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03 THE POLICE SERVICE IN SCOTLAND - LOOKING AHEAD
Like most other major public bodies, the police service in Scotland continues to experience significant organisational change. In addition, the greatest threats to the stability and wellbeing of Scotland, identified in the Scottish Strategic Assessment of March 2007, have highlighted the increasing operational demands also facing the service. HMIC acknowledges these dual pressures facing Scottish forces and their respective support organisations. Given this environment, the following chapter seeks to highlight what we believe to be the crucial areas for the service over the forthcoming year.
THE SCOTTISH POLICE SERVICES AUTHORITY
As mentioned elsewhere in this report, the Scottish Police Services Authority ( SPSA, or the Authority) came into being on 1 April 2007. Its role is to provide support services to the country's eight police forces as well as to the wider criminal justice community, and to maintain the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency. As a non-departmental public body, the SPSA is governed by a Board, appointed by Ministers in accordance with the public appointments process. The Board is chaired by a lay convener, and comprises two joint police board conveners, two chief constables and an additional two lay members. In terms of day-to-day management, the Authority is led by a chief executive, who happens to be a former deputy chief constable, and who reports directly to the Board.
As an independent body, the SPSA employs around 1,300 staff. It is assisted by a corporate services business area that provides organisational support in terms of finance, compliance, human resources, planning and performance, procurement, and corporate communications. Its fundamental role is to provide services in three key areas:
- Police Training - This includes the Scottish Police College as the central police training establishment for all eight Scottish forces as well as some partner agencies. It provides a comprehensive programme of training for police officers and police support staff of all levels.
- Forensic Services - The new national forensic service aims to provide an integrated forensic science service. It takes in the four pre-existing forensic laboratories and fingerprint bureaux located in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen, as well as scenes of crime officers from the eight Scottish forces.
- Information Services - This business area is divided into two sections, the first being Information Services - Criminal Justice, formally known as the Scottish Criminal Record Office. This section is responsible for developing, maintaining and managing integrated criminal justice information systems for the police service and its criminal justice partners. Meanwhile Information Services - Information and Communication Technology comprises a body formerly known as the Scottish Police Information Strategy ( SPIS), as well as some other IT development staff. It will continue to develop new information management systems for the police service, but will not completely transfer to SPSA until 2008.
The Act also made provision for Scottish Ministers to add other services to the SPSA in the future.
The legislation that created the Authority also brought about a change in governance arrangements for the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, establishing it on a clear statutory footing. While the Director General retains day-to-day operational control of the SCDEA, the SPSA is responsible for maintaining the Agency and overseeing its management. It is also the conduit through which Scottish Ministers direct the formulation of SCDEA's strategic objectives, and the Director General is accountable to both the SPSA and Ministers for achieving these. The Scottish strategic and tactical tasking and co-ordinating groups also have some influence on decisions concerning the Agency's operational focus and deployment of resources.
We are aware that the SPSA's development has presented a significant challenge to Scottish forces and their police authorities, as well as to the fledgling Authority's interim team. Nevertheless, we believe that its establishment has the potential to deliver real and meaningful benefits across the police service in Scotland - a development that all should support.
We also recognise that the Authority will need time to establish its own internal procedures and processes: this is an inescapable consequence of moving to a shared services model in an important public service. However, we are in no doubt that the benefits derived from such a development will, in the medium- to long-term, provide genuine opportunities for operational and organisational efficiencies in delivering support services.
Again looking to the medium- to long-term, it may be that the SPSA could provide all or part of the framework required at national level to provide, procure or co-ordinate other support services or even other operational services which cannot be efficiently or effectively provided independently by all forces. Obvious candidates for back-office services that might better be organised nationally are recruitment, legal services and some financial services.
We believe that there are also some operational policing functions that would best be provided, or at least co-ordinated, at a level higher than that of individual forces. Examples include counter-terrorism, specialist firearms support, motorway policing, air support, and some forms of serious crime investigation. Since its inception in 2000, the SCDEA has successfully evolved in order to improve its capacity to respond to the threats that Scottish communities face from serious and organised crime. It may be that, in the future, different operating relationships could be devised for different policing specialisms. For instance, the need for local accountability in such a sensitive area suggests that specialist firearms support units should always remain under the command of local commanders for specific operations. Nevertheless, all forces could contribute seconded officers to a centrally-managed, trained and co-ordinated unit.
However this 'supra-force' capability is achieved, acknowledging this need may actually help to focus the attention of local police leaders and interested local politicians on the much larger-scale policing activity of dealing with volume crime, disorder and the many daily, minor emergencies reported to the police. These more mainstream demands are largely very local in nature, and therefore are best tackled by local police staff and partner organisations influenced by community planning partnerships. In these instances, police efforts are best directed by local commanders and subject to local accountability.
In our view, it follows that creating a robust national solution for the very important but relatively small volume of policing activity that could be managed above force level, is one as yet unrecognised but effective way of improving and sustaining local or community policing. There is undoubtedly a wide range of views on this issue and we are keen to encourage wider debate on what additional specialist operational roles might more appropriately be centralised. (For further reference to capacity and capability, see the relevant section on page 35.)
HMIC has consistently argued that the SPSA, in delivering its services, must at all times focus on and be responsive to the needs of its customers. We are therefore encouraged to note that the Authority has included these concepts in its statement of values, in terms of accessibility, accountability, efficiency and cost effectiveness.
The SPSA's vision statement is highly ambitious, aiming for it to be a world-class organisation that continually enhances the effectiveness of modern policing in Scotland. We fully endorse this aspiration and, as indicated above, believe that the Authority's role and structure may have to expand to incorporate other shared services if it is to achieve this. Such a proposal will have clear ramifications for Scottish forces and we are therefore keen to engage with the Authority and its stakeholders in any future discussions on this matter.
Further information about the organisations mentioned above is available at the following web sites:
www.spsa.police.uk
www.sdea.police.uk
www.tulliallan.police.uk/
www.scro.police.uk/
www.spis.police.uk/
www.spsa-forensics.police.uk/
VIOLENT CRIME
Violent crime is a problem that affects not only the victims but also their families, the wider community and indeed the nation as a whole. The fact that for some people in Scotland violence is an everyday reality is irrefutable. Statistics from bodies such as the World Health Organisation ( WHO) have suggested that Scotland is one of the most violent countries in the western world. Comparative crime statistics can be difficult to assess because categorisation and recording practices vary widely from country to country. However it cannot be denied that violent crime, both in public and in private, is a significant problem in Scotland, the normalisation of which has serious repercussions for all in our society.
But violence need not be inevitable. We are encouraged by the growing realisation that the best way to reduce persistently high levels of violent crime is for the police to work together with key partners, such as those who contribute to the night-time economy, the health service, education and transport. A key strategic development in this area has been the emergence of the Violence Reduction Unit ( VRU) in April 2006. Originating with Strathclyde Police, the Unit is responsible for co-ordinating a national approach to tackling violence in Scotland. The Unit has since reiterated the WHO view, that a reduction in violent crime will only be achieved by adopting a public health model, and not by relying on the traditional criminal justice model which tackles the offender once the act has been committed.
From the work of the VRU and its partners, it is clear that the picture of violent crime, as reflected in the numbers of crimes made known to and recorded by the police, is seriously incomplete. Indeed one study conducted in Glasgow suggested that police are only made aware of about 30% of all violent crime. Recorded or not, the cost to society of violent crime is considerable. In purely monetary terms, it has been estimated that such crimes costs the NHS in Scotland between £258 million and £517 million each year. Investigating a single murder can cost millions of pounds, with legal costs running into the hundreds of thousands. These headline figures do not of course take into account the financial impact on the families themselves, particularly those where the victim is the main wage-earner. Nor do they consider the wider devastating impact on victims and families generally, which for some can be lasting.
Of particular concern is the link between alcohol and violent crime. The so-called 'booze and blades' culture can reflect a daily reality in some Scottish communities. Homicide statistics for the last decade confirm the prevalence of sharp instruments as the primary weapon used, while only 18% of those accused of murder in 2005-2006, and whose sobriety was known at the time of the crime, were not under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The Scottish drinking culture of heavy binge drinking in peer-groups is far removed from the more moderate, family-orientated drinking habits typical of southern Europe. The imminent introduction of new licensing legislation in 2008 offers some means of improving the way that all licensed premises are operated, though increasing the total licensed hours may well lead to higher levels of alcohol consumption. Licensing Boards, police forces and other stakeholders that inform them, would do well to begin preparing for these changes now. One useful exercise for Boards would be to consider imposing formalised definitions of 'over-provision' and establishing methods for identifying localities where the number of licensed premises has reached or is approaching that saturation level. Indeed the new Scottish Government may wish to consider whether it is fair to expect Licensing Boards, consisting of elected politicians naturally and understandably keen to promote local inward investment and increased leisure opportunities for their constituents, to take an objective view of harm reduction into account in their decisions.
In our view, other recent legislative changes relating to knife crime, sentencing and bail will also play an important part in tackling these types of offence. But legislation alone cannot change cultures. Alcohol-related crime can only be tackled by a concerted effort from all relevant public services.
An equally unacceptable aspect of the profile of violence in Scotland is its high incidence of domestic abuse. The fact that domestic abuse victims are increasingly confident that the service is willing and able to deal effectively with such incidents is reflected in the rising numbers reported to the police each year. However, there is some reason to believe that recording practices may yet vary across Scotland, and that good practice in the form of effective interventions being developed in some parts of the country is not being spread quickly to other parts. We intend to look at practices in dealing with domestic abuse in a thematic inspection within the next few months. In the meantime, we urge the police service in Scotland to continue to work with multi-agency partnerships and to participate in other partnership activities such as the domestic abuse court pilot in Glasgow because these kinds of joint initiatives, we believe, have the potential to provide sustainable solutions.
Still on the theme of partners, we would like to acknowledge Scottish Law Officers' efforts to tackle the complex and difficult issues involved in investigating and prosecuting rape and other serious sexual offences. A lack of understanding about the diverse social and legal factors that have historically resulted in low conviction rates for such crimes, allied with compassion for the plight of victims, has led to increased concern being expressed by the public and in the media. It is our belief that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service ( COPFS) review has gone a considerable way towards addressing these concerns, and will form a sound basis for delivering a better service to victims. Police forces have a big role to play in dealing with the victims of these crimes. That said, emphasis on all-out investigation as the overriding priority in the hours immediately following an attack may not necessarily be appropriate. Rather, balancing investigative and prosecution needs with the wellbeing and care of victims is perfectly possible provided everyone concerned approaches the task intelligently and sensitively.
Much work has been and is being done to reduce the incidence and impact of violence. In spite of this, recorded crime rates are still too high. We believe that constructive lessons must be learned by examining and evaluating the impact of past and current initiatives. We further believe that the current focus on partnership working has the potential to reduce levels of violence significantly in the longer term. For these reasons we would encourage the police service in Scotland to adopt a more strategic approach that includes extending partnership working, where possible, to all activities in this area.
For more information about the Violence Reduction Unit, please visit: http://www.actiononviolence.co.uk
TERRORISM AND EXTREMISM
Responding to the threat of terrorism was already one of the very highest priorities of the Scottish police service, before the reality of that threat became apparent through events at Glasgow Airport this year. International terrorism, in particular, poses a considerable threat to Scotland and the UK as a whole. Preventative work in this area has until now largely remained out of the public view, but is a matter which all public services and the communities they serve need to engage with. We too had already previously decided to make the operational outcomes of police efforts to prevent terrorism the subject of one of our thematic inspections this year.
A popular view of counter-terrorism activities is of dedicated personnel working separately in their respective specialist fields. As we are keen to stress, though, local police officers also have an important part to play. Community police officers in particular have a crucial role in gathering intelligence, particularly that concerning extremist groups who have been shown in the past to be key to the radicalisation of known terrorists.
But it is not just international terrorism that is of concern. The re-introduction of power-sharing in Northern Ireland and the Ulster Volunteer Force's renunciation of violence have seen a concomitant reduction in levels of associated violence. Nevertheless, the threat from dissident Republican groups remains and fund-raising for Loyalist causes still goes on, both of whom continue to enjoy residual support in Scotland.
Another potential threat is domestic extremism. Scotland has a long tradition of non-violent protest against, for example, the Clyde submarine base and RNAD Coulport. We would venture to distinguish between the occasions when protesters' actions amount to civil disobedience, and which is dealt with through law enforcement when laws are broken, and the type of harmful violence to people and property which amounts to terrorism that is advocated and practiced by, for instance, some animal rights extremists.
Scotland is no less likely than other parts of the world today to be a base for terrorist or extremist activity. Such acts are often the culmination of months and, on some occasions years, of planning and preparation. It is therefore imperative, we stress again, that Scottish forces are aware of the important role to be played by local community police officers, and public vigilance is essential if we are to combat such threats.
If you have any information that you think could be relevant, please visit the following website: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page18.html
COMMUNITY PLANNING
Community planning brings together public sector organisations, local communities and the business and voluntary sectors to identify and solve local problems. Since 2003 the Local Government in Scotland Act has placed a statutory duty on key public bodies, including the police, to participate in the community planning process. The result has been a greater emphasis on joined-up working to bring about a more integrated approach to delivering services. Community planning is considered a central tenet of the public sector reform agenda and has the potential to create synergies across the spectrum of public services. At the same time, participating bodies have recognised the need to involve communities in the decision-making stages of community planning, given that it is they who will be affected by any subsequent change to services.
Over the course of last year's inspections we were pleased to observe forces' active commitment to community planning. This was not unexpected, given the strong partnership working ethos that has permeated the service for some time. Nevertheless, as a 2006 Audit Scotland report highlights, some difficulties persist. These are due in part to geographical boundary differences between public sector bodies, fragmented funding arrangements, complex partnership relationships and under-developed planning and performance management systems. There is good evidence, however, of the police service in Scotland trying to work round these obstacles. For example, both Strathclyde and Lothian & Borders Police have realigned their policing boundaries so that divisional arrangements in Glasgow and Edinburgh are coterminous with local community planning partnership structures. We strongly support ACPOS' belief that community planning may well hold the key to better delivery of all local services, including the majority of policing activity. The challenge will be to find a means of ensuring that the governance and accountability of policing, currently shared in six of the eight forces at a level higher than that at which community planning is practiced, is appropriately reflected in developing partnerships at that level.
Given the volume of anti-social behaviour in certain Scottish communities, and the local and national political prominence that it has received in recent years, there is little wonder that anti-social behaviour is a high profile issue for the police in the community planning arena. That said, we are encouraged to note that anti-social behaviour or disorder is no longer considered a problem for the police alone to tackle. Instead, the community planning process has prompted a change of culture to one that views disorder as a multi-agency matter requiring a collaborative response, not just from public services but also from the business and voluntary sectors.
There are examples of this kind of activity throughout Scotland, with police forces involved in groundbreaking schemes that have joint working arrangements at their core. One of the most prominent is the Glasgow City Council-led Crime Prevention Pathfinder scheme. Part of the council's Pathfinder reform programme the scheme encourages a holistic approach to tackling crime and anti-social behaviour in the city. Other examples include Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary's approach to youth justice matters, where the latest available figures (up to September 2006), show rates of re-offending within six months of receiving a restorative justice warning, of 5.4%. Another is Fife's Safer Neighbourhoods team, which targets areas requiring longer-term intervention to deal with disorderly behaviour. In addition to these specific projects, we have been encouraged to see local crime reduction strategies centred on collaborative partnerships between public sector partners and other bodies such as transport providers, those involved in the licensing and late night catering industries, and relatively new groups, such as street pastors.
The results of the foregoing schemes suggest that working with partners across organisational boundaries can reduce criminal behaviour and reassure the public. Indeed joint initiatives dealing with problems emanating from the night-time economies of cities and towns, and the daily, ongoing work to make local communities safer, demonstrate how much can be gained by operating in tandem with key stakeholders. We believe that this approach should form the basis for community planning partnerships seeking to resolve the kinds of seemingly intractable, lower level problems experienced by local communities. Such an approach will also, we hope, encourage greater community participation in resolving these matters.
Another group of people who contribute to tackling street safety and order are the 550 or so community wardens currently employed across Scotland. With few enforcement powers, wardens cannot intervene directly to contain unacceptable behaviour, but part of their role is to help the police and other agencies by reporting any incidents of which they become aware. The Scottish Executive research report Evaluation of the Impact and Implementation of Community Wardens (March, 2007) recently raised some questions around their deployment and impact, its findings revealing little consistency across Scotland in how wardens are used. We nevertheless appreciate that the development of good practice in this area is still in its infancy. Furthermore, we offer the view that the use of community wardens employed by local authorities appears to provide Scotland with a proper balance of responsibility for what might be described as neighbourhood problems. The different approach south of the Border, where Police Community Support Officers are employed and directed by police forces, may put too much emphasis on the police as the only organisation interested in and responsible for civic behaviour.
Whether the community warden scheme is retained in its current form is of course a policy decision to be reviewed by the Scottish Government prior to the cut-off date for funding in 2008. We believe that councils who are actively exploring or implementing ways of continuing their warden schemes are certainly making positive and responsible contributions to the shared goal of community safety and crime reduction.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
The Local Government in Scotland Act 2003 also puts an onus on public sector bodies to improve their services continuously. As a consequence, how Scottish forces spend their budgets has come under more scrutiny. With current spending on the police in Scotland now exceeding £1 billion, forces are under greater pressure than before to provide value for money, by both making annual efficiency savings and improving effectiveness by better performance management. However, actually determining what constitutes good performance in a policing context is a complex and difficult task.
For a long time, crime rates have been considered the definitive measure of police effectiveness. In previous HMIC annual reports and in our 2005 thematic on performance management, we have repeatedly warned against relying on recorded crime figures without at least considering the wider environment in which they occur. Economic, geographic and social conditions, and therefore crime profiles, differ not just between the eight Scottish forces but also internally across the wide range of communities that each force serves.
In our 2005 thematic inspection report Managing Performance we recommended a fundamental review of how policing performance measures are identified. In response, members of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland ( ACPOS), Audit Scotland, HMIC, the Scottish Executive, the eight Scottish forces and the Scottish Police Authorities Convenors Forum have created the Scottish Policing Performance Framework ( SPPF). The Framework is a national model for measuring and reporting performance information. Its first iteration, containing high-level objectives and associated performance indicators, was published in April 2007. It is divided into four key areas - service response, public reassurance and community safety, criminal justice and tackling crime, and sound governance and efficiency - covering the wide scope of policing activity in Scotland. Regularly published reports on performance against the Framework measures should further improve local and national accountability.
Next year our annual report will contain the first annual publication of police performance and other environmental information in Scotland using the Framework. In some cases the statistical data behind the indicators will not previously have been recorded, and thus our ability to identify trends over time will initially be limited. We will, of course, seek the advice of forces when compiling the important contextual commentary for the report. Nor should this development be interpreted as a move towards police force league tables. Rather it is an aid to understanding the performance of individual forces in the wider, national context and in the differing environments in which they operate.
As implied above, work continues to develop the Framework. The intention is to add other measures in the years to come, particularly where some commonality or consensus already exists at the local level. We are pleased to see that the national control strategy, as an intelligence-driven identification of Scotland's policing priorities, will be used to help shape relevant future indicators.
Another potential aid to identifying and particularly implementing measures will be the national IT performance management platform. In parallel with the developing Framework, ACPOS' Performance Management business area has been working on a project to provide a common performance management system. We believe that by making information readily accessible to all levels of the service and its main stakeholders, the IT platform will prove to be the necessary catalyst for achieving tangible performance improvements. The initial set-up phase will concentrate on capturing performance data at force or divisional level. It is anticipated that in time the system will also include data on performance down to team and indeed individual level. When fully functioning, the IT platform will therefore give police managers the information necessary to drive continuous improvement from the street level up, while allowing greater public scrutiny down from the national to the local community level.
In our view, both developments have the potential to raise performance significantly across the service. Key to the success of the Framework will be establishing a flexible process for adding or removing measures as and when appropriate. This should be clearly understood, allow sufficient time for changes to be made and cause minimum disruption.
Further information on the Scottish Policing Performance Framework can be found by following this link: www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/03/16162825/0
CAPABILITY AND CAPACITY
As the section above demonstrates, the police service in Scotland is committed to continuous improvement. This includes both better services and greater efficiency. Over the last two years the service has generated significant efficiency savings over a wide range of activities and functions.
In seeking to build on these achievements, the police service and its stakeholders have recognised a challenge emerging from 21st century requirements and public expectations. And that is, that the kind of advanced technologies and expertise required to address old and new policing problems - from difficult murder investigations to armed criminals - are not always available or regularly enough used across all parts of the country to provide consistency. So while specialist resources needed to deal with serious crimes or serious threats of harm to the public are certainly available in Scotland, they are not always in the right place at the right time. In a country of Scotland's geographical pattern and population it is unrealistic to expect each of its eight forces, or even groups of forces, to maintain a permanent capability in what are critically important but essentially minority activities.
As one of the first steps in addressing this situation, ACPOS agreed in 2005 to analyse and assess the capacity of the Scottish police service across an initial selection of its 'protective services', including tackling serious and organised crime, investigating major crimes, counter-terrorism, dealing with armed criminals and preserving public order.
The review, led by designated chief officers and aided by relevant specialists from the various work-streams, resulted in a gap analysis being carried out to assess required operational capacity against future risk. Arising from this work were a number of recommendations focusing on how best national capacity might be increased and what improvements to collaborative mechanisms, national processes and support structures could be required to maintain the service's strategic capacity and capability. However, in some work-streams where a less in-depth review methodology was applied, the recommendations were limited to highlighting the need for more detailed examination.
The police service in Scotland is accustomed to applying a collaborative approach to events that are beyond the capability of a single force. In the last 20 years, incidents such as the Lockerbie terrorist bombing, the outbreak of foot and mouth, the fire service strike, the G8 summit and subsequent counter-terrorism operations, have demonstrated that the service is capable of participating in national policing operations. The successful resolution of these events in terms of police involvement is good evidence of the co-operative culture at all levels of Scottish policing. Nevertheless it has to be said that when there is more than one major demand on resources at any one time, the lack of a clear chain of command can make collaboration difficult, though never impossible.
We believe that the capability and capacity review should be seen as an opportunity to shape the best way, rather than the most acceptable way internally, to deliver certain key policing services in Scotland well into the next decade. In seeking to resolve these important matters, ACPOS has confirmed its commitment to continuing this programme of work, demonstrating that this remains an essential element of the service's desire and willingness to respond to the change agenda. We too will endeavour to play our part, by promoting solutions that maximise value for money and public confidence, but most importantly, which provide the most effective possible policing for everyone in Scotland regardless of where they live.
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