The Million Civilians

Readers of my last post might be wondering why so many civilians are employed by the police. Whilst part of the answer is obviously MONEY (civilians are cheaper, have cheaper kit, cheaper training and can be shot if they don't perform well), a bigger reason is NCRS: the fabled National Crime Recording Standards.

In the 21st Century, managers and politicians have realised that it is not important how much crime there is, nor how much is solved or prevented, but the most important thing is to record it properly. The NCRS are rules that police forces have to follow in order to both record crime, get rid of crimes that have been recorded, and to claim credit for crimes they have solved.

Here's the clever bit: police forces have for a while now been graded between Poor and Excellent on things like victim satisfaction, crime reduction, crime detection etc. Well now they are graded on their level of compliance with NCRS too. Which means that a police force that is incapable of reducing, preventing or detecting crime can still be graded as Excellent in the way they record it.

Blandshire Constabulary, along with many others, has long since given up a hope of being Excellent at reducing or detecting crime. Instead it has poured all its resources into recording crime as well as possible. There is a slew of civilians whose jobs are to check every crime report for compliance with NCRS and send out emails to the malevolent officers who have failed to enter their victim's ethnic background, age or favourite colour. There are more civilians to check that officers have not vindictively forgotten to update the system with detections, and yet more to make sure that the detections that are on the system are not lies. Another tier of civilians will then audit all crime reports prior to the statistics heading off to the Home Office.

It doesn't matter how many rioters roam the streets of Blandmore smashing windows and beating up random strangers, nor how many old ladies are duped by con artists at their front door. It does not matter how many knives are held to the throats of schoolchildren, nor masked men burst into the bookies on a Saturday afternoon. Instead we can all rest easy that all of these things will be most ethically and perfectly recorded in line with Home Office rules.

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