Reading the news release, I initially thought that Gordon Brown’s “new kind of policing” – by which every household in England and Wales will be given e-mail/mobile phone details to contact “neighbourhood police teams” – sounded like a good idea.
But then two figures jumped out at me. The first is the cost of the scheme – some £325 million. And the second is the percentage reduction in crime that the pilot version brought about in Clapham – some 0.9 percent.
Of course, falls in crime shouldn’t be sniffed at. But £325m is a not-insignificant 3 percent of total spending on police in England and Wales. It’s a large commitment to make – especially on the back of so slim a crime-reduction.
The uncharitable might say that it’s the Government wasting money again. And if this report is anything to go by, I suspect they’d be right…
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