The 6th SIPR Annual Lecture

The new police professionalism – democracy, evidence based practice and a 21st

century profession

Professor Peter Neyroud CBE QPM

Overview• Reflections on the ‘old’ police

professionalism

• From the old professionalism to the 21st century

• Evidence, myths and legends

• Police professionalism and politics

• Developing a new professionalism

August Vollmer (1876-1955)

Chief of Berkeley, CA 1909-1932

Professionalised crime investigation

Put radios in cars

Recruited women and african-americans

Advocated college education for cops

O.W.Wilson (1900-1972)

Chief in Wichita and Chicago

Advocate of rapid response, deterrent patrol and investigation

Founder of police science degrees

Police Officer and ‘clinical’ Professor

Air Marshall Lord Trenchard (1873-1956)

Metropolitan Police Commissioner 1931-1935

Founder of Hendon Police College to educate an ‘officer class’ for policing

Founder of the ‘Trenchard’ scheme to bring young men from the ‘best schools’ in to run policing

His new Inspectors were lampooned as “genstables”

Professionals, genstables or plebs?

Police professionalism and

democracy• Steve Herbert’s “Tangled up in Blue”

• Subservience

• Separation

• Generativity

Subservience

• Responsiveness

• Consultation

• Accountability

Separation

• Independence under the law

• Cultural separation – the remoteness of authority

Generativity

• The police influence on society

• Epistemological – police structure citizen understanding of crime

• Moral – and project images about the morality of crime and crime-fighting

The end of the ‘old’ professional era

Research established that

• Random patrol did not produce effective deterrence

• Rapid response did not lead to more crimes prevented

• Reactive detection produced little more than information from the public

End of the ‘old’ professional era

• In the USA, random patrol became associated with ‘racial profiling’

• In the UK there was the watershed of Confait and the Brixton riots

• A Royal Commission and a Public Inquiry

Community Policing

• The search for a mission beyond crime fighting

• Built around Goldstein’s problem-solving model

• Recognition that majority of problems that police were asked to deal with were not crime

Intelligence-led policing

• A British contribution to policing

• A professional discipline of managing police

• Integrating other approaches

Compstat

• Rediscovery of police confidence to fight crime

• The opportunities of ‘big data’

• The emergence of ‘evidence-based tactics’

• ‘cops on the dots’

Evidence based policing

• Place: high crime places

• People: tackling the most harmful and persistent

• Protecting victims: focus on vulnerability

• Persuasion: importance of legitimacy

Myths and legends

• Despite 25 years of research police, politicians and the public are still thinking about policing and crime based on intuition not researched facts

• The ‘facts’ that follow are drawn from Campbell systematic reviews of evidence

Myth 1

• Myth: More police on patrol mean less crime so lets get “more bobbies on the beat”

• Fact: More focused patrol of hotspots and targeted problem-solving will deliver crime reductions

Myth 2

• Myth 2: But crime will just “move around the corner”

• Fact: No: far from displacement, most studies show a diffusion of benefits from targeted approaches

Myth 3

• Myth 3: Prosecuting offenders in court is an effective deterrent

• Fact: Formal processing of offenders (particularly young offenders) tends to have a negative impact on offending suggesting that “tough” approaches should be used carefully to target the persistent and harmful

Myth 4

• Myth 4: Community policing prevents crime

• Fact: There is very little evidence to support this but it does have a significant impact on police legitimacy and, one component, problem-solving, can be used in a targeted way to reduce crime

Myth 5

• Myth 5: traditional methods work best – e.g. house to house and arresting and interviewing suspects to detect burglary

• Fact: DNA is more effective at identifying suspects in a burglary than even fingerprints let alone ‘traditional detective work’

Why do the myths matter?

An analysis of a cross section of the campaign pledges of Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales shows

• A reliance on ‘increasing arrests and prosecutions’

• Pledges to “put more officers on the beat”

• Only limited reference to policies that are supported by evidence

The police are not much better

• In every police audience that I teach – across the world – I ask police officers and police leaders whether they have read the evidence

• With rare exceptions, they have not.

• It is not part of their education….they know the Theft Act but not the evidence on how best to prevent theft happening

Current influences on policing practice

• Craft: ‘clinical experience model’• Professional traditions• Law and Bureaucracy• Politics

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Standard police tactics

• Preventive patrol• Arrest• Prosecution• Post release supervision

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The Treatment model?

• Why do these tactics work (or better still, do they work?)?

• If you were embarking on a medical treatment, would you not– Want to know how it works?– Want to know about possible side

effects?– Want to know whether the doctor is well

qualified to deliver it?27

What are the active ingredients?

• Deterrence– severity– certainty– Celerity

• Defiance• Desistance• Legitimacy

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Deterrence: what are the ingredients of deterrence?

• Rewards • Crime Commission

costs• Perceived formal

sanctions• Perceived informal

sanctions• Perceived cost of

apprehension

• Perceived possibility of successful completion

• Perceived possibility of apprehension given non completion

• Perceived possibility of apprehension given completion

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And like all medicines, • It will only work if you follow the

instructions on the packet• If the diagnosis of your condition is

correct• Some patients will experience side

effects• Overdosing can cause serious side

effects• With some chronic conditions, you may

need to repeat the treatment…30

Take a problem like burglary

Traditional response

• Focus on traditional methods of detection

• Flooding areas with extra patrols

• General campaigns to encourage crime prevention

Evidence based approach

• Predictive prevention patrols

• Focus on solvability• Targeting high

harm/highly persistent offenders

• Repeat victimisation strategy

• ‘Turning Point’ approach for first time offenders

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Predictive prevention

• Deploying work developed by Johnson and Bowers– Using data to identify time/geography of

high risk places– Targeting high risk areas selectively– Focusing on crime routes

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Burglary Solvability

• Detailed analysis of data from burglary

• Focus on factors correlated with successful detection

• Aim to– Increase detection rates– Speed up process to intervene with

offenders earlier

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Forest Plots – Burglary Dwelling Completed OffencesStudy or Subgroup

Offence DurationTime to Police attend

Total (95% CI)

Heterogeneity: Chi² = 3.43, df = 1 (P = 0.06); I² = 71%Test for overall effect: Z = 3.51 (P = 0.0004)

Mean

20.08171.26

SD

104.42492.97

Total

91749826

19000

Mean

13.14132.26

SD

60.93532.75

Total

11061051

2157

Weight

98.5%1.5%

100.0%

IV, Fixed, 95% CI

6.94 [2.76, 11.12]39.00 [5.35, 72.65]

7.43 [3.28, 11.57]

Undetected Detected Mean Difference Mean DifferenceIV, Fixed, 95% CI

-100 -50 0 50 100Favours undetected Favours detected

High Risk (2.2%)

Neither High nor Low Risk

(36%)

Low Risk (61%)

High, Medium and low risk offenders

Cosma, Sherman and Neyroud

(forthcoming)

Repeat Victimisation strategy

• Focus on victims and areas that have been burgled

• Target harden around victims – cocooning strategy

• Use Neighbourhood Watch in high crime areas

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Operation Turning Point

• Combined deterrence and desistance treatment for first time/low harm offenders

• Deferred prosecution linked to conditions designed to encourage desistance– Curfews– Drugs treatment– Non-association

• Certainty and Celerity linked to desistance support

37

A new professional model?

• Using evidence to test practice and practice innovation to generate research

• Requiring all practitioners to qualify and keep qualified

• Requiring managers and leaders to be qualified to manage and lead

• Having a professional body that can ensure that knowledge is spread to the profession and beyond

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Key developments • Understanding what we know: i.e. Systematic

Reviews - the Campbell Collaboration on Crime and Justice (hosted by Norway)

• Development of translation tools - the Matrix (George Mason University) , NPIA/National College of Policing POLKA, UK.

• A revolution in Training: National Police Training Colleges into Police Universities and integration of Police Training with Higher Education

• The "Age of Austerity" - the pressure for more cost-effective policing

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Translation tools•George Mason University Evidence based Crime Center Matrix

• A comprehensive set of current "high quality studies" which have evaluated policing using a control v treatment

• Too many are US based but UK currently has a substantial number of Randomised Control Trials in progress

• GMU are working on supporting the Matrix with training frameworks and field tools to support an evidence based approach

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Translation tools • The Police Online Knowledge Area will

migrate to the new College of Policing on 1st December

• Designed to blend knowledge products drawn from studies with practitioner guidance and expert groups

• SIPR has an impressive track record of building practitioner-academic research partnership

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Police training and Higher Education

• Many countries have developed Police Universities from their police training colleges

• Trend to accredit police training or to partner with Higher Education to deliver

• Potential to move beyond this model?

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Neyroud Review

• Pre-entry qualification at Level 4: new entrants should be properly prepared for role

• Management qualification at Level 5: new managers should be qualified to manage

• Senior Management qualification at Level 7: senior management should be prepared to lead and manage at strategic level

The College of Policing

• Not a traditional “police college” but a professional body responsible for

• Educational standards

• Professional practice standards

• Research and knowledge generation and dissemination

• Accreditation of practice

Police and Higher Education

• O.W.Wilson’s vision of police and Universities coming together to deliver a better society is relevant for 21st century

• SIPR has placed Scotland in the vanguard

• The new Scottish Police force can maintain that lead by developing clinical-academic partnerships in teaching and research

Linking Police Science with Leadership and Management

• Tendency for education in Leadership and management to be divorced from science

• Important that disciplines of leadership and management in policing are also scientific

• And are developed with an understanding of the particular challenges of policing

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Leading the “new professional” policing

• Leaders are focused on – Processes– Outcomes

• Leaders need to – Challenge practice with evidence – Provide a vision to translate police activity

into outcomes– Pay attention to values and ethics – Transformational and ‘authentic’ not just

transactional– Be International in their outlook

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Plebs or professionals?

• Professionals

• Led by well qualified leaders, with

• Evidence

• Based

• Strategies