland and Durham.

DCLG’s view is that the Total Place programme will lead to practical new ways of working - closer cooperation, more joint projects and greater pooling of budgets across local public services.

Coincidentally (why waste a good conspiracy theory though) the Audit Commission last week called for a firmer grip on partnership working. In their report ‘Working better together?’ (available in the sidebar under DCLG) which takes an in depth look at how local strategic partnerships are performing, they conclude more needs to be done in terms of governance and resource management.

Their findings suggest that resource allocation is not well managed (and if budgets are to be pooled within a ‘Total Place’ approach, then effective resource allocation and management is essential).

Most LSPs lack mechanisms for assigning mainstream resources towards achieving the goals of the sustainable community strategy and the local area agreement and few LSPs have assessed the costs and benefits of joint working. They also fail to align planning and reporting cycles and this makes it difficult for local agencies to align performance and resource management systems.

The Commission is also critical of overview and scrutiny arrangements to hold LSPs and partners to account. It found little evidence that governance arrangements are supporting LSPs’ accountabilities to member organisations and through them to local people. It recommends that overview and scrutiny committees should focus on one-off activities or events and review systems and risks. They should also assess performance in different themes and review performance data from LSPs and partners.

So, Treasury savings, Total Place and better resource management by LSP’s. Enid Blyton or clear links to an emerging agenda ? Time will tell.

Not about Twitter

Whilst I get the list of Forces and colleagues that use Twitter together, I thought that I would round up a couple of things from the last three weeks that you may find of interest.

Firstly, off to North Northants BCU where they have a cctv system that climbs lamp posts and an interesting approach to increasing familiarity with the local PCSO.

To combat anti social behaviour and crime in the area, the BCU has invested in several Sherpa Portable Rapid Deployment camera systems. The cameras, which can be deployed and set up within 15 minutes, can be fitted on a pole in any locality and can then be controlled remotely from a single location either by radio transmission (upto 1.2 km) or Wi-Fi.

The cameras, which have been tested in Northern Ireland, crawl up the lamp posts to any desired height, and are designed to withstand most vandal attacks.

The really cool bit is that and once set up they can be viewed from a BlackBerry handheld device, which all Safer Community staff on the BCU have been issued with.

So just who is my local Safer Community PCSO? What do they look like ? That was the public question that the BCU set out to respond to. The staff suggestion: cardboard cut-outs of the local PCSO displayed at strategic locations and times in the area to improve accessibility and visibility.

However, there is a steady turnover of Safer Community Staff so, with costs firmly in mind, full colour cardboard cut-outs with interchangeable heads have been developed. A generic uniformed body is used and different PCSO's can then use the cut out with their face. Clever solution and an instant diet if one is needed. Great.

Finally, a bit of self promotion (well HMIC are inspecting the Hallmarks of Citizen Focus at the moment, so it is topical), working together with Diane Lowe from Maxlowe, we have developed a scenario based approach to Citizen Focus training.

Aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at Inspector and Sgt level, the training provides a highly interactive and 'real world' approach to understanding Citizen Focus. Delegates get inputs about CF and then spend a day looking at a fictional location, understanding the complexity of partnership delivery and applying the Hallmarks of Citizen Focus to the scenario. In the last couple of weeks we have run the course for colleagues in North Wales. We had a great time and by their responses ( "So much packed into every day", "Thought provoking, I feel inspired", "Put it all into context") so did they.  If you're interested in getting this good stuff for your colleagues, give us a call.

Twitter, neglect and work

The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy.

There, that's the excuse. Got it out right at the start. No hiding. Exceptionally busy is code for: I've been neglecting this blog. I know it. Worse still, you know it and you've been pretty articulate about pointing it out to me.

However, for every downside there's an upside and my lack of blog activity has given me time for reflection about the mechanics of how I communicate (is shouting willy nilly into the blogosphere communicating?) and why.

The essence of a good blog is a personal conversation with many. Blogging allows a considered expression of a point of view. Space is unrestricted and the content inhibited only by the writers skill and imagination. It's the conversation bit that is the important factor here, or rather the pace of the conversation.

We live in a fast moving world, with 'always on' internet and a plethora of ways to 'chat' in real time. We've become used to the 'now' world and the new speed of the conversation, it's seductive and somehow gratifying, it provides a sense of connectedness. Blogging, particularly in the police environment where most colleagues still prefer their blog feed by email, is less immediate, more write and wait than type and 'talk'.

So, what are the implications for the way that I communicate (and possibly for the way that colleagues around the service use the new mediums) ?

A coherent and cognitive approach to integration seems to be the way forward, a blended approach across the various mediums and platforms. Many of you will know that I use Twitter quite extensively (follow me at www.twitter.com/openeyecomms ). Twitter provides a great place to highlight bite sized bits of information, little 'did you know's', current and developing events of significance. I allows me to provide a stream of relevant news about my particular field, quickly and easily. To stay connected to my audience, to show relevance and to add value. See it, appreciate it's relevance, tweet it.

However, where I have probably fallen down is using Twitter not just for the immediate, but in using it to place signposts to my wider writings and to my training and consultancy work. To such things as this blog. In short I've been lazy. Twitter is quick and easy. Writing this takes thought (oh yes it does!).

So. That's it. Mea Culpa. But now I'm cured.

Question is, how are you using the new mediums ? Are you just broadcasting. Shouting with intent? Or is your Twitter feed (you do have a Force/ Dept/Neighbourhood Team/ Specific topic or initiative Twitter feed don't you...) cognitively serving more than one purpose ? Is it linked to your other mediums and platforms ? Are the feeds targeted at specific key 'confidence' groups or issues ?

Twitter is becoming a tool that is increasingly being used by police departments, forces and units. In my next post I will try and provide an overview of some of the forces that are using Twitter and how they are using it. I will also highlight some of the colleagues who are actively using Twitter. I monitor quite a few of them, but if you know of any force/department/unit or colleague that is using Twitter, I would be grateful for an email (or a direct message to my Twitter feed). I would particularly like to hear about any mainland Europe cops that are using Twitter (forward this post to your mainland European colleagues).

Meanwhile, go check out CopTweet: the place where cops meet and tweet.

I'm a copper get me out of here

The news last week was filled with Lord Laming and issues affecting children. The Nottingham Youth Crime Conference will be in session soon and the Youth Justice Board will shortly be undertaking a practitioner workshop with North West forces.

I thought that it might be a good time therefore, to highlight a couple of schemes that directly work with children and offer them opportunities for growth and development.

Gallomanor run the highly successful 'I'm a xxxx, get me out of here' programme. Based on the 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here' concept, Gallomanor have run 'I'm a councillor, get me out of here' across more than 70 local authority areas and are now running an 'I'm a scientist, get me out of here' series.

Run in conjunction with local schools, the candidates discuss and highlight their position on issues of note (be that local/national politics in the case of 'I'm a councillor' or science issues in the case of 'I'm a scientist') and the kids debate the issues and vote  candidates off until there is an eventual winner.

The series are very popular. They are interactive and supported with publicity and learning materials and everyone seems to benefit from them. Having spoken at length to Gallomanor, I know that they would like to run an 'I'm a copper, get me out of here series' based around neighbourhood policing teams (either a one area, one team approach or across a BCU, where the kids vote on, and for, the approaches, views and engagement methods of the various neighbourhood teams across the BCU). If you are interested in this approach then contact me and I will put you in touch with the right person.

The other initiative that I thought worth highlighting is the approach taken by Safelink Resources. They run a thing called the Recreate Youth Project. This is essentially a peer education programme. The purpose is to tap into the information that young people think will influence their peers and to drive behavioural change. This approach has been successfully delivered in ten London Boroughs. The mechanism for engagement in this case, is the creation and development of a film. The young people help develop the script, write the storyboard and, working with professional film makers, and within the school curriculum, create the film.

Again, if you are interested in the Recreate Project, get in touch and I will give you the details of the right person.   

Police hiding bad news?

This story in the Bournemouth Echo is interesting because it has application across the country and is a good indicator of things to come.

With the move to the single confidence target, there will be an understandable temptation amongst colleagues not to publicise those things which don’t appear to show their efforts in a good light. To highlight the apparently positive (although, in reality, our communications targeting is so weak that quite often the apparently positive is delivered via the ‘spray and pray‘ method of communication anyway) and leave out the apparently negative.

Now there is legitimacy in this approach. Great brands and services don’t routinely go running around publicising their latest foul ups or examples of poor customer service, do they ? And, whether they like it or not, the press have no more right to police information than anyone else, although they will plead vociferously that they do (the role of a free press in society is far to heady stuff to debate in full here). However there is an expectation, built up over time and through custom and practice, that the press will be given certain information. Incidentally, I think that this unquestioning provision needs the application of some careful thought. If you are going to do it, at least think through why you are doing it, whether it meets your organisational needs (not the organisational needs of the press ) and whether the timing of your provision of information meets your news cycle objectives, not theirs.

So, pressure point one, the need to address the confidence agenda through your communications strategy (by the way, if your confidence communications strategy relies on the local newspaper, you are already planning to fail).

Pressure point two, newspapers are in big, big trouble.

Take the Bournemouth Echo as an example. The Echo is part of Newsquest. the second largest publisher of regional and local newspapers in the United Kingdom. However, Newsquest is not immune to the financial and business operating pressures which are now so obvious to us all. If you Google it you will see numerous stories about redundancies across Newsquest. Possible redundancies in north and east London, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Jobs gone in York, Brighton, Cheshire and Merseyside.

What does this mean? People working harder with fewer resources to gather the information is what it means. Overly office based 'reporters' reliant on briefings, press releases and FOI requests. Court Reporter ? Forget it. Gone the way of the dodo.

Newsquest is not alone in facing these problems and I'm not picking on them specifically. To compound the media's problems, advertising revenue is down and internet use is up (Where are you getting this information from? ). Circulation is generally down too. The audited circulation of the Echo In Jan 2008 was 33,215 but had fallen to 32,085 in June 2008.

Incidentally the unitary authorities of Bournemouth and Poole have populations of approximately 165,000 and 138,000 respectively. However, the Bournemouth and Poole conurbation also extends into Christchurch, Ferndown and Wimborne, and together it has a population that exceeds 400,000. I don’t know if the Echo covers the entire region or just Bournemouth, but either way its not likely that you’re going to be hitting your key confidence target groups by relying solely on the Echo, is it.

So police holding back information, journalists under pressure with the same pages to fill but no staff to do it. Light touch paper and retire ten paces…

This story is worth highlighting because the scenario is likely to be replayed with increasing fervour and acrimony around the country as the performance pressures on both parties increase.

The reality of police/press relationships is that we can be mutually beneficial, but only when the relationship is adult, cognitive and equal. My question to you is whether you have examined your local communications environment lately ? What are the pressures that your media face ? Has your operation changed to reflect the changed circumstance and increasing expectations that the confidence target brings with it, or are you doing what you’ve always done, in muc the same way as you've always done it ?

If your communications operation has slipped to a back burner issue for you, now might be a very good time to take a long hard look at whether it’s delivering what you want, in the way that you want and, most importantly, at the right cost.

Post modern racism

I read the article in the Guardian by Ali Dizaei this morning and it caused me some puzzlement. What is this thing that I’ve missed, this new and pernicious evil of which I was gleefully unaware. This wicked malaise that is to be found throughout the senior ranks of the police service and in our police authorities. This thing called ‘post modern racism’ which Mr Dizaei has so helpfully brought to my attention.

Ah, but then the penny tumbled. He’s cleverer than that. It’s not post modern racism per se that he means, surely that has to be an anagram for something deeper and more, well, sensible. Mmm, what could it be then?

I started thinking about concepts. What about the concept of ‘self promotion’, well at first the concept seemed to fit, but the letters were wrong. Same problem with ‘complete bollocks’. Sound concept but the wrong letters. So, onto the internet and off I went searching for the term ‘post modern racism’

Interestingly Ramon Flecha in his article entitled ‘Modern and Postmodern Racism in Europe: Dialogic Approach and Anti-Racist Pedagogies’ distinguishes between two kinds of racism: an older, modern racism and a newer, post modern racism. The former is, apparently, based on arguments of inequality and the existence of inferior or superior ethnicities and races. Whilst the latter holds that ethnicities and races are neither inferior nor superior; they are merely different. It emphasises the impossibility of equitable dialogue among different races and ethnicities to establish common rules for living together.

Well, having cleared all that up, I went back to my original theory and looked at the anagram generator here. This found 62501 anagrams of ‘post modern racism’. My particular favourite being: Commander Rip Toss

BoJo’s Race and Faith gig in the Met was always going to provide a platform for the angry voice (albeit that there has been some lucid and measured input too) and pages and pages of newspaper copy about and surrounding the issues that it raises. It is however, wearying, and, as public confidence becomes the overarching performance measure, damaging far beyond the Met.

Interestingly Mr Dizaei’s comments appeared on the day the Sir Paul Stephenson was reported as saying that police must move on from an obsession with race and that diversity was no longer "an end in its own right" He went on "That label no longer drives or motivates change as it once so clearly and dramatically did. What matters to the people of London is that we continue to change. It is actions, not definitions, that solve problems”.

Either way, I can see that ‘post modern racism’ is catchy enough to make a reasonable sound bite and will undoubtedly get sprayed around by those for whom it has appeal. Ah well, at least you know what it is now.

Reducing Bureaucracy

I have added a copy of Jan Berry’s ‘Reducing Bureaucracy’ report to the site under the Home Office section.

Jan’s report is fairly short, but the cross cutting nature of the issues that she is trying to address and the complexity of the policing landscape she is traversing are apparent.
She’s placed a number of signposts and markers in the report and it will be interesting to see how (and if) they come to fruition when her final report is published.

Her interim summary of recommendations are:

Organise a seminar with senior representatives from the Home Office, HMIC, ACPO, APA , the NPIA and staff associations to identify and agree protocols for implementation arrangements of national standards/initiatives across all forces

The National Policing Board or Policing Portfolio Group should consider promoting the principles of ‘Lean thinking’ to all forces, and provide a flexible framework to assist forces to adopt the principles in all their working practices.

Local Criminal Justice Boards should satisfy themselves that there is no conflict in practice between local police and CPS performance measures.

The requirement to collect data for activity-based costing should be discontinued.

Forces that do not have the Airwave GPRS locator switched on as a matter of course should review their policy. While there may be a small cost financially and in terms of network load, the locator has the potential to assist with officer safety, audit and accountability.

Consideration should be given to piloting, in a force that is currently introducing proportionate and ethical crime recording, an amended system extending police charging powers to include all summary offences, regardless of plea, and further offences subject to trial at either magistrates’ court or Crown Court.

Her Reducing Bureaucracy Practitioners Group has also identified ten processes which it considers particularly bureaucratic and which they believe would benefit from greater standardisation in systems, procedures and/or forms:
1. Accident reporting
2. Call handling
3. Case building and file management
4. Crime and incident recording
5. Custody processes
6. Domestic violence
7. Missing persons
8. National Intelligence Model (NIM)
9. Performance and development reviews for front-line officers and staff
10. Taser

The group also identified eight cross-cutting issues which need to be taken into account:
1. Interaction with the rest of the CJS
2. Partnerships
3. People (HR)
4. Performance culture and data collection
5. Assessment of risk
6. Training
7. Use of technology
8. Use of force