‘Police officers are doing their best’

28 January 2020

Officers are doing their best to fight crime despite the impact of budget cuts, says Hertfordshire Police Federation chair Geoff Bardell after criticism of the police over new theft charging figures.

Office for National Statistics figures for the year ending 2019 released last week showed that the chances of a theft resulting in a charge have halved from 10.8 per cent in 2015 to 5.4 per cent, and from 2.6 per cent to 1.3 per cent for personal theft.

Charging rates have continued to fall for a majority of crimes over the years – including for the most serious of crimes including rape and violence.

The figures prompted criticism from Caroline Goodwin, chair of the Criminal Bar Association, who told the Daily Telegraph ‘if charging rates fall close to or even zero, then the public feels offences are in effect being decriminalised’.

However, Geoff said officers were doing their best against a backdrop of ‘crippling’ cuts.

He said: “The police have not ‘given up on charging thieves’ as has been suggested in some reports. The number of offenders being charged could be reducing for a number of different reasons including perhaps wider use of fixed penalty notices to out of court disposals.

“Police officers continue to do the very best they can to tackle criminality and protect the communities they serve against a backdrop of cuts that have, in some areas, been crippling.

“We now have more than 20,000 fewer officers on the streets of England and Wales and fewer police staff too so there is no surprise that there have been consequences.”

National Federation chair John Apter has also spoken out against the criticism: “Charging decisions for the majority of crimes are generally made by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), not the police.

“What will drive these decisions is evidence, sometimes we simply don’t have enough to satisfy the CPS which is not only frustrating for victims but also for those police officers investigating the crimes.

“It must not be ignored that the majority of a police officer’s shift will be taken up with non-crime related calls, such as dealing with mental health, missing persons and social issues, which don’t have an offence attached to them.”