Re: Civil laws
The last time I mentioned something like this, I got more downvotes than upvotes. But I'm a persistent bastard...
They seem to have plenty of resources for lots of things that don't matter very much.
Actually, those things matter a great deal. They really do.
Those are the things that count towards performance targets and are easy to achieve. It really is that simple.
Figuring out who committed a burglary and proving it is a lot of work and your chances of succeeding are small. Not much chance of improving your arrest and/or conviction count.
Arresting somebody on littering charges for dropping a fag end and stamping it out is easy.
If you were in the police and your only hope of a pay rise was hitting your performance targets, would you go for the easy ones or the hard ones?
The performance targets are badly flawed. If we were sensible, we wouldn't put such a high emphasis on arrests, and we'd put a far higher emphasis on reduction in reported crime. Except, of course, that would encourage the front desk to tell people to piss off. Even so, the aim should be to get crime rates down, not arrest rates up. Probably hard to get right, just as the current situation encourages lots of arrests for trivial offences.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
