Criminal Numbers

There was an exemplary case of chasing totemic numbers on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on Monday morning. A political think tank had published a report that outlined ways in which UK police forces were missing opportunities to save tens of millions of pounds annually by getting civilian staff to replace uniformed officers in back office functions.

One of the authors of the report was interviewed, and then sounded somewhat taken aback when the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Constabulary agreed wholeheartedly with what the policy wonk was proposing. There was, however, a slight problem…

Whilst it costs something in the order of £80k to fully train a uniformed officer, many of them end up trapped into administrative roles in police stations that could be just as adequately be performed by people without officer status. However, UK politicians have become obsessed with the numbers of uniformed officers employed by forces, and it has become a key performance metric.

Here was the issue that the senior officer faced. Whilst he could save money (and all the UK forces are having to find savings) and not make any material difference to the services made available to the public, political will would not allow him to make such a shift in personnel because it would result in an unacceptable drop in the total uniformed head count.

You get what you measure… the only problem is we so often measure the wrong things.