Editorial

Citation

Bateman, T. and Smithson, H. (2015), "Editorial", Safer Communities, Vol. 14 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/SC-08-2015-0031

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Safer Communities, Volume 14, Issue 4.

Tim Bateman and Hannah Smithson

From the perspective of many members of the public, the essence of community safety is what happens on the street. It is there that potential dangers are most visible and the impact of a lack of response from criminal justice agencies most keenly felt. One manifestation of this understanding, is the tendency in many quarters, to identify positive policing with a public police presence, despite the research evidence suggesting the “bobbies on the beat” have a relatively limited impact on the extent of crime and anti-social behaviour.

The current Conservative administration, like the Coalition which it replaced but unlike previous governments of the right, has approached the police in a similar manner to other public services, as an agency that should share the pain of austerity with inevitable consequences for the manner on which the streets are regulated. This more recent development has reinforced the transformation of policing over the longer-term in which that function is no longer focused to the same extent on public space or delivered through the public police force.

Rachel Swann’s paper in this issue of Safer Communities explores one aspect of such developments in her account of the role of Street Pastors, a faith-based organisation offering support to people in the nighttime economy. Drawing on primary research conducted in the course of an evaluation, she aims to contextualise the role of the pastors, and similar faith-based groups, in filling the gaps left by shifts in traditional policing to deliver safer communities though interventions on the street. She notes, in this regard, that while there are geographical variations, strong relationships between the police and Street Pastors exist in most areas: in the fieldwork site, that relationship extended to considerable “advocacy, championship and financial support”, with additional funding from the local Community Safety Unit.

The paper reports on a survey that elicits the perceptions of students, one of the key client groups for the intervention, and provides an insight into the role of community and voluntary organisations in providing “policing from below” against the wider background of the marketisation of security of the street. The results are thus located in a context where the “plurality of policing” has been heavily influenced by cuts, resulting a reduction of police officers of 11 per cent and police community support officers of 22 per cent and the corresponding growth in “voluntary” securitisation. Swann however notes that the role of faith groups in this development of “policing from below” has been under-researched.

The Street Pastors was originally established in 2003 as a Christian-based initiative to combat black young people’s gun and drug crime in inner-cities, but it now has some 20,000 volunteers associated with its network with an extended remit to focus on anti-social behaviour and the nighttime economy. While there have been some claims for an impact on levels of crime, there is currently little robust evidence to support such a relationship.

Most respondents to the survey confirmed that they understood the primary function of Street Pastors as being to ensure public safety and this extent (although a quarter of the sample reported not being clear about their role). Four in ten also considered that the initiative made the city safer. Moreover, the Street Pastors received similar (albeit slightly lower) trust ratings to the police which were much higher than other workers occupying public space, suggesting that the organisation might provide a viable alternative to formal policing in at least some circumstances.

However, further analysis disclosed that the nature of the trust in the police and Street Pastors was different in important respects, with the latter regarded as having less legitimacy in controlling and monitoring behaviour and being more suited to carrying out welfare related functions – such as ensuring the safety of people who have drunk too much alcohol – which the police have increasingly relinquished. The extent to which such organisations are currently perceived to be a position to replace traditional policing activity to make streets safer, as opposed to acting as an adjunct to it, is thus currently unclear.

A different focus on policing is offered by Suzanne Young’s paper that explores the extent to which police decision making as to whether or not to make an arrest in influenced by gender. The paper draws on qualitative research with police officers in Scotland and considers respondents’ attitudes to young women demonstrating “violent” behaviour and in this sense also engages with processes that purport to make the streets safer places.

While Young confirms that the most important factor in determining whether police make an arrest in any given encounter with the public is the gravity of the offence, she contends that assessments of seriousness in relation to violent episodes allow considerable latitude for subjective judgments. In this context, gendered assumptions and expectations can play an important role. For instance, police officers expressed the view that young women involved in violent incidents were, by comparison with their male counterparts, more likely to be irrational and out of control and correspondingly less responsive to informal police intervention. On this basis, many respondents indicated a preference for dealing with male violence.

In particular, many police expressed the view that women were more likely to be resistant to police authority and that this could more often give rise to an arrest for assaulting the police in circumstances where the initial behaviour might otherwise have been dealt in a less formal manner, or additional charges for resisting arrest where that course was in any event likely. Male and female officers also both thought that interactions with potentially aggressive members of the public was influenced by gender with women more likely to engage in flirtatious behaviour with male officers and men less likely to display violence towards female police.

While the research does not provide any evidence that women are treated more harshly by the police than men in equivalent circumstances, it does demonstrate attitudes among, at least some, officers consistent with earlier research which suggests that women’s behaviour might be understood as more problematic than men’s where it transcends expectations of femininity. In this sense, there was no support for the chivalry thesis – at least in the context of responding to violent incidents – that policing of women might be more tolerant.

The author highlights the fact that police staff have less experience of encounters with violent women since men account for the large majority of aggressive behaviours exhibited in public (and private) spaces. She stresses the need for improved training focused on gender differences, rather than assumptions of gender neutrality, to counter the potential for policing predicated on stereotypical attitudes to render women involved in violent activity on the streets more liable to arrest.

Policing and accountability is at the heart of Helen Wells’ paper on the relationship between Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and Chief Constables. The tension between the two roles was identified as a recurring theme in previous special edition of Safer Communities (2014 (1)) on PCCs and it is explored here through paired interviews with both post holders in 11 police forces.

The focus of the research is the boundary between the strategic and public accountability responsibilities of PCCs on the one hand and operational policing decision making that remains the function of the Chief Constable on the other. Wells reminds us that while policy and guidance assumes an easy delineation between these different roles, the dividing line is something of a grey one in practice.

Analysis of the interviews reveals that while both Chief Constables and PCCs were clear that the former should enjoy operational independence, they frequently had different conceptions of what constituted that independence. Those different understandings had, in some areas, given rise to tensions, particularly in the period immediately after the PCCs’ appointment and both parties described a process of continual negotiation over the issue. Respondents recognised the practical difficulty of determining precisely where the boundaries of strategic responsibility lay, and this was compounded where PCCs engaged in “day-to-day strategising” rather than focusing on the development of high-level policing plans.

Public accountability of PCCs, reflected in a, perhaps inevitable, tendency on their part to respond to perceived priorities of the electorate was particularly liable to result in greater “interference” than Chief Constables sometimes felt happy with. This tension was potentially exacerbated by a lack of public understanding about the PCC role.

The author concludes that while previous academic work has been correct to highlight the tensions inherent in the relationship between PCCs and police, the resolution of this tension is a matter of empirical investigation and depends in large part on the “preoccupations, methods, and experience” of the individual elected to the former role. In the 11 areas included in the research, working compromises had been established that allowed policing to continue without serious disagreement although the details of that compromise varied in the extent to which PCCs could be seen to impinge on operational concerns. The electoral accountability of PCCs was a potential source of instability in the relationship since emerging public apprehensions were more likely to lead to day-to-day strategising and consequently drive increased interference with the deployment of police resources in particular locations or to particular tasks. Perhaps more perturbingly from the perspective of longer planning and stability of policing, periodic elections seem likely to ensure that any agreed settlements around the boundary between operational issues and strategy are likely to be relatively short term and vulnerable to re-negotiation.

The final paper in this edition of the journal deals with an aspect of policing that has acquired an increased prominence in the more recent period in respect of their role in providing support to victims. Roxanne Khan and her colleagues note that particular adults appear to be at heightened risk of re-victimisation and that this awareness has generated increased interest in the development of tools for assessing the risk of victimisation.

Drawing on research focused on incidents of domestic violence in two post code areas of Preston, the paper reports on a comparison of “matched” cases where the victim was assessed both by Lancashire police and Victim Support using a similar assessment profile, based on DASH. The results suggested a significant inconsistency between the two agencies. For instance the police were more likely to assess victims’ risk to be medium whereas Victim Support’s assessments tended to avoid that category in favour of high or low risk. Moreover, the latter service tended to classify victims as high risk much more frequently than the police (44 per cent compared to 22 per cent). This pattern was partly explained the fact that the police were more four times more likely to record risk as “unknown”; such assessments were particularly common in the case of male victims.

The authors conclude that the results do not suggest a high level of inter-user reliability for the assessment instruments. They consider a range of potential explanations of the difference assessment outcomes between the two agencies, including the context in which the risk assessment is undertaken and differential levels of staff training in using assessment instruments. Whatever the explanation, however, and the laudable intentions of consistent assessment procedures into policing not withstanding, the authors suggest that their findings should encourage caution against uncritical acceptance of assessments of risk derived from them.