The Student Room Group

Should we replace the police

My local council has plans to replace some of the police force with enforcement agents. I not going to lie I don’t have a high opinion of the police. I get leaflets through the door saying we got the highest police force ever. I only ever see police drive past. We need a more visible police force. I think in the future there will be fewer officers and council will apply enforcement agents. I often see police drive past escooters and don’t do anything.

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Reply 1
Should we replace the police - No

Police numbers have been eroded as a proportion of the population for a very long time. Crime levels in the UK have increased as resident criminals have brought new and violent methods to the UK. Behaviour which since has been copied by the local kids and embedded into our way of life. Crime in the UK is now endemic and there are no consequences to committing crime so it is just going to get worse.

So why should we keep the police? Because they are at present the last line between an orderly civilisation and full blown civil war.

There are so many hard working, determined, brilliant and very sensible police officers out there working so hard face to face on the streets and the majority wish to see serious criminals dealt with efficiently and removed from everyday society. Those police officers are now effectively 'gagged' from speaking out to the press or any other party. Those same officers get no thanks for putting their lives on the line to allow you and me to live a safe and easy life. Those same police officers who sometimes never know if they will go home alive, facing violent disproportionately aggressive offenders, police officers often working without thanks and alone. Police officers who are teased, goaded, abused, assaulted, and given ridiculous working hours, working without complaint so that you and I can walk home alone and be safe in our homes. We need to understand and protect those genuine, courageous police officers who have integrity as a core like Blackpool rock. All it takes is a few badly corrupted officers to drag down the whole show, as has happened. It would be all too easy to throw everything out and take another step to show boat some small voice group wish and dismantle all the established stability structures which have held the UK relatively safe, and comfortable system to live with. Security is surely the standard nearly every law abiding person would wish for?

The police commissioners (the political wing of the Government police authority) HR and administrative bean counters are the figures that should be disbanded. Like the NHS management structures, the civilian staff monitoring people doing police work almost outweigh the numbers actually doing it. The system has outgrown its purpose and trust has been lost to bean counting. Would I rather trust our current police officers and their judgement to decide who is arrested or who deserves to be prosecuted? - Yes I would. I would much prefer the imperfect street level police service we have than extended enforcement groups from an unaccountable Local Authority and those same enforcement agents tied to their blood sheets with faceless cameras. Be careful of what we wish for.
(edited 1 year ago)
One of the reasons why I’m so anti-Conservative is I don’t believe in defunding the police.
Reply 3
Why? Seriously, why? This is a commonly trotted out call and harks back to the days when the local Bobby cried "10 o'clock and all's well."

Given very little crime is committed by roughiuns needing a firm clip round the ear, why put valuable resources into pacing the streets. Take where I live for example. Three crimes were reported in June for a large area yet no doubt many residents would state there should be more police walking the streets. Is it really cost effective to put so much resource into stopping so little crime?
I strongly support additional policing however it should be in concert with meaningful judicial reform. Most notably, posession of narcotics like Cannabis should carry a financial penalty proportional to income rather than fixed and the police should be able to keep the penalty to give them an incentive to police this heavily. Likewise for knife crime which should carry heavy prison sentences.
Original post by hotpud
Why? Seriously, why? This is a commonly trotted out call and harks back to the days when the local Bobby cried "10 o'clock and all's well."

Given very little crime is committed by roughiuns needing a firm clip round the ear, why put valuable resources into pacing the streets. Take where I live for example. Three crimes were reported in June for a large area yet no doubt many residents would state there should be more police walking the streets. Is it really cost effective to put so much resource into stopping so little crime?

Glad you live in such a lovely location.

Go to other estates around the country and they aren’t far from resembling war zones, with kids running rampant with absolutely not a care in the world, knowing firstly they’d never be caught, but secondly if they were absolutely not a thing would happen. We need more police, on the streets with a physical presence. Simple as that.
Amazed anyone would think 'enforcement agents' with less training and weaker standards would in any way improve matters.

I was in the custody of G4S once and that was terrifying enough, never been so happy to see a real police officer.
Reply 7
Original post by imlikeahermit
Glad you live in such a lovely location.

Go to other estates around the country and they aren’t far from resembling war zones, with kids running rampant with absolutely not a care in the world, knowing firstly they’d never be caught, but secondly if they were absolutely not a thing would happen. We need more police, on the streets with a physical presence. Simple as that.


But do you really think the solution to what you describe is to lock children up in jail? Do you really think that would solve anti-social behaviour in those parts? Because from what I can see, young person offenders institutions are where you go as a minor criminal with a view to becoming a fully qualified criminal.

Personally I question why young people are being antisocial. We are not born criminals. Fox the cause and you fix the problem. Except the cause is difficult to fix so put bobbies on the beat and be seen to be doing something even though it is hugely expensive and has little impact.
Reply 8
Original post by imlikeahermit
Glad you live in such a lovely location.

Go to other estates around the country and they aren’t far from resembling war zones, with kids running rampant with absolutely not a care in the world, knowing firstly they’d never be caught, but secondly if they were absolutely not a thing would happen. We need more police, on the streets with a physical presence. Simple as that.


Unfortunately these sorts of things are rarely that simple. Hotpuds touched on a couple of these above.

Policing is much more data driven these days because it can be. The older days idea from the idealised golden era of the 1950s and before really was in a pre-data age where having police out on the street was pretty much *all* you could do.

If we want much more police out on the streets tackling low level crime then we need significant increases in policing numbers and a clear analysis showing that these increased numbers are best spent on physical beats, tackling relatively low level crime, and not in other areas of policing. Equally, if we plan to catch and imprison many more people we need many more prisons and this all needs to be paid for, bearing in mind many of our *existing* prisons are crumbling and really need fixing first - imprisoning people is really expensive. If we're going to significantly expand the policing and prison budget then we need to decide which taxes do we increase to pay for this, or which spending do we cut elsewhere to make the room - all difficult choices.

Is prison the best way to fix low level criminality? There's the "prophylactic" benefit that anyone in prison can't physically commit crimes (outside of the prison estate at least), but does imprisoning low level offenders reduce, or increase likelyhood of offending once released? What have other nations found? Would resources be better spent on the background "causes of crime"? Early intervention into troubled homes, social care, education, reducing inequality etc... There's mountains of research on all of these issues which we can probably conclude by saying "it's really complicated".

If there was a simple, cheap easy fix to tackling crime most governments would be *all* over it - fear of crime and tackling crime is a major political issue they'd love to get a handle on - in practice... it's a bit more difficult than that...
(edited 1 year ago)
Reply 9
Original post by AMac86
If there was a simple, cheap easy fix to tackling crime most governments would be *all* over it - fear of crime and tackling crime is a major political issue they'd love to get a handle on - in practice... it's a bit more difficult than that...


Once you open the flood gates and it is so glaringly obvious that there is no deterrent to committing crime. You open the flood gates and everybody and anybody does it. Take shoplifting for example. The rosy view that people steal because they are starving is rubbish. They steal in great quantities because it is lucrative and they can get away with it. People who grow up and are raised to accept thieving, and violence as normal with prison as an inconvenience are generally never going to change their way of life or lifestyle. But their 'low level' criminal behaviour has a massive impact on local people who try and conform to the rules of a safe and orderly society.

The criminal justice system is broken, out of funds, out of ideas but never stop locking up serial offensive criminal individuals and get them away from honest hard working people and give us all a break.

Cheap and easy fix? - Why does every cowardly politician ignore the relatively crime free Singapore where lone individuals can walk down the street without fear of being robbed or assaulted? Their policy is very cheap and very effective. But we are too weak here to even think of strong measures which are so badly needed.
Original post by Muttly
Once you open the flood gates and it is so glaringly obvious that there is no deterrent to committing crime. You open the flood gates and everybody and anybody does it. Take shoplifting for example. The rosy view that people steal because they are starving is rubbish. They steal in great quantities because it is lucrative and they can get away with it. People who grow up and are raised to accept thieving, and violence as normal with prison as an inconvenience are generally never going to change their way of life or lifestyle. But their 'low level' criminal behaviour has a massive impact on local people who try and conform to the rules of a safe and orderly society.

The criminal justice system is broken, out of funds, out of ideas but never stop locking up serial offensive criminal individuals and get them away from honest hard working people and give us all a break.

Cheap and easy fix? - Why does every cowardly politician ignore the relatively crime free Singapore where lone individuals can walk down the street without fear of being robbed or assaulted? Their policy is very cheap and very effective. But we are too weak here to even think of strong measures which are so badly needed.

Last paragraph is absolutely spot on. Too weak, no backbone, far too bothered about the rights of the criminal than the victim.
There's a bit to unpick here, what politicians and experts find is that whilst a tougher crackdown on crime sounds simple enough, it's a bit more complicated - re comparisons with Singapore...

The UKs population is about 12 times greater than Singapore, Singapore also has the massive advantage of being much wealthier (c50% higher GDP per capita) and a small self contained area (always much easier to Police). If the UK wanted an roughly equivalent number of police staff per population we'd need to more than double the size of the UK police force, then you need a massive increase in prison capacity if you're going to imprison more. Singapore has a *very* high immigrant/expat population (over 40%) so they can partially avoid high imprisonment numbers and issues of re-offending simply by having the option of deporting almost half the population elsewhere for the rest of the world to worry about.

Would significantly increasing resources (including in policing numbers *and* on wider social policy) to tackle crime decrease crime - yes, absolutely. However....

Imagine you're the chancellor trying to manage spending - the home secretary comes to you asking for a *massive* budgetary increase in home office spending. They are just one of many departments all bringing large, serious issues to you. The health secretary is asking for massive increases in social care and NHS funding as the UKs population ages, the defense secretary is asking for more defense spending in an increasingly uncertain world, the climate secretary requests more funding to tackle de-carbonisation, the communities secretary wants more funding for local councils to reverse many years of cuts, etc... etc... (you get the picture), there's limited resources and we know how unpopular tax rises can be, so who do you refuse? who do you force to find cuts? Do you increase taxes? How do yourmake the spending increases you need for your crime policy. Difficult choices, not cheap, and not easy to just copy policy from a small city state with a much more collectivist social outlook on society, one with significant restrictions on free speech and the ability to protest, and the other advantages I reference above.

I never argued, and no one is arguing, that hunger is the main cause of shoplifting, or that poverty is the sole cause of crime. There are plenty of bad people out there for sure.What decades of policing, criminology and research has shown though is that crime in society is fed into by lots of factors and many of those moving through the lower reaches of the criminal justice system are a steady stream of societies lost boys, growing up in deprived areas, often subject to abuse of various forms, with limited opportunities ahead of them.

Does high levels of imprisonment without wider social policy to improve broken lives work? The US is probably closest to implementing that kind of model in a large western nation - it imprisons more harshly and at a rate almost three times higher than the UK, their re-offending rate is also much higher and as a society it generally suffer from higher crime rates than the UK. Again - never as simple as it seems. There's lots of evidence that short term prison sentences of under a year (the sort that would be used for low level offending) achieve very little beyond causing further life disruption (eg: losing what remains of their job, their home, family etc...) which pushes prisoners further into crime when they're released. That's not to say prison doesn't have a role and place - but it illustrates how it really isn't as simple as your suggesting.

So it;'s not really cheap and easy - it's complex and expensive.

Hermit - what do you mean by the gov/police being more bothered about the rights of the criminal than the victim - can you give an example?
(edited 1 year ago)
Replace the met with an answering machine that gives out crime reference numbers. Doubt anyone would notice a difference.
Original post by Captain Haddock
Replace the met with an answering machine that gives out crime reference numbers. Doubt anyone would notice a difference.


See Hotpud's reply. Some people would favour this seemingly.

The question ultimately is whether one believes that contents insurance should be mandatory. If it is then the police can officially abolish investigating all low level theft and the like and we can move increasingly down your satorial route. If as one believes, all crime should be investigated and that there is no recourse for those who represent an affront to justice then we need more police and more police powers.
Original post by Rakas21
See Hotpud's reply. Some people would favour this seemingly.

The question ultimately is whether one believes that contents insurance should be mandatory. If it is then the police can officially abolish investigating all low level theft and the like and we can move increasingly down your satorial route. If as one believes, all crime should be investigated and that there is no recourse for those who represent an affront to justice then we need more police and more police powers.

We need tougher sentencing for low level crime and judges who have the balls to dish that out. See Singapore, absolutely no messing about.

I’d like to see money go into prison building, and the reforming of prisons into a two tier system with all of which resembling prisons as opposed to holiday camps. The bottom tier for those on minor offences with some hope of getting out, and the top tier for those lifers who will not get out of prison in their lifetime. Unfortunately however because of the way our sentencing system works not many would attend the top tier establishment. In the top tier I’d like no guards, apart from those on the outside. Drop the food and supplies over the fence and let those who choose to opt out of life fend for themselves in an environment that is fitting of murderers, rapists, drug lords and perennial life criminals who don’t learn their lesson.
I covered some of the differences and advantages Singapore has above. It's much easier to imprison people if you spend more money on places to put them, and if you can simply deport c40% of prisoners post release so *other* countries have to deal with re-offending. Singapore in general is a much more authoritarian society with much greater restrictions on free speech and protesting than in the UK. If we want more people in prison for longer we'd need to allocate *much* more money towards building and managing prisons.

There's very little evidence that brutalised prison regimes reduce re-offending and plenty of evidence that it increases it. Rehabilitating offenders into normal members of society is unlikely to happen by subjecting prisoners to brutal treatment. If the prison system simply becomes a way to create monsters whilst in prison - you're going to get monsters out (and higher re-offending). Using the criminal justice system to make *more* criminals isn't a sensible aim of any criminal justice policy.

Prisons are not holiday camps and I think you have a misguided view of what prison life is like. It's far, far from a holiday camp. Locked up for 20+ hours a day, horrible prison food, sharing a small room with one or two potentially very unpleasant strangers. A toilet next to your bed and where you eat. One visit from family/friends per fortnight, crumbling buildings with cold, damp, urine, cockroaches etc... repeat for the duration of your sentence. That sounds incredibly unpleasant to me (and a small TV with limited terrestrial television channels doesn't offset this).

That doesn't mean the UKs current criminal justice system is particularly good, it has all sorts of problems, but how you tackle crime is a whole academic discipline in itself with decades of research and analytics behind it. - it is no where near as simple as imprisoning at the highest rate possible, in the most brutal conditions as possible.
Original post by AMac86
It's much easier to imprison people if you spend more money on places to put them, and if you can simply deport c40% of prisoners post release so *other* countries have to deal with re-offending. If we want more people in prison for longer we'd need to allocate *much* more money towards building and managing prisons.

Yes it is much easier to imprison people if you spend more money on prison places in the first place. Yes we should build more prisons and imprison more people not less as the numbers imprisoned are irrelevant without linking it to the population increase (but the UK is bankrupt and this now dictates coherent prison building and sentencing policy)

I am sure police officers must go away and cry at their investment of so much time and effort to contain really unpleasant violent people, only to see them released on bail or quietly given a community 'monitoring' sentence at court. It's a moot point that you are killed by a 21year old not a 35 year old. Sending criminals to jail has to give us all a break from the fear and the misery caused by career criminals - Yes we should deport serious and serial offenders after their sentence ends if they are not UK citizens. Rehab should begin after the sentence ends and in the remainder of the other unserved half of the sentence when 'released on good behaviour'

Oh hang on. Who is left to lock up these really nasty people in the first place? Maybe we can find just one hard as nails police officer who is left - a police officer who hasn't buckled under the stress of daily assault and vitriol, a police officer who has not been prosecuted by social media and then abandoned by their senior officers only to quick to 'distance themselves' from any epic ...... Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if the police arrive on the 999's and then hide behind our front doors asking if you could go out and get the nasty people for them?

Where do we find so many people with common sense, discretion, honesty and integrity? Remind me again who you propose to use instead of police officers?
Original post by AMac86
I covered some of the differences and advantages Singapore has above. It's much easier to imprison people if you spend more money on places to put them, and if you can simply deport c40% of prisoners post release so *other* countries have to deal with re-offending. Singapore in general is a much more authoritarian society with much greater restrictions on free speech and protesting than in the UK. If we want more people in prison for longer we'd need to allocate *much* more money towards building and managing prisons.

There's very little evidence that brutalised prison regimes reduce re-offending and plenty of evidence that it increases it. Rehabilitating offenders into normal members of society is unlikely to happen by subjecting prisoners to brutal treatment. If the prison system simply becomes a way to create monsters whilst in prison - you're going to get monsters out (and higher re-offending). Using the criminal justice system to make *more* criminals isn't a sensible aim of any criminal justice policy.

Prisons are not holiday camps and I think you have a misguided view of what prison life is like. It's far, far from a holiday camp. Locked up for 20+ hours a day, horrible prison food, sharing a small room with one or two potentially very unpleasant strangers. A toilet next to your bed and where you eat. One visit from family/friends per fortnight, crumbling buildings with cold, damp, urine, cockroaches etc... repeat for the duration of your sentence. That sounds incredibly unpleasant to me (and a small TV with limited terrestrial television channels doesn't offset this).

That doesn't mean the UKs current criminal justice system is particularly good, it has all sorts of problems, but how you tackle crime is a whole academic discipline in itself with decades of research and analytics behind it. - it is no where near as simple as imprisoning at the highest rate possible, in the most brutal conditions as possible.


Quite simply put, those who have murdered, raped, been constant offenders for years; I couldn’t give a toss about their rehabilitation or what conditions they find themselves in. I really don’t care.

We have harboured through a lack of tough sentencing, weak courts and weak police now generations of petty constant criminals. You could go and ask any police officer and they could give you a ton of names of delinquent youths, throwaway criminals and most likely the names of ‘families’ in the area who are all criminals.
Original post by Muttly
Yes it is much easier to imprison people if you spend more money on prison places in the first place. Yes we should build more prisons and imprison more people not less as the numbers imprisoned are irrelevant without linking it to the population increase (but the UK is bankrupt and this now dictates coherent prison building and sentencing policy)

I am sure police officers must go away and cry at their investment of so much time and effort to contain really unpleasant violent people, only to see them released on bail or quietly given a community 'monitoring' sentence at court. It's a moot point that you are killed by a 21year old not a 35 year old. Sending criminals to jail has to give us all a break from the fear and the misery caused by career criminals - Yes we should deport serious and serial offenders after their sentence ends if they are not UK citizens. Rehab should begin after the sentence ends and in the remainder of the other unserved half of the sentence when 'released on good behaviour'

Oh hang on. Who is left to lock up these really nasty people in the first place? Maybe we can find just one hard as nails police officer who is left - a police officer who hasn't buckled under the stress of daily assault and vitriol, a police officer who has not been prosecuted by social media and then abandoned by their senior officers only to quick to 'distance themselves' from any epic ...... Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if the police arrive on the 999's and then hide behind our front doors asking if you could go out and get the nasty people for them?

Where do we find so many people with common sense, discretion, honesty and integrity? Remind me again who you propose to use instead of police officers?

You're jumping around a bit on various topics but I'll do my best to answer.

1) - Building and running prisons is very expensive, so if we want more prisons places this has to be funded, so the government of the day has to justify allocating more resources (and either raising taxes or reducing spending from other departments) to one aspect of criminal justice, against all the other competing demands for funding, whether in criminal justice, health, transport, local communities, etc... etc... This means they are unlikely to do this without strong evidence that more and harsher imprisonment will improve criminal justice outcomes, and there's very little evidence for this - the evidence generally points the other way, but it's a *very* complex topic.

2) - Being released on bail pending trial as a presumption is the general approach for two reasons - the first practical, you need more prison places (see 1 above), the second is the more important one, pre trial you haven't been convicted of anything so we need to be careful about imprisoning pre-trial because of the significant restrictions on liberty of those who could be innocent eg: You're in the wrong place at the wrong time and a witness to a crime mistakenly identifies you as having a committed a offense, you could easily be waiting over a year for trial and without bail - that's in prison.

3) - On deporting, my point there was that because Singapore has an incredibly high temporary immigrant & expat population so they have an easy way out of rehabilitation considerations simply by deporting at the end of sentence, the UK could only ever have this option for a much much smaller % of its prison population.

4) - Those committing the most serious and violent offences are not given community sentences, if you've come across an example of this then this is likely to be a *very* rare case with some incredibly unusual factors - if you have a specific example in mind happy to look at this in more detail. I'm not sure what distinction you're claiming between 21 and 35 year olds as these ages are already treated the same by the criminal justice system. It's much younger ages that are treated differently through the youth justice system.

I'm not sure what you're getting at on your last point but I think that's another strawman, I'm not suggesting defunding the police, I've been responding to the posts above advocating longer prisons sentences in more unpleasant prisons.

Hermit I'll try to get to your post later.
(edited 1 year ago)
Original post by imlikeahermit
Quite simply put, those who have murdered, raped, been constant offenders for years; I couldn’t give a toss about their rehabilitation or what conditions they find themselves in. I really don’t care.

We have harboured through a lack of tough sentencing, weak courts and weak police now generations of petty constant criminals. You could go and ask any police officer and they could give you a ton of names of delinquent youths, throwaway criminals and most likely the names of ‘families’ in the area who are all criminals.


Murder already carries a mandatory life sentence, rape carries sentences ranging from long to life. Rehabilitation very much takes a back seat here to protection of the public.

What you're proposing above are lengthy sentences (on a par those for murder and rape) for a *much* wider range of offenses, by their nature less serious,where there is a much greater scope for rehabilitation - the sorts of offenses where sentences currently can range from 1-5 years for example.

Irrespective of your own personal views, the question is why do governments not adopt the kinds of policies your proposing. That's because they have to take (or at least aim to take...) a longer term strategic view. If only on a pragmatic basis, they *have* to care about rehabilitation because it's a key part of longer term crime reduction strategies. If you want to take rehabilitation out of the picture and place a much greater focus on the punishment itself, then you have to also be accepting of a higher rate of re-offending post release, and to spend more money on prisons to meet the expanded prison population, resources you can't spend on other areas which might drive more successful outcomes for society. Let's imagine you're the prisons minister putting these kinds of policies forward to the home secretary & the treasury for approval - here's your case:

In the plus column:
- Being tough on crime and prisoners is a popular electoral position;
- There are cases where sentencing is deficient;
- There can be a moral case for tougher sentencing (focusing on the individuals decision to commit crime);
- Short term protection of the public would likely improve;

In the negative column:
- Your department would need massively more funding to fund the rollout of more prisons - anywhere between £3-5 billion as a starting point - which other department will take the cuts for the money you need?
- There's little evidence that tough prison sentences reduce crime rates;
- There's lots of evidence that removing rehabilitation and increasing imprisonment, particularly in the sort of tough conditions you favour increases re-offending - which *increases* crime, so longer term protection of the public is likely to worsen.
- There can be a moral case for rehabilitation (focusing on the social factors influencing crime)

Decisions, decisions - No easy answers and I think the above illustrates why more, tougher, prisons is far from an obvious criminal justice policy.
(edited 1 year ago)