Press Releases - 1999

6th September 1999

Police Federation Chairman's Speech

International Association for Civilian oversight of Law Enforcement

IACOLE World Conference,  Sydney, Australia,  September 1999

Let me make clear at the outset that although what I am going to say is from a police perspective it is also, inevitably, the perspective of an employee representative body in my case the Police Federation for Northern Ireland. I will return to the significance of this point later.

The incentives for change can be categorised under at least two headings: external incentives and internal incentives. Although the term incentive is used in the title of this session, my own preference is that we talk about the drivers for change. It is not simply a case of semantics. The word incentive can suggest that change is optional. We may or may not decide to change depending on the attraction of the incentive being offered. My argument is that change for the police service is not an option; it is an imperative and therefore the process is and must be driven either by the police service itself from internal pressures or where necessary it may be stimulated because of external pressures on the police service.

The external factors are numerous. They include the requirement for accountability. We live in an age where the accountability of the public services is a major issue and elaborate, formal, informal, official and unofficial, permanent or ad hoc organisations exist purely to scrutinise the police service and the conduct of individual officers. This very conference is such an event. Police authorities and police complaints bodies perform this role officially within their national and regional jurisdictions; Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Helsinki do the job unofficially. The news media scrutinise the police and crime daily as a rich source of stories of public interest. The Lawrence Inquiry and the Hillsborough disaster have both become very high profile issues of police accountability.

What all these watchdogs have in common, whatever official or self-appointed status they enjoy, is that they are looking for evidence or more usually weaknesses in police accountability. The UK police service, including the RUC have all made recent changes to their police discipline procedures to enhance officer accountability by reducing the standard of proof to the balance of probability rather than beyond all reasonable doubt. An ombudsman for Police Complaints is currently in statute for Northern Ireland and we await the appointment of a suitably qualified person by government.

The need for accountability preferably through mechanisms, which are also transparent, has been a major incentive or a driver of change within the British police service.

Perhaps unique to Northern Ireland as a driver of change within the police service has been the changing political context. In the case of the RUC the range of options on the future of policing has included disbandment - an option which I am glad to say has been ruled out by the British government - to changes of name, structure, uniform, operating guidelines, recruitment, training, disarmament and so on.

This particular external driver for change in the police service in Northern Ireland is purely and unashamedly political. The objective is entirely worthy: the creation of a police service acceptable to all sections of the community and in its aspiration is totally supported by my Federation. The extremes of the options - disbandment or no-change at all - are not on the table and we would agree that the answer is somewhere in between the extremes.

As a result of the Good Friday Agreement between the British and Irish governments and the Northern Ireland political parties Chris Patten was appointed to head a Commission into policing in Northern Ireland. He is due to report to Government in late summer 1999.

From the beginning my Federation welcomed the Patten Commission initiative as the opportunity to demonstrate that the RUC has done the best possible job, in the light of the most horrific circumstances, in policing Northern Ireland effectively, professionally, impartially and fairly. We submitted to Patten evidence comprising 44 separate recommendations and comments calling for major changes in recruitment procedures and training.

We believe that the RUC became a target of the paramilitaries because of our effectiveness and the physical and propaganda attacks upon us: to kill and maim us, to destroy the good name of the Force were politically inspired. You will hardly be surprised to learn that in our submission to Patten we opposed any changes which would have betrayed the sacrifice of the 302 colleagues who were murdered over the past 30 years. In particular any change of name from Royal Ulster Constabulary is seen as particularly difficult for us and the families of murdered officers.

External pressure for change of a different political kind - with a small p - comes from the weight of new legislation, which originates in Westminster and increasingly from Brussels as a result of our membership of the European Union. Incidentally my Federation places great store in our membership of the Standing Committee on Policing in Europe (SCOPE) both as a means of keeping track of pan European legislation and sharing common concerns on police issues with other European police forces. I am currently Vice President of SCOPE.

When you add to the growing volume of regulatory legislation, a reducing level of tolerance of poor service or faulty goods among consumers you create an environment in which people loudly and determinedly demand their rights and seek rapid redress. Among those rights is the proper and efficient investigation of crime and in their narrow view, a police service which is also visible, preferably in uniform and strolling along the street.

One of the most important aspects of legislation being progressed is that of Human Rights. It is being driven by the European Parliament and is also a part of the Good Friday Agreement. The RUC has moved quickly to embrace this legislation. It will have an exceptional role for all citizens from the highest in the land to the lowest. I understand that it will be law in late 2000.

There is a specifically modern change particular to policing which has been the subject of much academic analysis - a change in the ways in which policing is conceptualised, both by the organisation and individual officers. What I mean by this is the new approach in recent years and in many countries which sees the role of policing less in terms of reaction by an officer to an incident, and increasingly focuses on an organisational effort to reduce the level of incidents by tackling the relatively small number of circumstances from which they arise.

From this approach has sprung the concept of situational crime prevention - measures to make the physical infrastructure of a place (such as housing estates, transportation systems, parks, school yards and workplaces) less attractive to criminals. It is based in part on the apparent failure of two traditional ways of thinking about urban crime. Neither calls for greater law and order (implying more police, tougher laws and more severe sentences) nor for an emphasis on the causes of crime (such as economic and social deprivation, or racial discrimination) have led ultimately to long-term improvements. The modern theorists have developed a middle way, which can universally be summarised as the Safer Cities concept. This is founded upon partnerships between the police and a range of organisations including local businesses, schools, community groups, local and central government. With its stress on crime prevention rather than detection, and on community policing, it has wide-ranging implications for the way in which we structure and staff our police services.

William Walsh of the University of Louisville defined the operational challenge with which this degree of change confronts the police service as being to access and respond to the needs of the external environment with resources and capabilities of the internal organisation.

We are a can-do police service. We are brought up to respond to the public need for this kind of service. And we would if we had unlimited resources. The fact is resources are not only limited but increasingly constrained. In Northern Ireland as our imperfect peace has stabilised, the police budget is being gradually cut, first in real terms and more substantial cuts are likely - all this at a time when the RUC - as much as any police service and perhaps more than most, needs the resources to win hearts and minds across the whole community.

The restriction on resources is the most significant and perhaps crude driver of change in the police service. It is certainly the incentive which brings management focus to the service for it is all embracing, sparing no function and no rank but the Chief Constable. He may lose his driver but you will always have to have a Chief Constable. This highlights one of the eternal truths about change in the police service - it can never be concluded. The imperative to balance finite (and even, in many instances, diminishing resources with unlimited demand and public expectations has to be undertaken in the knowledge that our job is never finished: there is always another crime to investigate and solve.

The police service finds itself in the same conflict with itself and with Government that all parts of the public service are in. We have high standards of professional service to the community which we have set ourselves in consultation with the community and with the police authority yet the delivery of a service at a level with which we are comfortable is being undermined by the shortage of resources.

In any conflict between demand and supply of public services, reconciliation is through compromise and the police service is no different. And it is here that the internal incentives to change become paramount.

The major driver for change within the police service has to be the individual and collective self-esteem, the sense of professionalism of police officers - quite literally pride in the job. If we believe in doing our job professionally then we are genuinely motivated to find and examine ways of delivering a proper level of police service across and to the whole community.

We are being greatly aided in that task by tremendous advances in technology particularly information technology and DNA profiling. Just to take a couple of examples, the recent introduction of new communication systems in the UK allows will ultimately allow every police station to access central records such as fingerprints electronically. And in a recent high-profile case in the Republic of Ireland, a murder charge has been brought 20 years after the event, following DNA analysis of a sample left on the victim. This sort of information-driven, problem-solving approach will bring pressures of its own in terms of staff training and so on, but it will also enable us to focus more on the assessment and management of cases.

We have seen greater use and development of specialisation within the police service including the civilianisation of some functions. Not only does this free up police skills to where they could be more productively directed, but it enables technical duties (such as administration, IT, human resources, and financial management) to be undertaken more professionally by trained managers.

We have also seen more management skills being employed so that not only is job enrichment for the individual a priority but command itself is becoming more decentralised so that it becomes faster and more sensitive to local community needs.

There can be no doubt that one of the most significant factors in determining the extent of change which is possible in any police service is what academics have termed command resilience; indeed, it is no exaggeration to argue that meaningful change simply cannot be imposed upon a police force which resists it. Command resilience is thus a way of describing the ability and capacity of a force to sustain an effective service in terms of both operational policy and long-term vision. It merges the necessary day-to-day reactive sense of dealing with incidents as they arise and the equally essential strategic awareness of the need to plan for the future.

These are examples of change being initiated by the police service itself because of its own internally acknowledged realisation that continuous evolution to meet the changing public needs and mood is essential if the service is not to be regarded as fossilised and out of touch with the community it serves.

One of the most significant reports on the RUC has been its own Fundamental Review, which has made almost 200 recommendations to improve operational policing and accountability. This Report was obviously put on hold when the Patten Commission was announced yet obviously we stand ready and poised to make far reaching change in policing on our own initiative.

I said at the beginning of this paper that as an employee representative body we would have a slightly different policing perspective on the incentive for change. The management of the police service rarely looks at the police officer as an individual - with his or her own emotions, ambitions and even self-doubt. This may be the result of our heritage as a disciplined force trained to respond instantly and without challenge to management instruction.

My Federation has seen humanitarian concern for our colleagues and their families as a major driver for change in the police service. The RUC was the first British Police Service to set up an Occupational Health Unit. This was a response to tremendous pressure from the Federation. Earlier this year we launched the Police Retraining and Rehabilitation Trust - a semi-autonomous body set up on our initiative to help police officers - serving and retired - and their families to cope with the effect being in the police service could have on them. The Government saw the wisdom of this project and gave a ú4.5m grant to get it off the ground.

To quote William Walsh again, the purpose of creating responsive and effective changes in policing is to develop organisations that have the capacity to respond to the needs of their time. This then is today challenge: to face the future now and not tomorrow. It is true that organisations are at their most vulnerable when they are in transition, but this must never be allowed to act as a disincentive to change in the police service. Rather, it should serve as a constant reminder of the need for change to be well thought out and managed. As a public service, policing will inevitably be subject to almost constant change. We must be prepared not merely to accept change but to embrace it as the mechanism by which we become able to provide an ever-better service to the public.

In the short time of this session I have run through the key drivers for change as I understand them: political initiatives, legislation, consumer expectations, theoretical analyses, finite resources, but the most important, is our own sense of professionalism. If we aspire to the best professional standards then we make change willingly and more importantly, we do it effectively for our benefit and the public good. If change is imposed - such as Sir Patrick Sheehy proposed - it will be either ineffective or irrelevant. The onus on the police service, is to lead change by being first with the initiatives.