Any members of the police on here?

[fedup21]

I was just reading the bbc news article about Boris’s priory of spring our police recruitment. I’m interested as I wonder if it’ll be teachers next?

When the article says

Downing Street said a recruitment campaign would begin in September, with forces held to account for meeting the target by a new board, bringing together police leaders and led by Home Secretary Priti Patel.

Does that mean the police force itself will be held to account for meeting its own recruitment targets? How does that work??

Sounds great in theory but they've shut loads of police stations so where are all these people going to be based, for a start. I work in a similar sector and we're massively understaffed. They can have all the recruitment campaigns they want but if people don't want to do the job, then it won't work. There's also issues with retaining staff (which is the bit that all these organisations need to get right first).

The whole criminal justice system is a mess. The police are the "public" face of that but cuts everywhere else have had a massive impact. Lots of Courts have closed down so if you make more arrests, when are they going to appear in Court? Prisons are overcrowded, so hardly anyone is getting prison sentences right now. Why bother to recruit police to arrest when the person will just get Community Service, which they end up not doing because the probation service is in a mess too!

God, that sounds like a nightmare!

Are they doing a similar thing to what they’re trying to do to combat the teaching recruitment/retention problem and making entry easier? Eg Academies no longer have to have qualified teachers, TAs and HLTAs (which in my school means the head has decided they can cover classes-there is no additional training) cover absence and PPA, and they’re now saying they’ll scrap the maths/English skills tests that graduates have to do as they’re too hard and stopping too many people getting on the teacher training course!

We also have the problem that school budgets are crap (can’t imagine police are any different) and heads are choose NQTs rather than experienced (expensive!) teachers. Expensive teachers who have gone part time to have kids are not being allowed to increase their days when their kids are older, as they are too expensive which has massive knock on effects on their pensions.

Are things similar in the police?

I’m not a journo by the way-just nosy!!

I think it's the same in a lot of sectors at the moment. Yes the area I work in has relaxed the entry requirements and at the same time, decided that the unqualified staff can do virtually everything the qualified ones can! I'm not saying they can't. We have some very good staff that don't have the formal qualifications, but they are getting no increase in pay to match the increase in responsibility!

If you have more police dealing with more crime then unless our court system is currently half empty (and I hear it's overstretched ...) you're gonna need more courts and lawyers and judges. So where are they coming from ?

Plus you'll need more prisons to house the increased number of criminals you are catching.

It's almost as if it's a load of hot air, rather than the results of a carefully planned improvement in the criminal justice system.

I wonder how long it takes to go from day one recruit to serving constable ? Two years ?