4 Police leadership, values and culture
The College
of Policing Code of Ethics
66. The College of Policingwas recently established
as the professional body for the police in England and Wales.
It has assumed strategic responsibility for development of policy
and practice, including PRC statistics. It has developed a new
Code of Ethics for the police in England and Wales, based on the
seven core principles developed by the Committee on Standards
in Public Life (CSPL) (accountability; honesty; integrity; leadership;
objectivity; openness; selflessness), with the additional principles
of fairness and respect. It articulates the standards of professional
behaviour expected of police officers, including a requirement
to ensure accurate and honest record-keeping:
· Under the heading 'Honesty and Integrity':
"do not knowingly make false, misleading or inaccurate entries
in any record or document kept or made in connection with any
police activity"
· Under the heading 'Work and responsibilities':
"ensure that accurate records are kept as required by relevant
legislation and force policies and procedures."
It also establishes "challenging and reporting
improper conduct" as a core principle, placing on police
officers "a positive obligation to report, challenge or take
action against the conduct of colleagues which I believe has fallen
below the Standard of Professional Behaviour set out in this Code."[55]
67. The College of Policing's Chief Executive, Chief
Constable Alex Marshall, reacted to the testimony heard at PASC's
first evidence session by pointing to the draft code of ethics
as part of the solution:
The College of Policings draft code of ethics,
which reflects established standards in the service, is very clear
that to knowingly make false, misleading or inaccurate entries
in records damages our integrity. Where it has been shown that
figures have been deliberately misreported, this should be looked
into.
The service has come through a period where targets
were more important than outcomes and the College is working to
ensure greater accuracy and consistency in recorded crime. Modern
policing relies on the integrity and robustness of our data, which
has huge potential to help us to cut crime further, and I am confident
that better recording will benefit police officers, staff and
ultimately the public.[56]
68. In its written evidence to this Committee, CSPLwelcomed
the publication of the draft Code of Ethics and its adoption of
the CSPL's Seven Principles of Public Life, and observed that
the "Seven Principles, especially those of leadership, accountability
and integrity apply to the production of crime statistics as well
as to other areas of policing."[57]In
a House of Lords debate in November 2013 on public trust in the
police, the CSPL's chairman Lord Bew reiterated his warm welcome
for the draft Code, but called for a clearer articulation of the
"relationship between not living up to the code of conduct
and possible issues of misconduct." He added that "the
great danger is that the College of Policing statement of principles
just becomes abstract and out there and is not fully operationalised
in the conduct of police officers."[58]
69. The Chief Inspector of Constabulary in his first
Annual Assessment of policing, published in March 2014 while we
were completing this Report, emphasised the importance of "the
requirement of scrupulous honesty and integrity required of all
police officers" as restated in the College of Policing's
Code of Ethics.[59] He
added that "in every organisation, the conduct as well as
the quality of leadership is a material determining factor in
relation to its culture, principles and performance".[60]
70. We welcome
the adoption of the new statutory Code of Ethics setting out the
principles and standards of professional behaviour expected of
the police in England and Wales. This is most important in respect
of the training of police leadership.
71. We recommend that the Home Office and College
of Policing make a more explicit statement of how the Code of
Ethics' enforcement framework will impose a duty of data integrity
on police officers in respect of crime recording practices, and
that penalties will apply in the event of deliberate non-compliance.They
must also ensure that officers are familiar with the victim-focussed
principles of the National Crime Recording Standard and the distinction
between recording standards and charging standards.
Target-chasing versus data integrity
72. Accurate crime recording is not merely a technical
matter. Effective police recording processes require a professional
ethos of data integrity, reinforced by the right set of incentives
and messages from senior leadership. This in turn reflects the
importance leadership attaches to the values of policing, such
as openness, transparency, integrity, which are values at the
core of standards in public life.
73. Data integrity in any organisation is at risk
of being compromised if the people responsible for generating
data are subject to performance appraisal and political pressure
based on the trends shown by that data. The natural tendency is
for the organisation to prioritise cosmetic improvements in the
statistical indicator over the accurate measurement of the real
underlying trends. This tendency can only be exacerbated if the
organisation in question is required to achieve specific quantitative
targets based on its own data.Even without any targets, there
is a general expectation that the police should aim to cut crime.
The Committee has also heard evidence that the legacy of centrally-imposed
performance targets has played an unhelpful role in helping to
entrench a 'target culture' within forces-and that the problem
of target culture persists to this day.
74. Senior leadership is influential in shaping the
institutional attitudes and behaviour of the people they lead.
In the opinion of Tom Winsor, Chief Inspector of Constabulary:
The quality of leadership in policing, as in
so many other organisations, is absolutely critical.The behaviour
of the man and woman, and men and women, at the very top of a
police force affects the whole culture, the whole approach, and
the integrity and the honesty of their operations.If they believe
their leaders are misbehaving in some way, that will affect the
whole performance and culture of the organisation.[61]
75. Remarks to the Association of Chief Police Officers
conference by Derbyshire's Chief Constable Mick Creedon in November
2013, made immediately following this inquiry's first oral evidence
session, acknowledged the responsibility of senior police leadership
for reinforcing the culture of performance, with the emphasis
on targets more than principles:
My fear is that inadvertently we are all still
putting pressure on officers to do all they can to manipulate
and create crime reductions. [...] It is whether we have the nerve
to step away from crime reductions and the obsession with crime
figures and move to a real environment where we do properly record.
[...] It is sadly what is told to me by many forces still is that
everything people do everything they can to make sure crime is
not going up. [...] The consequence is another threat to integrity.
This is inadvertently caused by what we have done over the past
decade. I don't think they do it because they are inherently corrupt,
they are doing it because the pressure is on to reduce crime.[62]
The move away from national targets
76. In 1999, HMIC reported into Police Integrity.
They identified crime recording as "perhaps the major area
of malpractice connected with the performance culture".[63]Nevertheless,
in the mid-2000s, police forces became subject to a centralised
assessment regime based on a range of statutory numerical performance
targets, of which the PRC data formed a key part. In recent years,
central Government has sought to shift the emphasis away from
the use of centrally-imposed targets as a means of assessing police
performance, but this is not reflected in the attitudes, systems
and processes of individual police forces and their governing
authorities, Police and Crime Commissioners.
77. The Police Act 1996 gave the Home Secretary the
power to direct police authorities to establish performance targets.[64]
The Policing Act 2002 inserted a requirement for the Home Secretary
to publish an annual National Policing Plan setting out strategic
policing priorities and specifying the performance indicators
(that is, targets) to be used for assessing each force's performance.
78. Between 2004-05 and 2007-08, police performance
was assessed using the Policing Performance Assessment Framework
(PPAF). Under PPAF, the Home Office graded each force's performance
against a range of Statutory Performance Indicators, including
crime incidence rates, detection rates and public satisfaction.
PRC statistics were central to the calculation of a number of
these statutory targets. At the time, concerns were expressed
that the importance attached to crude detection rates were leading
officers to concentrate on 'low-hanging fruit', focusing unduly
on offences that were easier to clear up.[65]
79. Following the Flanagan review of policing, in
July 2008 the Home Office's Policing Green Paper "From the
neighbourhood to the national: policing our communities together"
announced that the Home Office would no longer set or maintain
any statutory top-down numerical targets for individual police
forces, apart from a target to increase the level ofpublic confidence
in the police. The current Government announced in July 2010 that
it was scrapping the remaining Government-set target on police
forces to improve public confidence, stating that "from now
on it will be for communities to decide how well their force is
doing".[66] As the
Home Secretary remarked in March 2011: "I've scrapped the
last remaining national police targets, and replaced them with
a single objective: to cut crime."[67]
80. Despite this declared intention to relieve police
forces of target-related burdens, the 'target culture' has remained
a concern among producers and users of crime statistics. The UKSA's
2010 monitoring report "Overcoming Barriers to Trust in Crime
Statistics" noted:
In setting performance targets, much harm can
be done if statistics are chosen or used inappropriately. The
aspects of a service that matter most to people may not lend themselves
to numerical measurement and what can be measured may be a poor
substitute. The existence of a target may change the behaviour
of service providers in ways that have unexpected and unwanted
side effects. There may be scope for manipulation or gaming.[68]
The pernicious effects of target cultures were a
recurrent theme in the evidence received by this inquiry. Notwithstanding
the widespread awareness of the issue within the policing world,
Paul Ford, the Secretary of the National Detectives' Forum at
the Police Federation, told us that the target culture is alive
and well:
We have Police and Crime Commissioners demanding
reductions in crime, and again that explanation is placing pressure
on people. I think it is really important to understand. I do
not think [...] that there are memos and diktats from on high,
in my experience, in the organisation I represent. But there is
a culture within policing of success and 'We have to do this to
be successful'. It pervades every level, unfortunately.[69]
81. The second report of the Winsor Review of Policing
in 2012 took on board the problem of perverse incentives and gaming
in making its recommendations for police officer pay and progression.
The review recommended a qualitative assessment of officers based
on values and competencies rather than a quantitative performance
measure, noting that:
There is widespread concern that crude performance
measures will be inappropriate, creating perverse incentives and
promoting the pursuit of short-term, simple, quantitative targets.
There is a lack of trust in the ability of the police service
to operate a robust performance appraisal system on which to base
decisions about individual officers' performance.
82. A particularly disturbing example of how target-chasing
can distort the policing of serious crime and harm victims was
revealed by the Independent Police Complaints Commission's February
2013 report into Southwark Sapphire Unit's handling of sexual
offence investigations in 2008 and 2009, referred to earlier in
this Report. The report found that the Sapphire Unit had been
"under pressure to improve performance and meet targets"
rather than focus on the outcome for the victim and resorted to
gaming the figures by inappropriately encouraging victims to retract
allegations (so that a 'no-crime', rather than an unsolved crime,
was recorded), in clear defiance of the NCRS principles.[70]
83. HMIC's June 2013 inspection report on crime recording
in Kent, commissioned at the initiative of Kent's Police and Crime
Commissioner Ann Barnes, provided a further illuminating case
study into how ingrained target cultures have continued to influence
recording practices. Although HMIC found "no evidence of
corrupt activity in the way in which the crimes that we looked
at had been recorded or resolved", it nevertheless concluded
that:
a target-driven culture had, until recently,
led to some officers in Kent pursuing crimes on the basis of how
easy they were to solve, rather than on their seriousness, or
their impact on victims or communities. [...] While such an approach
is not unlawful, and does not contravene the letter of the HOCR,
it is against the spirit of the rules, which place the needs of
victims-not of meeting particular performance targets-at the centre
of the crime-recording process. HMIC therefore concludes that
there has, in the past, been an institutional bias in Kent towards
chasing numerical targets for solving crime. This has led to some
officers focusing on those categories of crime which have the
best chance of a quick and easy resolution.[71]
HMIC published an interim progress report on Kent
Police in January 2014 which found that the force had "responded
positively" to the 2013 inspection and that there had been
"considerable improvements to crime recording processes made
by the force, and inspectors found substantially greater accuracy
in crime recording-although HMIC found that more needs to be done
on training and raising awareness of the force's new approach
to managing performance."[72]
84. In his first Annual Assessment of the state of
policing, published in March 2014, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary
referred to the "widespread use" of performance targets,
stating that"Regrettably, performance targets of this kind
have in some instances become so ingrained for so long that difficulties
are found in getting people to do things in a more rational and
intelligent way".[73]He
also highlighted the importance of strong leadership in ensuring
the police do act in a "more intelligent way", stating
that "it is the responsibility of police leaders to ensure
that their officers and staff concentrate on what matters most,
not what scores highest in the partial and impact, discredited
performance measurement systems of the past."[74]
85. In relation to the legacy of the target-driven
culture, HMIC found that the force had "recognised the critical
importance of ensuring that its culture is consistent with working
in a different way, where activity is not driven primarily by
numerical targets" and that "none of the staff we spoke
to had any individual numerical performance targets, nor did they
feel under any pressure to concentrate on numerical performance
at the expense of quality and victim care."[75]
86. The vast
majority of police officers joined the police in order to serve
as dedicated and courageous professionals, motivated by their
vocation to protect the public. However, targets, based either
on Police Recorded Crime data or on other internally-generated
administrative data, set by senior police officers or Police and
Crime Commissioners, tend to affect attitudes, erode data quality
and to distort individual and institutional behaviour and priorities.
87. HM Inspectorate
of Constabulary's inspection in 2013 into the Kent Police found
clear evidence that targets are detrimental to the integrity of
crime data. We are pleased to note that when they returned to
Kent in January 2014, they found that good progress had been made
in tackling this issue. HMIC's findings in Kent are a promising
indication of how a rigorous and sustained audit regime, combined
with a clear prioritisation of data integrity by senior leadership,
can contribute to bringing about positive change.
88. The attitudes
and behaviours which lead to the misrecording of crime have become
ingrained, including within senior leadership, leading to the
subordination of data integrity to target-chasing. This can present
officers with a conflict between achievement of targets and core
policing values. HMIC recognises this in their first Annual Assessment
of the state of policing, but we are disappointed that this vital
issue received only cursory attention in over 200 pages.
89. Senior police leaders and HMIC must ensure
that emphasis is placed on data integrity and accuracy, not on
the direction of recorded crime trends. Formal performance appraisal
should be based upon these core policing values and not based
on targets derived from Police Recorded Crime data or other administrative
data on their own. We are convinced that this requires leadership
in many police forces to place new emphasis on values and ethics,
especially in the Metropolitan Police Service. We expect HMIC
to lay much stronger emphasis on this aspect of police behaviour
in future Annual Assessments.
Broader concerns about police
values
90. The doubts relating to police recording practices
are just one of a range of serious concerns about values and ethical
standards within the police. The Home Affairs Committee's 2013
report on Leadership and standards in the police highlighted how
a "concatenation of crises risks damaging the quality of
law enforcement: public faith in policing has been tested by episodes
such as the findings of the Hillsborough Panel Report, the 'plebgate'
incident, and the first dismissal of a chief constable in 30 years."[76]More
recently,there have been the Operation Elveden investigation into
allegations that police officers accepted money for supplying
information to journalists, and the recent revelations about undercover
policing in the Stephen Lawrence case.[77]
91. The issues raised in this Report concerning
the integrity of Police Recorded Crime statistics demonstrate
the subordination of core policing values to the 'target culture'.
This reflects broader concerns about policing values. We recommend
that the Committee of Standards in Public Life conducts a wide-ranging
inquiry into the police's compliance with the new Code of Ethics;
in particular the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining
these values in the face of all the other pressures on the force.
Whistleblowing
92. We are grateful to PC James Patrick, a serving
police officer with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), for
his courage in coming forward to voice his concerns. This was
instrumental in prompting this inquiry. PC Patrick became a police
officer in 2004, joining Derbyshire Police, and moved to the MPS
in 2009. At the MPS, he had a growing number of concerns, some
of which related to the manipulating of crime data by police officers
in order to improve the crime statistics. For example, he told
us that robbery offences were sometimes downgraded to 'theft-snatch'
and burglaries to 'criminal damage', or that incidents were logged
as 'crime-related incidents' until there was a detection, in which
case the incident would then be logged as a crime.[78]He
also believes that the misrecording of crime led to the misallocation
of resources in the MPS, which in turn helped to leave the MPC
ill-prepared for the summer riots in London in 2012.[79]PC
Patrick's evidence stated that he went public with his concerns
as a 'whistleblower' only after encountering resistance and obstructiveness
within his force.[80]In
2012, he started to blog and tweet about some of his concerns
(which were wider than the issue of crime statistics). Many of
his blog posts were self-published in a book, "The Rest is
Silence", in 2013.[81]
In November 2012, the Metropolitan Police started to investigate
him for alleged gross misconduct and he was placed on restricted
duties. According to his solicitors, this was in relation to the
publication of his book.[82]In
February 2014, following a "management review" of the
case by another force, at the invitation of the MPS, the charges
of "gross misconduct" were dropped. Nevertheless, the
MPS continued to pursue charges of "misconduct".[83]In
March 2014, PC Patrick resigned with effect from June 2014, stating
that "this resignation arises directly from my treatment
[by the Metropolitan Police Service] as a result of making disclosures
in good faith and in the public interest".[84]
PC Patrick claims that he has been subject to bullying and intimidation
over a long period, which has affected his physical and mental
wellbeing and his family life.[85]
93. It would not be appropriate for us to comment
on PC Patrick's disciplinary proceedings in any detail. However,
there are some wider lessons to be learnt from PC Patrick's experiences.
The new police code of ethics places a duty on officers to report
misconduct among their peers. Norman Baker MP, Minister of State
at the Home Office, also expressed his desire that officers "exercise
their duty and report any conduct they believe to be inappropriate."[86]However,
officers need to feel safe and confident that they can raise their
genuine concerns without adverse repercussions. Paul Ford of the
Police Federation told us that his organisation was "dealing
with a lot of stifled whistleblowers", and added:
We have lots of anecdotal information but, unfortunately,
people are fearful of coming forward and raising concerns. That
comes down to the whistleblowing aspect of the lack of protection
for people, the peer pressure and the fear factor in terms of
their future.[87]
94. The National Audit Office recently looked at
whistleblowing in their report "Making a whistleblowing policy
work".[88] In that
report, they found that:
The departments we examined are effective at
promoting internal routes to blow the whistle, but external routes
for employees are less clear. We found departments offer a range
of appropriate contacts internal to an organisation, but were
less consistent in explaining how an individual could raise their
concerns externally, and still be protected under the Public Interest
Disclosure Act 1998.[89]
95. During the course of our inquiry we encountered
some uncertainty as to which external avenues a police officer
may use to make a complaint, if dissatisfied with the response
after raising his or her concerns within his or her force. In
particular, it is unclear whether an officer may approach the
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPPC). The Police Reform
Act 2002 states that police officers cannot make a complaint to
the IPPC, but IPPC's guidance adds that:
This does not mean that a person serving with
the police cannot raise concerns about the conduct of other people
serving within their own force. However, the person serving with
the police who raises the concern does not have any of the statutory
rights of a complainant. Police forces and local policing bodies
should ensure that there are adequate systems in place to support
and protect people serving with the police who want to raise concerns
about the conduct of their colleagues. This might include extending
confidentiality to anyone raising such a concern, as far as this
is possible and appropriate.[90]
96. We wrote on 27 January 2014 to the Home Office
Minister, Norman Baker MP, to ask for further clarity on the avenues
open to police whistleblowers who are not satisfied with the response
received if they raise their concerns within their forces. Despite
our chasing the minister and his private office, we have still
not received a reply.
97. We recommend that the Home Office clarify
the current position about the external bodies a police officer
may approach once internal procedures have been exhausted. We
deplore the failure of the Home Office to send us a reply in time
for this Report. As soon as we receive a reply, we will publish
it on our website.
98. We recommend that the Home Office clarifies
the route open to police whistleblowers who have exhausted internal
channels within their police forces. Police whistleblowers should
be free to refer their allegations to the IPCC, and should, while
those concerns are pending formal investigation, enjoy immunity
from disciplinary proceedings in relation to actions taken in
order to raise those concerns.
99. We recommend that Her Majesty's Inspectorate
of Constabulary should investigate the Metropolitan Police Service
in respect of the treatment of PC Patrick and review the internal
processes and procedures of the police for dealing with whistleblowers,
in order to ensure that they are treated fairly and compassionately.
We further recommend that the Home Affairs Committee should inquire
into these matters to ensure that whistleblowers in any police
force are treated fairly and with respect and care. We have grave
doubts that the Metropolitan Police Service has treated PC Patrick
fairly or with respect and care.
55 College of Policing, Draft Code of Ethics: public
consultation, October 2013 Back
56
College of Policing press release, College of Police comments
on recording of crime figures, 20 Nov 2013 Back
57
CST06 Back
58
HL Deb, 28 November 2013, col 1593 Back
59
Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, State of policing:
the annual assessment of policing in England and Wales 2012/13,
March 2014, para 83 Back
60
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, State of policing: the annual
assessment of policing in England and Wales 2012/13, March 2014,
para 89 Back
61
Q420 Back
62
As reportedby BBC, Telegraph, Daily Mail, 20 November 2013 Back
63
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Police Integrity England, Wales
and Northern Ireland: securing and maintaining public confidence,
June 1999 Back
64
Police Act 1996, sections 36A -38 Back
65
See, for example, Police 'target culture' hurting crime victims,
Daily Mail, 19 September 2006 and Police criminalising young to
hit targets, says charity, Guardian, 3 April 2008, andPolice condemn
'target culture'BBC, 15 May 2007 Back
66
Home Office, Cm 7925, Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting
police and the people, July 2010, para 3.5 Back
67
Home Secretary, Speech on police reform, 2 March 2011 Back
68
UK Statistics Authority, Overcoming Barriers to Trust in Crime
Statistics: England and Wales, May 2010 Back
69
Q24 Back
70
Independent Police Complaints Commission, Southwark Sapphire Unit's
local practices for the reporting and investigation of sexual
offences July 2008-Septemeber 2009, Independent Investigation
Learning Report, February 2013
Back
71
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary,Crime recording in Kent, 2013,
p22 Back
72
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Crime recording in Kent - An
interim progress report, 31 January 2014, p10 Back
73
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, State of policing: the annual
assessment of policing in England and Wales 2012/13, March 2014,
para 95 Back
74
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, State of policing: the annual
assessment of policing in England and Wales 2012/13, March 2014,
para 97 Back
75
As above, p8 Back
76
Home Affairs Committee, Third Report of Session 2013-14, Leadership
and standards in the police, HC 67-I, para 4 Back
77
Stephen Lawrence Independent Review, HC 1094, March 2014 Back
78
Q6, Q9, Q10 Back
79
CST02, CST34 Back
80
CST02 Back
81
James Patrick, The Police Debating Directive blog and James Patrick,
The Rest is Silence, published April 2013 Back
82
Kaim Todner solicitors, Media statement - PC James Patrick, 4
December 2012 Back
83
Kaim Todner solicitors, Media statement - PC James Patrick, 11
February 2014 Back
84
James Patrick, Statement on resignation, blog post on The Candle
Legacy blog, 24 March 2014 Back
85
As above Back
86
Q595 Back
87
Q47 Back
88
National Audit Office, Making a whistleblowing policy work, March
2014 Back
89
As above, para 8 Back
90
Independent Police Complaints Commission, Statutory Guidance to
the police service on the handling of complaints, 2013
Back
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