ACT voters, for instance, while saying that they felt safe in their own neighbourhood, were more likely to say the police were not doing a good job at protecting communities.“If you’re an ACT Party supporter, you’re very sort of sceptical about government generally and about the state generally. And so you're more likely, I think, to give any agency of the state a negative rating.”
Back in June I wrote a post about how the police failed to resolve 87% of property crimes within the year. That fact is from their own annual report. Does that represent a police force "doing a good job of protecting communities"?
In May I wrote a post about how the number of prisoners on remand has doubled. The justice system is not functioning properly.
Those are just two recent instances of my skepticism about state agencies.
Warranted?
1 comment:
Lindsay, You are not wrong, but there are reasons beyound the control of both parties you refer to. Police are top heavy with brass. As a cop many years ago, I recall a cleanout at PNHQ, where some 80 ranking police members were sent back out into the districts to actually earn a living. I rather naively said that I hadnt thought there were that many at HQ, to which I was informed that figure didnt even begin to scratch the surface.
Then there were the closures of the mental institutions to save money - of course, the Police had to take up the not inconsiderable task of looking after the ex inmates when they invariably ran amok out in the community.
There has been so much more that was once the province of various other entities that have been shuffled off onto the police because there is now nothing and no-one left to deal with them.
Staffing has not kept pace with the workload. When you hear a politician or upper echelon police member talk about 'X thousand' members of police, you must realise that to baffle the public a decade or so back, they included civilians - typists, clerks etc, into the term. In reality, the number of sworn cops [actual policemen] has only increased by one or two thousand since I joined in 1976. Forget about the much touted 1,800 new cops - they have not been keeping up with attrition
Legislation has been watered down so much, that criminals now have no fear - its just a minor inconvenience when they are caught. Then there was the 8 years or so of police, Health, etc having their funding frozen in real terms by the last government... What is a wonder to me is that Police get the number they do before the courts [who admonish and let them go anyway]
With regard to remand, there have been no jury trials for the period of CV19, and thus many more have been held in custody than would normally be the case. In fact, I heard a day back, that some lawyers are advising their clients to consider a guilty plea [especially when they are, in fact, guilty] to avoid being held on remand for longer than the time they would be sentenced to!
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