Police are failing to meet the public’s minimum standards of service, researchers find

Police services across Britain are failing to meet the public’s minimum standards of service delivery, according to a new report from the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre.

For the report, the research team (from UCL, University of Leeds and University of York) sought the views of members of the public across Britain to establish the minimum standards of service that the public should be able to expect from the police. The report measures this sentiment for the first time.

The survey was informed by focus groups in which participants worked collaboratively to define what is meant by local policing and the expectations people have around it.

Most people who participated in the research said they do not think that the police are a visible or engaged presence in their communities.

This comes amidst the backdrop of well-publicised crises, as well as a lack of public confidence in policing, which according to some estimates is at its lowest point for 15 years.

Professor Ben Bradford, lead author of the report from UCL Security & Crime Science, said: “The results of the survey show that public confidence in policing is currently tenuous, at best. This lack of confidence is strongly linked to a sense that police often fail to achieve what people expect of them.

“While recent high-profile events have clearly damaged trust and confidence, at least as important is the everyday policing that people experience in their communities. Many feel police are not present and engaged, do not provide an adequate response to calls for assistance, and are failing to build appropriate relationships with all parts of the community.”

Survey results

To find out whether the public think police are achieving the minimum standards of service delivery, the new survey of 1,484 respondents in England, Scotland and Wales covered three sets of expectations identified by the focus groups:

Response: the way police respond to calls for service, follow up, and address crime.
Behaviour and Treatment: the ways officers and police organisations treat individuals and communities.
Presence and Engagement: the visibility, presence and engagement of police in neighbourhoods and communities.

Respondents found police to be failing across all three areas. In the figures released in the new report, only four of 18 questions achieved a positive response rate of 50% or more.

In the Response theme, there were low levels of confidence that police deal effectively with violent crimes (41%), respond quickly (31%), prioritise the crimes most affecting their communities (30%) and provide adequate follow-up after crimes have been reported (27%).

In the Behaviour and Treatment theme, the public had relatively high levels of confidence that police are professional (74%) and would treat people with respect (60%), but less than half of respondents thought that police provide good role models of behaviour (45%), build relationships with the community (42%) and have good relationships with young people (32%).

In terms of Presence and Engagement, most people agree that police are responsive to the local community (61%), but only a quarter said that police provide a visible presence (25%).

Focus group findings

The new survey builds on previous research conducted with focus groups in four locations in England (Leeds, Lancaster, Lichfield and London).

The focus groups were designed to engage members of the public to identify ‘good’ or ‘effective’ local policing, develop an agreed definition of local policing and supply a list of core functions that the public expect police to fulfil, in order to establish ‘minimum standards of service delivery’.

Professor Bradford said: “The focus groups that we conducted highlighted that the public are more interested in the community aspects of policing than in the police’s ability to tackle crime, though this was also important, particularly for violent crimes.

“But it’s clear that factors like visibility, contactability, respect and empathy are important to people when it comes to their relationship with the police. It’s not just about what the police do to tackle crime, it’s about how they do it.”

Participants did recognise the financial and other constraints under which police currently operate, however, and stressed the need for other agencies, such as health services, to intervene or provide longer term solutions.

The scale of the problem

The research comes at a time of increased pressure on police forces. With the Labour Manifesto making key pledges on community policing.

Co-investigator Professor Adam Crawford, Co-Director of the Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre and professor at the University of York and University of Leeds, emphasised that the Government should not underestimate the scale of the challenge, saying: “The Government’s commitment to introduce a new Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee as a vehicle for restoring public trust represents a potential step in the right direction.

“However, our research suggests that for police to meet minimum policing standards, this must be accompanied by a drive to improve the quality of interactions between police and the public, not only in terms of neighbourhood police but also in ensuring that the public experiences procedural fairness, active engagement with communities and responsiveness to their calls for assistance.

“Given current resource constraints, the feasibility of achieving this requires clearer recognition of the limits to the range of social problems that police are expected to respond to.”