Chris Philp MP is the Shadow Home Secretary.
So many people have their bike nicked or a phone snatched from their hand, but do not even bother reporting it to the police because they think they will do nothing about it. Too often they are right.
92 per cent of crime recorded in England and Wales ends with nobody being caught. Almost none of that is down to the crimes themselves being difficult; the evidence has often been handed to the police by the victim and then left to sit there. This is wrong. The police’s main job is to catch criminals and keep the public safe. Crime must have consequences.
That is why the Conservative Party has set out a plan to take back the legal powers that allow the Home Secretary to set the standards and practices in policing, and will use them to compel every force in England and Wales to carry out basic investigative work.
Three investigative measures would be mandated if I were a Conservative Home Secretary. Firstly, forces would be required to always run a suspect’s images through the facial recognition database. Secondly, to always follow up geolocation signals coming from stolen goods; and thirdly, to always follow up stolen goods advertised for sale online when notified.
The police hold a database of around 10 million faces of people previously arrested, and an AI algorithm can compare an image of a suspect against every one of them in a matter of seconds with incredible accuracy. In a very large share of thefts, robberies and assaults, there is a picture of the suspect, from a shop camera, a doorbell or a bystander’s mobile phone. Some forces run those pictures as routine and identify the offender inside a day, while others do not bother, so the same person carries on snatching phones from the same high street.
Modern phones, laptops, bikes and even cars can report their own location, so victims can inform the police with the exact address of the stolen item, having watched their possessions travel across a map. Understandably victims are often told not to go and get it themselves, but then if police are not going to knock on that door, the thief is allowed to get away completely.
Tools stolen from a van overnight or other stolen items are often advertised online, photographed and priced, because the men selling them have worked out that no officer is going to look. Cutting off the resale removes the profit, and following up a listing when notified recovers the property and identifies the thief in a single afternoon.
Nothing in any of these amounts to clever policing, which is rather the point of it, because this is the basic work every taxpayer in the country already assumes is being done and would be astonished to learn is optional. Forces have nevertheless found the time for other things, including the recording of non-crime hate incidents, which means officers logging hurtful things which somebody said online, and the feelings of the person who read it. That practice was built into a national system by guidance, with no vote in Parliament. Recording an argument on the internet became a national duty, but checking a thief’s face against a database has not.
So why has no Home Secretary simply picked up the telephone and ordered it? Because in 2014 the power to set how the police go about their work was taken out of the hands of the Home Secretary and given to the College of Policing, a body nobody elected and nobody can remove. A Home Secretary can no longer require forces to adopt a practice unless the College has written or approved the wording first, which leaves the one person the public can sack with the smallest say in the matter.
Labour intends to bury the problem deeper still, folding the College into a new National Police Service. The decision on whether your burglary gets investigated would then be taken inside an operational police force, another step further from any minister and from the voters who put them there.
The Conservative Party would go the other way. Restore the power over police practice to the Home Secretary, and give that code teeth, so that a force which ignores a properly laid standard faces consequences a chief constable notices, whether through inspection findings, funding conditions or, in the last resort, removal of the Chief.
If every force investigated to the standard that some forces already manage on facial recognition and asset tracking alone, 36,800 more crimes would be solved every year. That figure comes from levelling every force up to the average performer. Once every force is doing the basic work rather than merely the average force, it is likely to be higher rather than lower.
The public expects clear evidence to always be followed up. Conservatives will always be on the side of the law-abiding majority and have a plan to restore the basics the public expect. Because crime must have consequences.
Chris Philp MP is the Shadow Home Secretary.
So many people have their bike nicked or a phone snatched from their hand, but do not even bother reporting it to the police because they think they will do nothing about it. Too often they are right.
92 per cent of crime recorded in England and Wales ends with nobody being caught. Almost none of that is down to the crimes themselves being difficult; the evidence has often been handed to the police by the victim and then left to sit there. This is wrong. The police’s main job is to catch criminals and keep the public safe. Crime must have consequences.
That is why the Conservative Party has set out a plan to take back the legal powers that allow the Home Secretary to set the standards and practices in policing, and will use them to compel every force in England and Wales to carry out basic investigative work.
Three investigative measures would be mandated if I were a Conservative Home Secretary. Firstly, forces would be required to always run a suspect’s images through the facial recognition database. Secondly, to always follow up geolocation signals coming from stolen goods; and thirdly, to always follow up stolen goods advertised for sale online when notified.
The police hold a database of around 10 million faces of people previously arrested, and an AI algorithm can compare an image of a suspect against every one of them in a matter of seconds with incredible accuracy. In a very large share of thefts, robberies and assaults, there is a picture of the suspect, from a shop camera, a doorbell or a bystander’s mobile phone. Some forces run those pictures as routine and identify the offender inside a day, while others do not bother, so the same person carries on snatching phones from the same high street.
Modern phones, laptops, bikes and even cars can report their own location, so victims can inform the police with the exact address of the stolen item, having watched their possessions travel across a map. Understandably victims are often told not to go and get it themselves, but then if police are not going to knock on that door, the thief is allowed to get away completely.
Tools stolen from a van overnight or other stolen items are often advertised online, photographed and priced, because the men selling them have worked out that no officer is going to look. Cutting off the resale removes the profit, and following up a listing when notified recovers the property and identifies the thief in a single afternoon.
Nothing in any of these amounts to clever policing, which is rather the point of it, because this is the basic work every taxpayer in the country already assumes is being done and would be astonished to learn is optional. Forces have nevertheless found the time for other things, including the recording of non-crime hate incidents, which means officers logging hurtful things which somebody said online, and the feelings of the person who read it. That practice was built into a national system by guidance, with no vote in Parliament. Recording an argument on the internet became a national duty, but checking a thief’s face against a database has not.
So why has no Home Secretary simply picked up the telephone and ordered it? Because in 2014 the power to set how the police go about their work was taken out of the hands of the Home Secretary and given to the College of Policing, a body nobody elected and nobody can remove. A Home Secretary can no longer require forces to adopt a practice unless the College has written or approved the wording first, which leaves the one person the public can sack with the smallest say in the matter.
Labour intends to bury the problem deeper still, folding the College into a new National Police Service. The decision on whether your burglary gets investigated would then be taken inside an operational police force, another step further from any minister and from the voters who put them there.
The Conservative Party would go the other way. Restore the power over police practice to the Home Secretary, and give that code teeth, so that a force which ignores a properly laid standard faces consequences a chief constable notices, whether through inspection findings, funding conditions or, in the last resort, removal of the Chief.
If every force investigated to the standard that some forces already manage on facial recognition and asset tracking alone, 36,800 more crimes would be solved every year. That figure comes from levelling every force up to the average performer. Once every force is doing the basic work rather than merely the average force, it is likely to be higher rather than lower.
The public expects clear evidence to always be followed up. Conservatives will always be on the side of the law-abiding majority and have a plan to restore the basics the public expect. Because crime must have consequences.