Are we doomed?

This thread on PC Copperfield's book is an interesting one. There is a lot of talk about cooking the crime books and police not caring about crime.

In my experience it is the Home Office, not police forces, who cook the books. We are all now governed by the National Crime Reporting Standards which is supposed to standardise figures across all forces. They have not standardised anything, however, as some forces count "administrative" detections towards their overall rate and others do not (these are Detections where no crime has actually been detected).

As for police not caring about crime, here is the process that occurs when you ring up to report a crime in Blandmore. For simplicity's sake, this is one where the victim knows the name of the offender:

1. Crime report is created.
2. Police attend and take statements. If there are a couple of witnesses, this can take up to ten hours spread over a week or so as the police officer runs around trying to catch up with the witnesses.
3. Offender arrested - can take many attempts to locate them and is usually done by ringing them up and asking them to come to the police station to be arrested.
   
4. Offender interviewed, bailed for CPS advice or further work to be done.
5. Assuming there is enough evidence to go ahead, several weeks later the offender answers bail. If they fail to answer, a massive file must be created to label them as "wanted". If they do attend, a massive file must be done for court.

This whole process can have taken up to thirty or more hours spread over weeks or months. If the victim nor witnesses were able to name the offender, there is really no way to trace them unless it is a murder (murders are solved very successfully in the UK).

Your average police officer is not lazy. But he/she does feel a bit daunted at the thought of the months ahead in which he/she will receive snotty emails from the Inspector and Head of Critical Emailing. He/she worries about finding the time to take the necessary statements, and feels constantly stressed at the ten other similar cases piling up in his/her docket. He/she also worries about the court file. He/she worries a lot about that. Plus the fact that having done all that work, the courts will wait twelve months before having the trial and then bin the whole thing because a witness who was not told about the trial in time has failed to show up. This is demoralising, to say the least.

Hence, very often, the following course of action is taken as a way out:

1. Crime report is created.
2. Police officers attend and persuade the victim that there is nothing they can do. By the time they leave, what was reported as an "assault" is now a "verbal argument", the "harassment" is a "civil dispute", the "robbery" a "misunderstanding".
3. The victim has now fallen into the category of people who are dissatisfied with the police.

Sadly, we have a choice between playing under a demoralising and stressful system, or lying.

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