Non-Subscriber Extract
Population pressure
By Sarah Bebbington
02 November 2007
If you believe everything you read in the papers, you might think there will soon be no room in jails for British prisoners, that cops are rushed off their feet dealing with knife-wielding Polish criminals and that the student officers joining the service will have to learn to speak Lithuanian as part of their conditions of entry. According to the Office of National Statistics, the UK is facing an unprecedented population boom that could see an increase of 4.4 million people in the country during the next nine years.
So what is the truth and what does this all mean for police officers? How will officers be expected to deliver a high standard of service with more and more people clamouring for attention? And how worried are police bosses about this?
One of the forces dealing with the headache of too many people and not enough officers is Lincolnshire Police. According to Peter Davies, an assistant chief constable with the force, he believes this rural force already is overstretched and under-resourced, but it also faces one of the steepest population growths in the country in the coming years as a result of migration and its popularity with commuters to London and the south east.
Mr Davies tells Police Review his force is 'ill-equipped' to absorb further population growth.
He says: 'The cost of police per head is far higher then any one else in the country, the number of police officers here is far fewer and the number of police staff per officer is lower then anywhere else... the big issue is that any growth in population increases the demand for population. Not just an offending population, but victims and majority population who make calls to the police and need reassurance and visibility.'
Mr Davies adds that the force is at the bottom of the pile when comparing officer numbers with other rural forces. Lincolnshire Police only has 178 officers per 100,000 members of the population (the national average is 223), and the chairman of its police authority described the situation as 'dire' last month.
Mr Davies believes the more people there are in the country, the stronger the UK economy and the richer and more diverse our society will be. But he says that police force funding has not caught up with this growth.
The Office of National Statistics says the population increase is partly due to a 'net inward flow of migrants' to the nation.
This poses separate problems to officers. Earlier this year, Julie Spence, chief constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, said she needed 'more coppers for coppers' to police the growing Eastern European population in her force area.
But Bob Jones, chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, says: 'Immigration brings benefits. [Migrants] bring economic activity, they encourage growth in the housing market.'
According to him, the problem is that the money earned by the working population is not being properly redistributed where it is needed the most.