Police officers must be trained to step in early and prevent crime
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Version 0 of 1. Sitting in an A&E department in a large hospital I watched a police officer settle a distressed, drunk and confused young man with calm and assurance and was struck by the range of skills a good officer must have. Related: Tough case to crack: the mystery of Britain's falling crime rate While crime has fallen in recent years, the demands on the police have not reduced accordingly. Police work increasingly involves picking up the pieces at crisis points – when a child goes missing, is out late and unsupervised, self-harms or reports abuse, or when a domestic argument escalates. In some forces, public safety and welfare now represent the largest category of recorded incidents. Recent College of Policing analysis [pdf] shows that police spend increasing amounts of time dealing with problems other than crime: non-crime incidents account for 84% of all command and control calls. These incidents usually involve vulnerability, public protection and safeguarding and as such, are likely to be more complex and use more resource. It’s not surprising that police officers are some of the most powerful advocates for early intervention – getting to problems early on before they escalate and become so much harder to reverse. We hear frustration from police officers about the issues they see and could respond to earlier and more effectively if they were able to involve schools, GPs, family support services, social workers or the wider community at the right time. Some of the loudest voices calling for a different response to vulnerability in local communities come from within the police service – and many forces are starting to work differently. In Dorset, the police and crime commissioner is spending some of his budget on the early years; in Blackpool, when the police spot children in families at risk of domestic violence, rather than take no action if there is no likelihood of a prosecution they now refer people on to family support services. The police-led, multi-agency Margate task force is supporting high-risk young people by working with their whole family to make sure problems are tackled consistently by everyone. Related: The police, like vicars, are now the social service of last resort | Giles Fraser: Loose canon Some police officers have initiated new ways of working with partners at a neighbourhood level. This involves bringing together the collective resource of public services – integrated teams which focus on crime and vulnerability hot spots. In Lancashire, the police force wants to create a single “neighbourhood early action team” with frontline practitioners from health, social work and youth services. Where critical gaps in services exist, such as the need for community mental health workers, they are making the case to fill these gaps themselves. For police leaders, this means changing how the police works and how individual officers are incentivised. The culture in some local forces needs to change: early intervention, problem solving and going the extra mile should be encouraged and rewarded through performance management structures. This is the type of work we need to create a police force fit for the challenges of the 21st century. Carey Oppenheim is chief executive at the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF). The EIF is launching an early intervention academy for police leaders. Click here to find out more. Sign up here for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday. Follow us on Twitter via @Guardianpublic |