2.1.3 Improving public value in policing

Public value in policing is a really useful concept when we talk about how we look at demand and arranging our resources around that demand. It's a current issue that policemen are trying to resolve.

I think often in policing we have relied on formal performance measures to judge public value. You know it's about our detection rate, how many arrests we've actually made. And that has a place and it does have a value. But actually, I think our value will derive from how our communities feel. When they see us I want communities not to feel frightened and occupied by policing. I want them to see us as approachable, as accessible.

The challenges of improving public value are around how we look at what it is the public want the police to do. So by communicating or engaging with communities, by asking them what it is. So we already do satisfaction surveys, and perception surveys, and things of that nature. But I think we need to mature more and find a way of directly communicating with what is effectively our customers.

I think there's an intrinsic tension that the public want immediate results. So the public will see that we are facing a swathe of fraud. And when fraud gets added to the crime statistics, we're talking about, according to the crime survey, 5.1 million fraud offences in a year. That's seismic, it will dwarf crime. It's larger than all forms of crime combined. So therefore, the public want immediate results. Tackle fraud, do something about it. But the reality is that 50 per cent of fraud is committed by criminals that don't live in the United Kingdom. And it's very hard to see a means of catching them and bringing them to justice. So the best you can do is disrupt.

We're seeing rises in different crime types such as child sexual exploitation, indecent images, issues around counter-terrorism. These are not easy things to resolve. So I think the police service itself looks to academia to help us with the evidence base of what works.

Terrorism, setting the public expectation with the threat levels where we are today. Of course we can disrupt terrorist plots. And we are doing so and arresting terrorists at the rate of one a day. But eventually someone will get through. And preparing the public for the inevitable impact of an event that we've seen in Paris or in Brussels is very difficult for a politician and also for police leaders. But the public have very high expectations, and it's not always easy to be able to deliver against those.

Policing continues to grow up. We would like to have thought we were the thin blue line and that it was all about the tactics and all about the equipment that we carry. And yes we have taser, yes there are more armed officers, yes our capability is more sophisticated. But actually, that is not sustainable. We're not here to battle communities; we're here to keep them safe. And keeping them safe is about partnership. Keeping them safe is about all of that early learning, all of those early years. We have cadet programmes. We have other community ambassador programmes. We are in our communities working with them.