The Sunday Telegraph reported yesterday on the work of Mr. Rodger Patrick, later Dr.Patrick? The retired West Midlands police chief inspector submitted his work towards a PhD.
The part reported by the paper concerns techniques used by the police, with tacit approval by senior officers, police watchdogs and the Home Office, which are designed to pretend that fewer crimes are being committed and that a higher proportion are being solved.
The whole broad area of deceits is called "gaming" and includes charging when there is insufficient evidence, knowing that the prosecutors will not proceed, although the crime seems to have been solved (-known as stitching), ending reports as being false or with downgraded level of seriousness (- cuffing), concentrating on easier to solve crimes to increase detection rates (-skewing), or persuading convicted criminals to admit to crimes they have not committed (-nodding).
Most of us have heard instances of these, or suggestions, and most of them are almost inevitable conclusions of the target driven culture in which the police operate. It seems that when police forces are attacked on one of these practices, there is a rapid rise in other categories, which suggests that the practices are widespread within and among forces.
So we have a government driving the police force by targets, and then wallowing proudly in the supposed crime reductions produced by such practices. (Did nobody dare to tell them what has been going on, or was it that they just did not want to know?)
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