Revealed: government plans for police privatisation

[ttosca]

West Midlands and Surrey police offer £1.5bn contract under which private firms may investigate crime and detain suspects

Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighbourhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatisation plan being put forward by two of the largest police forces in the country.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/02/police-privatisation-security-firms-crime

Ttosca, do you know if the public has any right to know, under the Freedom of Information Act, anything about the internal affairs of private companies? I don't think we do, as we won't be able to enquire about botched operations by private health care companies, either, AFAIK.

So if private companies take over 'investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources', how will we ever get to hear of it if a person is beaten up while in their custody, or if they abuse their power in some way?

In the article, it says "Privatisation means that the police will be less accountable to the public. And people will no longer be able to go to the Independent Police Complaints Commission if they have a problem."

But surely some other body would be set up? And these private police forces would be trained? And paid? And properly regulated?

But it still doesn't make sense to me. Why would anyone want to buy the police force? How can you make a profit from locking people up? And why does the government think it's OK to pour public funds into private security firms anyway?

Solo-

In fact, private companies are exempt from FOI requests, I think. If not entirely, then certainly when they successfully claim that release of information could jeopardise their business or competetiveness.

As for the details, I really don't know. I'm not even sure private police forces has been tried anywhere in europe.

I do know that there are quiet a few privately run prisons in the USA.

Good grief.

Someone was telling me that elections for these new crime commissioners start soon. Apparently there are no women standing at all.

FOI applies to the state, not to private businesses.

I think it's an interesting idea. Police are always saying they want to do less paperwork/admin and get more of their personnel back on the 'front line', and if private security companies can take up the slack doing less skilled tasks, why not? A lot of the Olympic policing has been contracted out already. Not sure what 'investigating crimes' would involve but perhaps they mean dull legwork like cross-checking records rather than dusting crime scenes for prints or making dawn raids. As for beating people up in custody, hasn't G4S been transporting prisoners around for years already? Like anything other contract, there have to be terms and conditions, operational boundaries and monitoring of performance. I'd like to see how this one develops.

Cogito - where's the accountability to the public? Will FOI apply or will people be fobbed off with 'commercial confidentiality'? G4S has a rather shoddy record of fuck-ups btw. And the private security guards the border agency uses have a shocking record of mis-treatment of people being deported, including killing one man through so-called restraint by restricting his breathing - other passengers on the plane were shocked and appalled at the way they treated the poor man.

The use of force and the power to detain people against their will are the most draconian powers that the state has. The state has to take responsibility for them and gain and keep our consent. The profit motive has no place here.

What's more, contracting actual policing out means EU competition law applies. Once that genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. You end up with all the expense and bureaucracy of tendering and contracting. Huge waste of taxpayer's money, huge delays.

Same accountability that presumably applies when they lose prisoners or whatever. If they do a poor job, they'll lose the contract. The regular police aren't above a bit of 'commercial confidentiality' as we've just seen in the Leveson Inquiry. They've also killed quite a few people in custody down the years. The power to arrest is not being given to the private companies, from what I understand so they are not detaining anyone against their will.

Like the NHS situation, isn't this just an extension of the outsourcing that already happens?

That'd be nice, Cogito, but sadly the history of government contracting suggests no, companies don't lose contracts for being shit. Even when they do, the companies involved usually end up walking away with millions or billions of pounds of public money - go and have a look at NHS electronic records.

(Or any project in which Capita have been involved.)

Equally, it's always the taxpayer who carries the can when things go wrong. If the private sector fucks up - e.g. maintaining council property in, IIRC, Northampton, the private sector company walks away or goes bust and the council has to pick up the costs.

"But surely some other body would be set up? And these private police forces would be trained? And paid? And properly regulated?"

I think that's a huge assumption to make. In the news it said that this would be cost-saving and provide a better service to the public. I think that's pretty contradictory as well.

I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption that the contracts would be given subject to agreed standards and targets and that there would be monitoring of performance. It's true that the Civil Service hasn't got a great track record when it comes to negotiating real-world commercial deals, but that's an argument for the better recruitment and training of civil servants, not for a halt in the progress of essential services. The last person I saw that was in favour of the proposals was a senior woman police officer. She saw a greater involvement of contractors as a way to free up more trained officers for frontline services. And I think it saves money because a fully-trained police officer is an expensive unit, overqualified for some of the jobs they are currently asked to do.

I think talking about people as 'units' is part of the problem. These units are people who may well be called upon to risk their lives. And certainly do a much more important and socially useful job than the policy wonks and management consultants who dream up wheezes like this.

Outsourcing 'back office' functions sounds great. Until you realise it's your medical records that are being sent to India - meaning UK jobs are lost, never mind all the other implications. (My old employers, a publishing company, outsourced their finance department to India - cheaper for them but fewer taxes going to the Treasury and nightmare for us poor freelancers trying to chase invoices. Which means the company earnt a lot more money by paying everyone late.)

If people are trained up to risk their lives and paid accordingly, then wouldn't it be better to have them out there on the front line where they can fulfill that specialised role, rather than sat in front of a computer screen doing something that anyone could do? I remember the fuss when ambulance crews were split between highly-trained paramedics and the less skilled transport functions - unions wanted everyone to be paid the same regardless of skills. The police force can probably make similar distinctions.

The police already do differentiate between iniformed police staff and police support staff (who do the back room mundane work and are paid much less). Still let's privatise the function to save money only for it to cost more and provide a lesser service just a few years down the line. Why change the habits of a lifetime now.

I'm giving this one a cautious

For some of the more more process oriented stuff then I'm open minded about a private company taking on some of the investigative work. But one of the fundamental responsibilities of the police is to investigate crime. So in my view, every crime these private companies 'investigate' must be headed up by a full time cop.

The devil is in the detail I guess.

The other thing is, why do we need a private firm patrolling? We already have PCSO's who are in effect coppers with no powers. The idea was they'd patrol and be the eyes & ears of the regulars.

And as for detaining suspects, I'm assuming they mean citizens arrest just like any other person. I wouldn't support powers of arrest for a private firm. Especially when PCSO's can't do it.

It's been stated specifically that a private contractor wouldn't have the power of arrest. They could do things like manage cells or transport prisoners securely, as happens at present.

How, exactly, would they expect to make a profit?

Fairly easy I suspect. So let's take for example 'investigate crime' whatever that means.

What a private firm would probably do is hire an ex-copper, ex army MP, someone with investigative skills such as a retired cop. They could easily pay them a decent salary with a profit margin on top.

I would bet that this cost would still be way less than a serving police officer with their public sector pension and other HR requirements.

Whether or not it's a good idea to do this in the name of saving money is entirely a different argument.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Niceguy, that's how I thought it worked.

Sorry to be dense, but how is it cheaper for the council to hire a company to hire a professional (and allow for a profit margin) than for the council to hire the person directly? Another level of management, a middle man to cream off the tax payers' money profits ... ?

Unless the private company skimps on wages, training, pension provision, etc?

And then when things go pear-shaped there are the legal costs of bailing out a company that is the only one performing a vital function and is too important to be allowed to go bankrupt.

Is this really going to be cheaper for the tax payer?

Essentially yes a private person would 'skimp' although the use of that word is probably biased.

Once upon a time we had a full police officer sat on reception answering the telephone and dealing with members of the public. Now do we really need someone trained in riot training, firearms training etc. etc. to do that? No we don't. Similarly inside the police station, do we need a copper to unlock cell doors and fill in the required paperwork?

I'd argue not. In which case why pay someone the same as a copper?

As for my earlier example, I know a retired copper who has a very generous pension who would probably be quite happy to do a bit of part time work just to keep his mind active and himself busy. The police would get a very experienced person doing investigations for a fraction of the cost of a full time officer.

And crucially for the police, you can easily get rid of a supplier. Not so easy your own employees. And you can't even sack a policeman if he hasn't done anything wrong. So say G4S don't come up to scratch, sack them. Job done. No HR problems, no PR problems. Just boom gone.

In effect this is outsourcing which is what my company does. We often bid for contracts which is taking on the existing employees and providing back the same service back to the company at a lower cost.

I'm still quite about this plan though.

Thanks, Niceguy. Another Q: the police aren't allowed to go on strike, are they? But presumably the employees of private companies will be allowed to?

Correct and yes

I'd be really worried about this, especially for women. It's really unethical that men have lots of professional power over women in the first place, be that the medical or judicial system, or the police and military. This is because men do use their position to abuse women.
But at least if there is accountability, women have some recourse.

I live in Japan which is obviously more patriarchal than Britain, and I have seen first hand (through first hand experience) how male medical professionals use their position to abuse women. When it comes to the police here, I a know of a woman who went to the police after being raped and was laughed at by a group of policemen in the office. All men, of course. Again, there is a certain amount of recourse if it's a public body, but if the organization is private, then god help us, really.

If over 50% of the people employed in positions of authority in this "private" police department were women, I'd be less worried, but it sounds to me like it's going to be mainly men.