At the beginning of December last year I formally complained to the Information Commissioner about the failure to provide a response (even after an earlier intervention from his Office had elicited a response that a reply was imminent).  The Information Commissioner has now (2nd February) issued a formal Decision Notice and the Information Commissioner’s decision is that:

“the public authority has failed to comply with the Act.”

The public authority in this instance is the Home Office and the Decision Notice goes on to say:

“The Information Commissioner requires the public authority to take the following steps to ensure compliance with the legislation.

• It should either provide the requested information or issue a valid referral notice stating why it is exempt from disclosure.

The public authority must take these steps within 35 calendar days of the date of this decision notice.”

Failure to comply may be dealt with as Contempt of Court, although the Home Office is entitled to lodge an appeal with the Information Tribunal within 28 days.

The Information Commissioner has branded the Home Office timescale in responding (or rather failing to respond) as “unreasonable”.

So in five weeks time – a year after I first asked about the matter – the Home Office will be potentially in Contempt of Court unless it answers the question or produces a valid explanation as to why the information cannot be disclosed.

Unless, the Home Office appeals to the Information Tribunal ….

There have repeatedly been assurances given that the new arrangements would be at least as transparent as those that existed with the now-abolished Metropolitan Police Authority.  Performance data and financial information would be placed on the web-site and everything we were assured would be open and visible to the people of London.

So what happens when you seek to go to www.mopc.police.uk?  You get redirected to the home page of the Greater London Authority web-site – not even its page on policing.

And where is the financial information and the performance data that was promised?

If it is there, I couldn’t find it.

Still it is early days and I am sure that Kit Malthouse AM will sort it out now that he has been formally appointed as the Deputy MOPC (a role specifically envisaged in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act).

But wait, is Kit Malthouse really in charge?

The press release says he has been appointed.

But, if you go to the Mayoral Decisions part of the Greater London Authority web-site, there is no Mayoral Decision appointing him.

If there is no formally recorded Mayoral Decision, any actions taken by Kit Malthouse as Deputy MOPC are invalid and ultra vires, because there has been no formal decision to give him the legal powers.

And if he has been properly appointed, the failure to post the relevant Mayoral Decision on the Greater London Authority web-site doesn’t bode well for the new era of transparency about policing that we were promised.

Or am I being pedantic?

• Police officer numbers in the Metropolitan Police were 32,900 in September 2010, fell to 32,441 by March 2011, with a further fall to 31,657 in September 2011 – a loss of 1,243 officers over the year.
• Police staff numbers were 14,047 in September 2010, falling to 13,688 by March 2011, and then to 13,126 in September 2011.
• The number of Police Community Support Officers also fell over the same period: from 4,387 to 4,009 and then to 3,903.

Now I don’t believe that police numbers should be the only goal of policing policy.  Many duties are performed by warranted police officers that could be performed by police staff or by PCSOs, but these figures show big falls in all three categories – so, if anything, more police officers will be carrying out roles that could have been performed by people other than warranted police officers, as police staff jobs are back-filled by police officers.  The reduction in PCSOs will also impact directly on the uniformed presence on the streets.

These figures are not going to be good news for the Conservative Party who have been trying to pretend in their campaign to re-elect Boris Johnson as Mayor that police numbers are really improving and, of course, that there is no problem on London’s streets with violent crime and gang crime.

But the acronym has, of course, a number of other (longer-established) uses, such as the Mount Olive Pickle Company and Mouse Plasmacytoma Cells.

However, the acronym MOPC is also used widely to denote mobile body armour in the form of Condor’s Modular Operator Plate Carrier, pictured here:

Not to be confused with the standard issue anti-stab MetVest:

I just thought you’d like to know …..

So what was the secret of success?  And could it be translated to the UK and to London in particular?

Professor Franklin Zimring of the School of Law at Berkeley has applied scientific analysis to the figures and has come up with a number of interesting conclusions.  The improvement was not so-called “zero tolerance” policing, focussing on stopping the spread of crime into new areas.  Instead, the results were delivered by “hot spot” policing – robust, sustained policing of those areas with the highest rate of crime (especially violent crime).

The aim should be harm-minimisation as far as things like drug use are concerned (disrupting public drug markets where associated violent crime tends to happen, for example, rather than trying to eliminate drug use itself).

Crucially, he also finds that police numbers matter – provided those numbers are directed to the areas with the highest crime and, when there, officers police “robustly”.

He is also not convinced that simply locking criminals up cuts crime.  As he puts it:

“We used to think that all we could do with high-rate offenders is lock ‘em up or they’re going to offend on the street. But NYC has 28 % fewer people locked up in 2011 than in 1990. And it has 80 % less crime. The [individual] criminals didn’t go anywhere. They’re just doing less crime. So the bedrock of prediction on which incapacitate imprisonment was built, has turned out to be demonstrably false. And the proof of that is in New York City.

The data shows that the criminal activity of people coming back to NYC from the prisons dropped as the crime decline proceeded. In 1990 the odds that a prison released from prison coming to NYC would get reconvicted of a felony over the next three years was 28 %. But over the next 17 years, the odds of being reconvicted of a felony dropped to 10 percent.

The street situation changed and so had the things that their friends were doing. People were now smoking marijuana and drinking wine. Cocaine use was down. Street robbery has gone down 84 %. Burglaries 86 %. And that meant that the people that the released offender used to hang out with as a persistent offender from a high-risk neighborhood, are no longer doing those things. So he’s not doing crimes with them.”

This obviously has implications for the current debates on prison numbers and suggests that Kenneth Clarke’s approach is potentially right, if – and it is a big if – the rest of  Zimring’s conclusions are taken on board.

So what else does his work mean for policy here?

It certainly implies that police numbers are important and that the last Labour Government (and the last Mayor in London) were right to boost the number of police.  The cuts envisaged by the present Government and those that are being carried out quietly in London by the present Mayor are therefore almost certainly unhelpful. (The lack of certainty derives from the fact that it does, of course, depend on what the police officers remaining are actually doing and whether their activity is in fact robustly tackling crime hot spots.)

It also suggests that policies favouring policing the suburbs at the expense of the areas with higher crime that tend to be in the inner cities are misconceived.

I suspect that the robust and sustained “disruptive” policing of crime hot spots is consistent with the approach that Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe would wish to follow.  It will be interesting to see whether this is encouraged by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC – pronounced “Mopsy”) or whether the MOPC will be nervous about the political implications in the run up to the Mayoral elections in May.

“Small prizes should be available for those reaching the bottom in the fastest time. These would be paid for out of the savings of not having to maintain and operate down escalators.”

The e-petition has been rejected because this is a matter for a devolved authority – in this case the Mayor of London – and therefore it is for the Mayor of London to consider this proposal.

“The Metropolitan Police Authority was established in July 2000 as a by-product of the legislation that also created the London Mayoralty, the GLA and the London Assembly.  Until then the Metropolitan Police had been solely accountable to the Home Secretary, who was uniquely the Police Authority for London.

The MPA is now to be abolished and replaced by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC – pronounced “MOPSY”) as a by-product of the legislation that will see Policing and Crime Commissioners elected outside London in November.

The MPA’s final meeting is taking place today and the MOPC will take over responsibility on Monday 16^th January.

So what did the MPA achieve in its eleven and a half years of existence?

The early years of the MPA saw a dramatic transformation in the Metropolitan Police. In 2000 morale in the Service was poor, more officers left the Met each month than joined (police numbers had declined each year for a decade), public confidence was low, financial controls were virtually non-existent (the Met had no system for telling if bills had been paid more than once) and the quality of many serious investigations was poor.  The first tasks of the new Authority included the introduction of financial controls and discipline; establishing a new culture of openness and accountability; and reversing the decline in the number of police officers so that the MPS saw the most significant increase in its size in its history.

This was followed by a sustained focus on turning round street crime and cutting burglary.  The MPA led the way nationally on the introduction of Police Community Support Officers and then the setting up of the first Safer Neighbourhood Teams before rolling them out across London.

This contribution led to a general increase in public confidence in the police service, but specific initiatives led by the MPA on stop and search, on hate crime, and on recruitment and retention of black and minority officers also changed perceptions of the Met.

Inevitably, the direction of travel changed somewhat with a change in administration in City Hall after the 2008 elections, but the MPA continued to deliver a much clearer visible accountability of the police in London than had existed before.

Certainly, throughout its life the MPA has ensured that far more information about the policing of London has been put in the public domain.  The MPA also meant that the Commissioner and senior officers were seen to answer questions in public at full Authority meetings and at its Committees.  And this was supplemented by detailed MPA scrutinies ranging from rape investigation and victim care to counter-terrorism policing, crime data recording to mental health policing, and landmark reports on the Stockwell shooting, of the Race and Faith Inquiry, and on public order policing.

So will all this disappear with the MOPC?

The first thing to emphasise is that London’s model will – as ever – be different from that in the rest of the country.  There will not be a directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioner.  Instead, the functions will be carried out by the MOPC, led by an appointed Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime.

The policing priorities will be set by the MOPC and it remains to be seen how much these will change from those previously set by the MPA with its more widely drawn membership.

The real danger is, of course, that much of the visible accountability and answerability will be lost.  Some will be provided by the London Assembly who will have a new and enhanced role in respect of policing and crime, but their focus – as envisaged by the new statute – will be very much on the MOPC and not on the police service itself.

How this will develop will depend on the personalities involved – both at the MOPC and on the Assembly – and on the willingness of the Met itself to be open and transparent.  There are certainly no guarantees on any of this, yet police accountability in the capital will remain as important as ever – as the events of the last few months have demonstrated.

Perhaps the message is watch this space.”

“The Indi is running a story about a potential “rift” between Clegg and Cameron over Europe and the veto.  This is such a non-story, Clegg’s position on Europe is well known.  Cameron’s position on Europe has been made clear and is much more in tune with the wishes of the British people.

David Cameron is the Prime Minister and his position is both right and popular.  Nick Clegg is not Prime Minister and his position is wrong and unpopular.  Bets please on whose views will win out.”

Squelch!

At some point, the LibDems are going to realise that their post-General Election sell-out to the Tories is getting them nowhere …..

The saga – for anyone still listening – is reprised here.

In November, I formally raised the strange refusal of the Home Office to divulge this information with the Information Commissioner.

On 11th November his office responded saying:

“I have today spoken to the Home Office regarding your complaint; they have acknowledged there have been significant delays in responding to your information request.  I have been advised that you will be getting a response within the next five working days.”

You might think that this would be progress.  (Admittedly, the Information Commissioner’s Office were less confident saying that “If the Home Office responds and refuses to release the information you have asked for and you are dissatisfied, you may, after exhausting their internal complaints procedure, complain to us again.”  They’d clearly been there before.)

In any event, with mounting excitement that I was about to see a response from the Home Office I waited for five working days.

And then another five working days.

And then five more working days.

Suffering a patience failure (if not a sense of humour failure), I left a telephone message for the Information Commissioner.

And his office responded on 7th December saying:

“I have today spoken to the Home Office who have advised me that they have in fact not sent out any response to your information request.  In the light of this information I have passed the case to our case resolution team who will contact you as soon as possible to explain how your complaint will be progressed.”

And guess what?

I am still waiting.

The meeting on Thursday is not being held in City Hall and is much more low-key than usual with no written report from the Commissioner and with most of the agenda given over to formal reports winding up the remaining aspects of the MPA’s business.

There is, however, an item grandly-entitled “MPA Retrospective” which you might assume was intended to deal with what the MPA has achieved during its eleven and a half years of existence.

You might assume that, but you would be wrong.

In fact, the report only looks at the achievements “under the current administration” – i.e. since Mayor Boris Johnson and his Deputy Kit Malthouse AM got their hands on the tiller - so it is a record of the three and a bit years when the MPA was Tory-led and ignores the previous eight when its was Labour-led.

I am trying to establish whether this is simply an attempt to save paper (clearly a report that looked at what has been achieved since July 2000 when the MPA took office would be a good bit longer).  I am assured that a “there will be a full retrospective on the website”.  However, it is not there yet and the MPA website will be archived after this coming weekend, so that’s not much help…

Only an extreme cynic would suggest that this is yet another effort by parts of the GLA family to promote the record (sic) in office of a Tory Mayor in advance of the elections next May …..

Interestingly, one claim rather confirms the view that the Conservative tenure has provoked an unusually – and possibly unhealthily -high turnover of senior police officers at New Scotland Yard: