Rural Crime
Crime Reduction: Criminal Justice System responses to rural crime: The Police
Criminal Justice System responses to rural crime: The Police
Overall, police funding is being increased with additional resources of £1.25 billion over the next three years. The position of rural police forces has improved steadily since 1997. In 1999-2000 their budgets increased on average by 3.6%, compared with around 2.7% for the metropolitan forces.
In 1996 the then Government, as a matter of judgement, introduced into the police funding formula a “sparsity” element of 0.5% of funding. This is similar to sparsity factors in, for example, the Standard Spending Assessment for education. This factor, which specially benefits rural forces, has been retained by the present administration.
Independent research was commissioned in 1998 to look at whether there were additional costs in policing sparsely populated rural areas Last summer, a Home Office chaired Working Group, which includes representatives of the police service, police authorities and local authorities considered its findings. There was no single view within the Working Group. There was general agreement that a sparsity factor had been detected, but less agreement about how to include it appropriately in the police funding formula.
A particular concern is that to change the formula so as to reflect the report’s findings would involve taking money out of London and the other metropolitan forces and redistributing it to most of the shire forces. In general these have lower rates of crime per population.
The Government recognises the desire of rural Chief Constables and police authorities for the findings of the research to be reflected in a new funding mechanism. It has indicated, however, that it wishes to ensure that the funding mechanism is right and is seen as a fair and equitable way to fund the police service in England and Wales.
Ministers have also emphasised the desirability of stability in the grant system to help police authorities plan ahead. In July 1998, the Deputy Prime Minister announced a three-year freeze on changes to Standard Spending Assessment funding formulae pending a wide ranging review of the revenue support grant system across local government. In view of this moratorium, the Home Secretary has decided it would not be appropriate to make substantive changes to the method of police grant distribution for 2000/01. This included a decision not to implement, at the moment, the conclusions of the research into cost of policing rural areas.
The Government has recognised that sparsity remains an issue, and it is under consideration. It is for local Chief Constables to decide how best to use the resources allocated to their forces. Increasing the number of officers, or the number of officers on the beat, is not necessarily the most effective course.
The ring-fenced Crime Fighting Fund, announced in September 1999, has, from April, made money available specifically for recruiting extra officers. This gives a particular opportunity for rural forces to bid for increased numbers. Decisions on their most effective deployment remains, however, a matter for individual Chief Constables.
Accessibility of services and response times
Police stations are a visible form of reassurance for the public, but closure can often free up resources to maintain or improve service delivery over-all. The Audit Commission report Action Stations: improving the management of the police estate (Link to report) confirmed that public demand for access to police stations has reduced over time, particularly because of the greater use of better communications technology. All forces therefore, including those that are predominantly rural, are likely to review regularly the number and location of their police stations..
Forces currently set their own target times for responses to emergency calls, typically between 10 minutes for urban forces and 20 minutes for rural forces. ACPO currently plan to standardise at those figures. From April, the extent to which forces meet their response time targets is included in the suite of police Best Value Performance Indicators.
The Best Value duty, placed on police authorities from April, provides a framework for them and forces to review all their activities, including how they respond to the concerns of rural communities. An integral part of Best Value is that police authorities must consult widely within the local community before compiling Best Value Performance Plans and undertaking Best Value Reviews.
New technical developments will help all forces improve response times and can bring special benefit to rural areas. The Public Safety Radio Communication Project, for example, will reduce the amount of time officers spend at police stations by providing them with direct mobile text and message facilities and links to the telephone network from cars and handsets. This will in turn increase the amount of time which officers can spend on patrol or dealing with crime. Rural areas will benefit particularly since officers may patrol many miles from police stations.
Access to databases via the new facility will provide officers with information which will enable them to deal more effectively with incidents (for instance by telling them if there is an arrest warrant extant or if someone is likely to be armed). The ability to work in talk groups of several officers will enable them to co-ordinate activities more effectively without direction from the control room many miles away. Officers when operating at a distance from colleagues will also gain reassurance from a panic button on their handset.
Other technological improvements include:
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£4 million in capital in the current financial year for police aviation;
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a speedier reaction to calls and dispatch of resources through the next generation Command and Control computer system;
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a national Geographic Information System to improve the speedy location of incidents.
The targeted policing strand of the Government’s Crime Reduction Programme is designed to develop local policing techniques that can subsequently be expanded across the country. £40,000 has been granted under this provision for a new integrated strategy to tackle crime and disorder in small towns and villages in Northumbria. This makes use of a range of interventions, including high visibility policing, CCTV, raising drugs awareness and deploying a mobile police station to improve contact with the public. The project is tackling both localised offending and that perpetrated by travelling criminals. A local multi-agency safety group is developing intelligence about offenders and identifying hotspots.
Best Value and the policy of 2% efficiency gains may encourage a greater degree of cross-border co-operation between forces. This could benefit rural areas where, for example, officers from a town in one force area could get to an incident in a rural area policed by another Force much more quickly than that Force’s own nearest officers. There might also be scope for more co-operative working, eg shared premises, between different local emergency services.
For a comprehensive and imaginative approach to reducing crime and the fear of crime, it could be helpful also to look beyond the deployment of police officers themselves. Police forces may, for example, wish to consider how best to make use in rural areas of Special Constables or of civilian volunteers who could provide help and undertake duties not requiring specific police powers or expertise.
The use of neighbourhood wardens is another potential option, this concept might be successfully employed in rural areas. This could be a further means to provide an additional and complementary presence in a village.
Last update: 09/09/03