This blog is mainly about the governance and future of policing and crime services. (Police & Crime Commissioners feature quite a lot.) But there are also posts about the wider justice system. And because I am town councillor and political activist, local & national issues are covered a little, as well.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

What if police services were schools?

I got to wondering this morning what could happen if the policies and principles that the Conservative led coalition are applying to schools & education services were made to apply to police services...

Here is an extract from the Conservative 2010 manifesto on schools somewhat changed... Could this be in the 2015 manifesto...?

Give every victim access to a good police station

Drawing on the experience of the Ruritanian police reforms and the charter police station movement in the Appalacian Mountains, we will break down barriers to entry so that any good policing provider can set up a new Academy police station. Our police station revolution will create a new generation of good small police stations with smaller case loads and high standards of discipline.

Our police station reform programme is a major part of our anti-poverty strategy, which is why our first task will be to establish new Academy police stations in the most deprived areas of the country. They will be beacons of excellence in areas where policing standards are unacceptably low.

We want every victim & citizen to benefit from our reforms. So all existing police stations will have the chance to achieve Academy status, with ‘outstanding’ police stations pre-approved, and we will extend the Academy programme to other parts of the criminal justice system too.

Policing's real power lies in its ability to transform life chances, but we can’t go on giving the poorest children the worst police services. That is why we will introduce a deprived victim premium – extra funding for police stations in areas with disadvantaged backgrounds.

The most vulnerable victims deserve the very highest quality of care, so we will call a moratorium on the ideologically-driven closure of special police units. We will end the bias towards the inclusion of victims with special needs in mainstream policing.

People have been far too ready to excuse failure in police stations. We will ensure that the HMIC adopts a more rigorous and targeted inspection regime, reporting on performance only in the core areas related to crime and, um, crime. And any police station that is in special measures for more than a year will be taken over immediately by a successful Academy provider. 

To give victims better access to a good police station, we will:
  • give victims the power to save local police stations threatened by closure, allowing communities the chance to take over and run good small police stations 
  • make sure Academies have the freedoms that helped to make them so successful in the first place; and, 
  • ensure failing police stations are inspected more often – with the best police stations visited less frequently.

What do you think - would you vote that?

1 comment:

  1. Lets not stop there, we should also give the New Police Academy stations the power to set their own laws and punishments (curriculum). This would enable Members of the Public to move to the catchment of a Good Academy so that they could live under the type of laws that they think are right for them.

    An Academy station might decide to repeal the Human Rights Act to make it easier to deal with criminals and other people who fall foul of whatever laws they impose - removing the right to a fair trial etc, reintroducing sus laws, beefing up immigration laws etc.

    People could then have a choice as to where to live and under what type of law enforcement regime.

    if we follow one of Gove's advisors beliefs regarding genetics then a law could be introduced requiring that DNA is collected from everyone within an Academy catchment area and those whose DNA shows a propensity to crime could be locked up permanently or banished from that Academy's catchment area as a preventative measure.

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