Key Challenges in the Police Sector
The police service is facing a rapidly changing landscape, whilst trying to deliver new and improved services to citizens. Demand for police services has reached record levels, along with new threats that are constantly evolving. This demand is being compounded by increasing attrition numbers within the police officer profession, caused by an increasing workload and low job satisfaction.
It is estimated that within the next 20 years, the police sector will experience officer attrition rates comparable to standard profession market trends. Previously policing was considered a career long vocation, however the sector has not been immune to the job jump culture of today’s employee market, with many trainee or junior police officers now leaving the profession early on in their careers.
To counteract this growing trend and to attract new talent to the Force, local constabularies need to prioritise creating an inclusive workplace, which focuses on lowering workloads through process automation and provides a digital environment which closely aligns with the expectation of the modern workforce. Police forces must also consider what part they need to play in global efforts to address climate change and meet the UK governments Net-Zero carbon emissions ambition.
In November 2021, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and Blue Light Commercial announced the launch of a decarbonisation programme. The programme will be delivered on a local level by forces overseen by a Sustainability Governance Board and will focus on the implementation of three key workstreams: Sustainability Strategy and Policy, Decarbonising the Fleet and Creating a More Efficient and Carbon Neutral Estate.
Police forces will also need to work in collaboration with technology innovators to shape the environmental impact of their supply chain going forward.
With 80% of the current police fleet running on diesel and with fewer than 1,000 EV charging points, police forces need to start rapidly scaling their sustainability response if to be ready for the Government’s 2030 plan (to halt sales of new petrol and diesel cars). A fully electric police fleet would require over 8,000 charging stations to operate effectively. Some forces have already made significant progress in decarbonising their fleet but application across forces is inconsistent.
In its ‘Levelling Up White Paper’, the Government has set out its mission to extend, deepen and simplify devolution across England. The goals are to address long-standing regional inequality, realign national and local budgets and improve public services for all constituents at a local level. However, if powers are given to authorities without the infrastructure and capabilities to deliver and without the funding necessary to administer new responsibilities, then taxpayers could suffer from this.
To drive cost savings and provide better support for the areas which need it most, police constabularies need to work together sharing data and resource to maximise outcomes at a reduced cost. By sharing data and resources local constabularies will have more autonomy to target areas which are in the most need and drive real change in the communities they serve.
The National Policing Digital Strategy 2020 – 2030, published by the NPCC, highlights the UK police forces plan to modernise the police service through digital transformation with an ambition to drive improvements in data, technology and the skills of the people that lead, manage and use it.
To achieve this transformation locally, regionally and nationally, a clear common roadmap is required across all forces, which considers the considerable legacy technology estate that many police forces are being hindered by and develops a common plan suitable for all.
Utilising and combining new technologies to modernise the police service will provide many benefits in terms of efficiencies and cost savings, as well as empowering the workforce like never before.
However, this change is double-edged, as it will make many of the demands on policing increasingly more novel and complex, requiring an adaptive workforce with a more diverse set of skills and knowledge.
Policing will need to find new ways of connecting to the skills, expertise and resources that are available, creating a new broader ecosystem of partners, including volunteers, public services and even private sector expertise.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for driving technological advancement across the public sector, including within the police sector. Technology has enabled forces and staff to progress investigations regardless of their working location and without having to come into contact with victims or witnesses. Future opportunities for the police force include increasing the use of Digital Evidence Management Systems to digitally transform hard media. This is a move which will support a seamless interface between policing and the criminal justice system, as digital evidence can be identified and presented easily and all without delay.
Constabularies are looking to extend this further with some looking to adopt a ‘cloud-based’ information system which has been trialled in the US. Moving data to a cloud platform will give officers instant access to data, records and intelligence and allow them to update the system immediately with information to improve risk management and free officers from the tedium of repetitive administration. In the US, implementing a cloud-based data system saved one police force 240,000 officer admin hours, freeing up resource to be more effective in protecting their citizens.
By utilising a cloud-based system to store digitised data, forces can take advantage of technological innovations such as Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Gathering comprehensive information about victims, offenders and locations quickly from an array of data sources, including CCTV and mobile technologies, will allow police forces to make decisions faster about where to target their limited resources. However, many of AI’s use cases require ‘human profiling’ systems which collect and interpret information on people’s interests, behaviours, movements and physical characteristics in order to forecast future behaviour.
This new form of ‘deep’ surveillance could create a society where practical opportunities for maintaining privacy are limited and where the level of access to information about peoples live is seen by many people to be unacceptable. Police forces must balance public safety with public approval when deploying technology in the future.
The police service must adapt to the rapidly changing nature of crime, especially in the digital world. Online crime has also grown dramatically, with the internet providing the opportunity to commit new types of crime, enabling some crime types to be committed on an industrial scale and facilitated many forms of “traditional” crime.
Phishing, trolling, malware, online scams, revenge pornography and the proliferation of child abuse imagery go largely unrecorded, unanalysed and, as a result, are not fully understood by police.
Criminals are exploiting technology and the tools to preserve anonymity online more quickly than law enforcement is able to bring new techniques to bear to identify them.
As a large holder of public information and data, police forces must also secure their own networks and data stores against the threat of cyberattack. A breach would not only result in a large fine but also in a substantial loss of confidence from the public. As police forces look to modernise through partnership and the adoption of new connected technologies, they need to ensure security maintains a priority to protect their systems from powerful next generation security threats.
The CyberEdge 2022 Cyberthreat Defense Report found that 81.4 per cent of UK organisations experienced at least one cyber-attack in 2021, an increase of 10.3 per cent on the findings of the previous year.
Investigating this ever increasing workload will require police forces to develop specialist skills in digital forensics and identify new technologies which can speed up the investigatory process.
Other future technologies also posing new risks and opportunities for the police service, include the invention of driverless cars, virtual reality and implant technology.
