Are you one of the thousands of police officers suddenly without a job? Do you miss investigating serious crimes, knocking on doors, and doing nearly everything you did in your last job? Well then, you're in luck! Warwickshire police need "civilian investigators", so apply through G4S! That's right, G4S will be providing staff to assist police in serious investigations, but it assures us that it won't be taking over "core" policing functions. Well, at least not yet.
I'm not here to shame G4S for advertising these positions, because this is a problem brought by a government focused solely on the bottom line, and G4S is just meeting the needs of this newly created market. I'm sure it was happy to bid for the opportunity, and may have even suggested the idea, but in the end this tragedy is the result of a political agenda that is blind to the implications of turning emergency services into a for-profit enterprise.
Clearly there is some room for the private sector to take on a support role in policing activities. Do you need a warranted officer to transport a prisoner or fix the cars? Probably not. However, this hiring effort – and several associated contracts G4S are participating in – is about cutting officers from the ranks and then hiring them back through a private company.
When they return, they'll likely not have the same pay, pension benefits or work-related protections their unions have fought dearly for. What other reason is there to cut trusted officers who have sworn to uphold the law, and replace them with private employees of a multinational company? We must acknowledge that such cutbacks will most likely result in savings for the police service. For this government, that seems to be the only bottom line.
Too often the coalition's logic misses the point that reforming a state doesn't mean you dismantle it. The neoliberal fetishism with private enterprise does not address the issues that go beyond money. Thankfully, even Phillip Hammond is starting to question if the private sector really is the right answer to many of the problems of government.
The outlandish depictions of privately paid "civilian investigators" derailing the entire criminal justice system to protect their employer are hyperbolic at best, but we cannot ignore that something is lost when the people running the criminal justice system face even the slightest implication that they are not completely objective.
If your reason for cutting current officers is that you think the private sector will provide better staff, then you should instead reform the current police service. Invest in training, increase accountability and improve their connections to the community they serve. Years of wildly fluctuating targets and measurements have left the police with disjointed goals, so we cannot be surprised if they seem a bit unable to cope at times. There is plenty of room to improve the UK policing, but we must also realise that when you start putting basic policing services out to tender, you remove what sanctity is left. I'm not worried about the capabilities of the individual civilian investigator, I'm worried about a police service that thinks about profit. The homepage for G4S has its current stock price on it, and while I respect that because it's a private company in a capitalist system, I don't want that thinking invading my police service.
Besides, haven't we learned anything from Robocop?
