Reversing police cuts may not solve all problems, but it is a good start

We understand Martin Hewitt’s point, but recruiting extra police officers certainly makes the challenges easier to face

(PA)

Recruiting 20,000 extra police officers “is not the answer to all the challenges we have”, Martin Hewitt, the new chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, tells The Independent.

We understand his point, but we feel bound to point out that it certainly makes those challenges easier to face. That is why there was such a broad consensus at the last election that the cuts to police numbers of about the same number were a mistake.

Boris Johnson’s promise of 20,000 additional officers was outbid by the Labour manifesto, which promised to recruit 2,000 more than whatever the Conservatives planned.

But Mr Hewitt is right that simply increasing the numbers will not solve all the problems of the criminal justice system. Indeed, restoring the number of police officers to the level of 2010 will create new problems. Above all, as the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has pointed out, more police means more arrests, more trials and a higher prison population.

As it is, we face the paradox that parts of the courts system are running on empty, with not enough prosecutions to keep them busy, while the prison estate, as ever, is still stretched and over capacity.

Indeed, the next five years would be a good time to take some bold and radical steps towards reducing the prison population by rethinking the punishment of non-violent offenders. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of longer sentences in the Conservative manifesto is going to make that difficult.

Mr Hewitt also makes an important point when he calls for additional resources for mental health services and youth services, in an effort to tackle problems at source before they get to the “last resort” of the police.

However, police chiefs ought to recognise that dealing with the problems of rising staff numbers is better than the opposite, which is what they have struggled with for the past decade. And, although the government’s plans will “only” take them back to roughly where they were in 2010, they are not worth their salaries if they cannot deploy the new police officers more efficiently than the configuration of 10 years ago.