Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE POLICE REFORM PROGRAMME
“For the NCA to be effective, it
will have to build strong relationships
with the law enforcement
organisations of the EU countries.”
Areas of concern
The NCA has been wheeled into
action even before its vesting in order
to lead the investigation into child
abuse allegations in North Wales. It
is to be hoped that such short-term
re-prioritisation of NCA resources,
before the organisation even exists, is
not a harbinger of persistent political
tinkering to come. This highlights
the very real danger that the NCA’s
proximity to the Home Office will create
a temptation to treat it as the weapon
of first resort to tackle problems on the
Secretary of State’s desk.
The temptation should be resisted.
Not the least because the tasks that
the NCA has been set are, as Felia
Allum states in this volume, of central
importance to the UK. The financial
costs of organised crime – imaginatively
constructed by the Home Office at
between 20bn and 40bn – are the
least of the worries.
The distorting impacts of extortion
rackets, threats to an internet now
central to the UK economy and the
potential for corruption of the very
institutions that are central to our
democracy mean that the NCA’s success
is central to our nation’s health.
One concern that the Home Office
papers do little to dispel is a worry that
we don’t yet have adequate and effective
law enforcement models to tackle
organised crime. There has been limited
research on nature of extortion rackets
and the most effective ways to tackle
them. The EU is currently funding,
through the GLODES project on
extortion rackets, some serious attempts
to model good practice.
The early work has identified quite
serious gaps in our knowledge. The
experience of applying evidence-based
approaches to target volume crime is
that real success starts with a detailed
analysis of the problem. Only then can
the most effective tactics be brought to
bear in the most efficient fashion.
A second area to watch is the impact
of the Home Secretary’s announcements
in respect of an opt out from EU
arrangements on law enforcement.
Most of the provisions affected are
related to serious and organised crime,
including the agreements that created
Europol. For the NCA to be effective,
it will have to build strong relationships
with the law enforcement organisations
of the EU countries. This was an area
in which SOCA made considerable
progress. It is very difficult to see how
that progress will be sustained while
the government tries to renegotiate the
UK’s relationship.
The final issue that will trouble the
NCA right from the start is budget.
The NCA has been given a much
larger mission than SOCA and has
been launched with high ambitions
that it will transform our response.
et, its starting budget looks likely to be
smaller than that of SOCA, which was
judged by the HMIC in 200 to have
provided inadequate covert capacity
and underinvestment in intelligence
gathering.
To some extent, it could be argued
that this shortfall could be made up by
the NCA’s new powers to co-ordinate
local force efforts. The Director-General
is provided with an ability to pull
together a single intelligence picture
and co-ordinate and task the national
response. However, the experience
of the past suggests that a national
agency is unlikely to win friends and
influence the service if it starts by
placing increased demands on very local
forces currently suffering the most severe
budget cuts in a generation.
All of which suggests that the
challenges facing the Director-General,
Keith Bristow, and his team, are going to
be very significant. Past history suggests
that the first few steps, the early meetings
with forces and the first big cases will set
the tone for the new agency, which means
that 2013 will be crucial for the NCA
and the UK’s response to serious and
organised crime.
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