Early Release And Politicians Who Promise More Police Officers, But Just How Do We Keep The Officers We Do Have?
To say policing is under significant pressure is quite frankly an understatement. Politicians seem determined to promise that, under their watch, they will increase police officer numbers. Even those reluctantly willing to accept that their own party played a part in reducing numbers. We are now faced with another challenge: the Early Release Scheme. A significant groan will be heard by most having read that last sentence.
We can all complain and object strongly, but once again, the consequences land in the never-ending laps of those on our frontline.
We have read the recent letter from a borough commander, which sets out in plain terms what the Early Release Scheme has meant for his officers. Officers who are already under significant pressure.
As politicians continue to sell their promises of more police officers, perhaps the key question should actually be this: how do we keep the officers we already have?
There are only so many hours in a day for these officers. Retention is a vast subject, and one that deserves far more attention than it receives. Officers are leaving in their droves. And can you blame them?
Former officers are often quick to pass judgement, but the key point here is that this is not the job it was even two years ago. Society has changed, and continues to change. Whether that is for better or worse is a question we will leave to our sociology and theology scholars.
The bottom line is that, time and again, it falls to frontline officers to pick up the pieces.
The Early Release Scheme is another challenge added to an already demanding job. It is not simply a political announcement or a statistic to be debated in Westminster. It has practical consequences for the officers expected to respond when things go wrong.
Recent reporting has highlighted concerns about offenders committing further crimes shortly after release, alongside questions about electronic tagging and supervision. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has also spoken about officers arresting people who had been released early from prison.
These cases do not tell us how every individual released under the scheme will behave, and the overall reoffending picture needs to be assessed using reliable official figures. But they underline the reality that police officers must respond to incidents as they arise, whatever the political decision that preceded them.
And who is left dealing with the consequences? The officers answering the calls, attending the scenes, investigating offences and trying to protect the public.
Politicians can announce recruitment drives and promise more officers, but recruitment alone will not solve the problem if experienced officers continue to walk away. Numbers on a press release mean little if forces cannot retain the people they have spent years training.
It would be interesting to see a shift from every Basic Command Unit (BCU) share its calls and workload over a 24-hour period. Imagine the public being able to see the reality of what officers are dealing with, hour after hour, call after call.
Not simply the headline-grabbing incidents, but the full picture: the demands, the competing priorities, the paperwork, the investigations and the decisions that have to be made when there are only so many officers available.
Perhaps then the public would have a clearer understanding of what modern policing actually involves.
The Early Release Scheme is another challenge, but it sits within a much wider question about the pressures placed on policing and the people expected to keep our communities safe.
We hear politicians promise more officers. We hear arguments about numbers, budgets and recruitment. But where is the same urgency when it comes to keeping experienced officers in the job?
Before politicians promise to increase police numbers, perhaps they should first explain how they intend to stop the numbers they already have from falling.
Because the public does not just need more police officers on paper. It needs experienced, supported and properly resourced officers on the streets.
And those officers need to know that the people making decisions about policing understand what they are being asked to carry.
The question is no longer simply how many officers can be recruited. It is how many can be persuaded to stay.
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People who are convicted of crime are usually sent to prison, this is to protect the victims and general public and is the approved way of exerting contrition. whilst in prison the government provided a means of rehabilitation. halving the sentence and giving early release clearly doesn’t provide this service so the felon is more than likely to commit more crimes. so all the labour government has achieved is a prison merry-go-round for criminals who literally will treat prison as a respite between crimes