Politicians have been calling for a return to neighbourhood policing ever since Theresa May decimated the service. This week, Rishi Sunak put forward plans for “hotspot” patrols as part of a draconian crackdown on fly-tipping and laughing gas (nitrous oxide). Days earlier, Keir Starmer called for “more visible neighbourhood policing” to fight the “virus” of antisocial behaviour. In 2021, Boris Johnson proposed that every neighbourhood in England and Wales have a named police officer whom residents could contact.
This recognition that police have become inaccessible to the communities they serve is an indictment of Conservative policies. Neighbourhood policing, introduced by New Labour, assigned one sergeant, two constables and two police community support officers to each council ward. In cutting police funding, Mrs May destroyed this model. The Met lost two-thirds of its special constables and half of its support officers after 2010. It closed 126 police stations and merged 32 command units into just 12. Places where people could report crimes in person have been lost, together with the local knowledge of experienced officers. Across England and Wales, over 22,000 officers left the force after 2010.
Community policing should not be romanticised. The evidence that local patrols reduce crime is mixed, and politicians would be wrong to assume that voters – particularly people of colour and women – necessarily desire more visible policing in light of recent crimes committed by serving officers. But the current approach to policing isn’t working. Officers react to emergencies, most often in cars. They lack a local presence, and are therefore easy to regard as intruders. The recent Casey report highlighted how the erosion of frontline policing had weakened the public’s trust in the Met. Labour’s proposals to bring back neighbourhood policing would be an improvement.
In an attempt to leverage a hardline stance on crime into a vote-winning issue, both Mr Sunak and Sir Keir appear to be trying to out-do each other on the policing of antisocial behaviour. Their time would be better spent examining the problems for which the police are being called out. Some 84% of police calls relate to non-crime incidents, and overstretched police forces in England and Wales are dealing with more mental health crises than ever – a symptom of cuts to health services. There is a risk that putting more police on the streets to pick up the pieces of a broken public realm will lead to vulnerable people being criminalised rather than supported.
While the Conservatives may portray Mr Sunak’s reforms as a crackdown on “yobs”, many behaviours deemed antisocial are symptoms of problems caused elsewhere. Research by the Police Foundation found that people who raised concerns about such behaviours frequently felt their town centres and public spaces had deteriorated, leading to boarded-up shops, rough sleeping and a sense of visible neglect. Litter is partly caused by cuts forcing local authorities to reduce street sweeping; homelessness by the paucity of social housing. Expecting police to solve these problems will not make their causes go away.
Policing, the sociologist Loïc Wacquant suggests, has emerged as an alternative to the welfare system to manage the social insecurity caused by the rolling back of state support. Introducing more neighbourhood patrols would be better than the current remote and underfunded model of policing, but the erosion of community that Mr Sunak blames on antisocial behaviour is the product of austerity. Arresting more people won’t fix that.
