Learning from Group Relations and how that is applied to the inspection process.

Stephen Otter, HMIC, joined the TIHR 'Food for Thought' lunchtime talk series to ask how his experiential learning through the Tavistock Institute’s Group Relation tradition is offering insight to the way he approaches the Police inspection process.

Transcript

1. Tavistock Institute Lunch Time Talk. 26.02.14! Inspecting the police! How can inspection of the police facilitate learning and improvement? ! ! Stephen Otter!
2. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary! ❖  Mission! ❖  Through inspecting, monitoring and advising; to promote and advance improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of policing. ! ❖  We will do this independently, professionally and fairly, always championing the public interest, and we will explain what we do and why.!
3. Or, as some might say...! ❖  Inspectors arrive after the battle and bayonet the wounded or! ❖  solve a problem you didn't know you had in a way you don't understand!
4. New annual inspections! ❖  '...allow the public to see - from a small number of easy to understand categories - whether their local force is performing well or badly when it comes to cutting crime and providing value for money' (Home Secretary)! ❖  Objectives! ❖  improve effective democratic accountability! ❖  inspect in a way that leads to improvements in policing! ❖  identify problems at an early stage to reduce the risk of service failure!
5. Scope of inspections! ❖  How well does each force:! ❖  cut crime - from anti-social behaviour through to organised crime and protecting vulnerable people! ❖  provide a service that is fair! ❖  provide value for money?!
6. Police Context! The work of the police is an area of life about which everyone has an opinion. Much of this intense interest stems from the fact that police work is a moral melting pot or minefield where individual officers are faced, a daily basis, with personal risk and making complex moral decisions which most other people would never have to face. This provides the ‘observer’ of TV cop shows with endless opportunities for exercising their own morality by discussing the rights and wrongs of each decision made by police officers without actually exposing themselves to the risks inherent in making a ‘wrong’ decision. The decisions that police officers make not only have a significant impact on those on the receiving end, but they also affect the moral character of the officers themselves. They cannot avoid the moral aspects of the work that they do. ! High personal standards are expected of police officers by a community that they often perceive as hypocritical. They are expected to be moral exemplars in a social environment where the pressures toward cynicism and a loss of moral idealism are very great. This tends to reinforce the values of peer group membership and erode the demands of individual morality. Group culture tends to reconfigure individual moral demands so that they sit more easily with the demands of group membership. Individual integrity and group loyalty are simultaneously expected of police officers, and some of the most difficult problems, both moral and psychological that officers face concern the ordering of these two demands. !
7. Police Culture! The policeman’s role contains two principle variables, danger and authority, which should be interpreted in the light of a constant 'pressure to appear efficient’ (J. H. Skolnick. Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. (1975)). According to Skolnick, the elements of danger and authority tend to make officers feel ‘isolated’ from the public and ‘suspicious’ of the people they deal with. Danger makes officers ‘more attentive to the signs indicating a potential for violence and lawbreaking’ and isolates them socially from the section of society they regard as ‘symbolically dangerous’ and from the people with whom they identify most.! Danger and authority should be seen in the context of the pressure on officers ‘to “produce” - to be efficient rather than legal when the two norms are in conflict’. Under this pressure to produce, officers not only perceive possible criminality according to the symbolic status of the suspect, they also develop ‘a stake in organised patterns of enforcement’. Officers therefore respond negatively to those suspects who interfere with their enforcement arrangements. ! Officers’ loyalty to each other is a product of their isolation from society as a result of the danger and authority they experience in their work, within the context of continuing pressure for improved performance.!
8. Police loyalty! • The twin variables of danger and authority lead officers to feel isolated from the public and to seek solidarity with their colleagues. ! • Their loyalty is to each other and the informal police code rather than the official orders and rules.! • The inner sense of loyalty to the fellow officer is positively related to tolerance of misconduct. (S.K. Shernock (1990)).!
9. Police Leadership! ❖  Imbued in police culture! ❖  Hierarchy of 9 to 11 ranks! ❖  Command and control: a preference for action and reaction not reflection! ❖  Maintain status quo! ❖  Heroic - nicknamed 'silver backs'! ❖  HMIC was seen as a senior arm of the police service !
10. Some questions for us! ❖  How should we avoid the danger of making inspection the end in itself ! ❖  Understanding that inspections are mostly associated with guilt and wrong-doing, what should we do to make sure our inspections lead to a constructive facilitation towards improvement! ❖  Understanding that police officers often invest much of themselves in their roles, how could we diminish their feeling that they are being personally challenged! ❖  How do you avoid criticism leading to learning shutting down and defensiveness! ! With thanks to Dr Mannie Sher !
11. Confidence in the institution! ❖  Lord Scarman said when writing his report on the Brixton riots that, while he would not hesitate to criticise individuals and organisations where the evidence clearly called for it, he would exercise great care indeed not to report in such a way as needlessly to damage public confidence in institutions vital to society! ❖  He said that each case should be considered on the evidence and that one should avoid stereotyping and caricaturing.! ❖  Government and the public must play an active part in recognising the value of the contribution the public sector continues to make; and in helping to ensure that confidence in that contribution is not undermined.!
12. The Historical Enquiries Team’s approach to reviewing deaths during ‘the troubles’ is inconsistent, has serious shortcomings and so risks public confidence, HMIC finds ! The inspection found that:! ❖  the HET is not conforming to current policing standards in a significant number of important areas. In particular, HMIC found a lack of explicit systems and processes; different teams adopting different working practices; no clearly defined complaints process; and (until now) no independent review of the HET’s processes;! ❖  the HET treats state involvement cases differently as a matter of policy and this appears to be based on a misinterpretation of the law. This is entirely wrong, and has led to state involvement cases being reviewed with less rigour in some areas than non-state cases; and! ❖  as a result, HMIC considers that the HET’s approach to state involvement cases is inconsistent with the UK’s obligations under Article 2 ECHR.!
13. Belfast Telegraph! 4 July 2014 ! The Northern Ireland Policing Board today declared it has no confidence in the leadership of a special unit set up to review unsolved murders.! The decision announced in Belfast followed a devastating report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) which claimed the Historical Enquiries Team was not rigorous enough when investigating killings by troops.! The Board has also established a dedicated working group to take forward and oversee the implementation of all of the recommendations in the HMIC report.! A statement this afternoon said: "This group, comprising political and independent membership, will also review PSNI failures to respond promptly to issues raised in relation to the work of the HET."! The group will meet next week to begin this work and will report on progress in the autumn.! Killings by British troops are to be re-examined after the report claimed investigators were not rigorous enough in their questioning of members of the security forces.! The national police watchdog review also alleged that the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) was inconsistent, had serious shortcomings and risked losing the confidence of victims' families.! Chief constable Matt Baggott confirmed that deaths caused by military personnel are to be reviewed after admitting a deferential approach was adopted by investigators questioning the soldiers involved. !
14. HMIC finds the police use of stop and search powers is too often ineffective in tackling crime and procedurally incorrect, thereby threatening the legitimacy of the police ! Over a million stop and search encounters have been recorded every year since 2006; but in 2011/12 only 9% led to arrests. The police use of stop and search powers has been cited as a key concern for police legitimacy and public trust in most of the major public inquiries into policing since the 1970s. While there is much public debate about the disproportionate use of the powers on black and minority ethnic people, there has to date been surprisingly little attention paid – by either the police service or the public – to how effective the use of stop and search powers is in preventing and detecting crime.! The inspection, which included a public survey of over 19,000 people found that:! ❖  the majority of forces (30) had not developed an understanding of how to use the powers of stop and search so that they are effective in preventing and detecting crime, with too many forces not collecting sufficient information to assess whether or not the use of the powers had been effective;! ❖  27% of the 8,783 stop and search records examined by HMIC did not include sufficient grounds to justify the lawful use of the power. The reasons for this include: poor understanding amongst officers about what constitutes the ‘reasonable grounds’ needed to justify a search, poor supervision, and an absence of direction and oversight by senior officers;! ❖  there is high public support for the use of these powers, but this support diminishes when there is a perception that the police are ‘overusing’ them; and! ❖  half of forces did nothing to understand the impact that stop and search had on communities, and less than half complied with the requirements of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 code of practice to make arrangements for stop and search records to be scrutinised by the public.!
16. So, is it possible to facilitate critical reflection through inspection? ! ❖  publication, which often leads to the media creating its own league table, can block learning! ❖  but, without publication, inspection becomes private consultancy! ❖  staff welcome inspection as a way of letting others know the problems they're facing! ❖  but too often there follows little learning about how to improve!
17. Rethinking Audit and Inspection! Michael Rustin (2003)! 'I am in favour of a lively system of audit and inspection, but one which has as one of its principal goals to stimulate, facilitate, and support ongoing improvements in practice. I think this goal is consistent with that of improving common standards. Once these basic aims are met, the work of improvement and innovation can begin, within a different culture and practice. I don’t think that such a system can also be used to provide data to effect the competitive ranking of public providers without damage to its quality-enhancing function. ! Of course, informal and formal rankings will be made anyway, by a host of people and media. But just as organisational consultants do not go around marking their clients out of ten, and publishing their marks, so must institutional auditors maintain a distance between their work and such competitive measurement. They should seek instead to promote self-understanding and change among their clients, and, through publication and circulation, in the wider community.'!