The Policy Police

Policy Exchange, Agendas and 'The Cost of Crime'

Mar 09, 2025

The Conservatives cut 20,000 police posts from 2012, precipitating the current crisis in law enforcement.

I recently wrote this fairly well-received article, based on a Policy Exchange report entitled ‘Extremely Confused.’ Then Policy Exchange issued another report called ‘The Costs of Crime and How to Reduce Them.’ It’s an interesting piece, and I read this stuff so you don’t have to. So here’s a review of sorts.

Much of the Policy Exchange report is eminently sensible. Parts reminded me of the old French civil service joke ‘we can’t do that; it might work in practice, but never in theory.’ Then there was the stuff conspicuous by its absence, specifically the Tory, Theresa May-shaped elephant in the room. This is important, because Policy Exchange is often described as a shadowy ‘right-wing’ think tank (so says George Monbiot, so I like them already). Policy Exchange has been an outrider for Conservative policy since its inception in 2007 (by Tories of a Cameroonian disposition, I might add, including Michael Gove).

I mention this because your definition of conservative (small or big ‘c’) might differ from mine. Hey, Policy Exchange has Nick Boles on its board. Nick, bless him, is wetter than an otter’s pocket. For me, he represents the ‘hug a hoodie’ tendency in One Nation Conservatism that’s contributed to our current state of occasional anarcho-tyranny. Furthermore, Policy Exchange’s fingerprints were all over the decimation of British policing under the Osborne / May / Winsor axis of evil.

So, depending on where you sit politically, Policy Exchange is either a nest of reactionary Tory shills, or a swamp full of Uniparty wets. Me, being a generous-hearted, open-minded sort of guy, is prepared to accept it might encompass both. Not to mention those falling somewhere in the middle.

In any case, the theory works like this: outfits such as Policy Exchange put a load of brainiacs in the same room and hope they catch some lightning-in-a-bottle. It’s for this reason think tank output is what army intelligence types call ‘Combat Indicators,’ or CIs, for politics-watchers. What think tanks (sadly, not the rumbly, sexy versions with 125mm guns) say signals mainstream political intent. A direction of travel. Look at the Left-coded think tanks are up to, for example. If Labour win the next election (who knows? The world’s upside down), their output provides clues - CIs - about their next manifesto. If politics is fashion, think tanks are a Milanese catwalk. A catwalk full of clothes people will be wearing a year or two from now, whether they like it or not.

This reminds me of the American ‘writers room’ concept, where US television employs twenty-odd creatives who cook up plots and dialogue in a collegiate atmosphere. Apparently, this is why US sitcoms have so many jokes. Which maps across to think tanks; Conservative policing policy between 2010-2014 was as darkly amusing as anything the writers of Curb Your Enthusiasm might conjure.

Think tanks swarm around the nexus of influence we call The Blob like wasps around a jam jar. I was an investigator and an intelligence officer. I was trained to examine motives and agendas. In this case, one of the report’s authors is a chap called David Spencer. David, unusually for policy world, is an actual, gen-u-ine ex-police officer. I don’t know him, but he was a detective in east London before helping create ‘Police Now.’ Then he bowed out of the job as a DCI. Police Now struck me as faddish, to be honest, but bowing out as a DCI? It’s a big thumbs up from me. Dave (I feel like I know him already) is therefore untainted by chief officer rank. An obviously clever bloke, I suspect he got to middle-management, saw what crock of shit it all was and bailed out. In any case, a copper’s imprimatur is all over the more sensible parts of the report.

So what does the latest Policy Exchange offering tell us about future Conservative plans for policing (assuming the Conservatives have a future)? Will some of these ideas be stolen by Starmer’s administration? I suspect the Blue Labour wing will find much to like here, too.

Policy fuel: Reform UK quickly referenced the Policy Exchange report in their messaging.

The report’s executive summary opens with this statement of the obvious, which nonetheless every UK government since 1997 has ignored;

Securing the safety of the public is the foremost duty of government. But we are witnessing acute growth in a range of highly visible crimes. This is undermining the very legitimacy of the British state.

They go onto describe the lamentable state of our police and criminal justice system - crime rates, lack of prison capacity, loss of public confidence and other stuff you’ll be familiar with if you’re a regular reader of this Substack. Their catalogue of the obvious continues;

Order and the rule of law are necessary prerequisites for prosperity. They generate confidence that contracts will be upheld, property will not be stolen or damaged, and that individuals and businesses will enjoy the proceeds of their labour and industry, rather than being deprived of it by criminals. And the converse is true too; when the rule of law is breached with impunity, economic activity suffers.

Here’s a proper (small ‘c’) conservative-utilitarian argument. Crime costs UK PLC £250-odd billion a year. Protecting property rights is essential to creating prosperity. Such logic warms the cockles of my otherwise flinty old heart. The wonks go on to describe five thematics;

A dramatic expansion of the prison estate (I’m not going to comment on this too much, as it’s not my area)
Taking back the streets
Promoting smarter policing
Reforming sentencing and our courts system
Providing more funding while demanding more accountability.

You’d be forgiving for wondering why such obviousness needs a room full of geniuses to hypothesise. Well, the answer isn’t what to do, so much as how to do it. I notice Policy Exchange doesn’t really address the core issue - the lacuna of Blairite human rights law fundamentally hindering policing and sentencing.

More on that later.

I suspect, being a think tank, there are people inside Policy Exchange who think the current legal / political settlement is more or less okay. There are probably others who think the current legal / political settlement needs nuking. I think nuking is disproportionate. It needs a chainsaw, though.

The report does highlight an oft-neglected point, one with which I wholeheartedly agree; over fifty percent of crime is committed by nine percent of recidivist criminals. The report suggests this nine percent should be ruthlessly targeted and incarcerated. I detect the hand of former-DCI Spencer here, who was once a crime manager in a benighted east London borough. He’ll be wearily familiar with how a tiny subset of scrotes become the criminal equivalent of Chernobyl. I remember from my own service how locking up one or two prolific burglars for six months saw a dramatic fall in local offending. It’s a shame our current crop of judges, and the wider criminal justice blob, seem hell-bent on non-custodial sentencing. Incidentally, a Cameron/ May-era wet, David Gauke, is driving that one too. Good grief.

One of the biggest disappointments of my policing career (and there were many) was never meeting a burglar wearing a mask or a stripy jumper.

On funding and accountability, the report’s like a burglar’s bag of goodies. With one or two exceptions. It posits increased funding and police numbers. Expanded prison capacity. Increased protection for officers against vexatious complaints (thank you, Policy Exchange). It gently hints a bonfire of dead wood at the National Police Chiefs Council. That would burn for years!

Then, like a turd on top of a wedding cake, there’s this;

A wholesale change in the structure and approach of police leadership is required. The design and implementation of this should be led by an individual from outside policing. This should include Police and Crime Commissioners having the final say in all appointments to chief officer teams.

This is where I disagree. Strongly. Two names immediately spring to mind when it comes to ‘individuals outside policing’, namely Patrick Sheehy and Tom Winsor. When the one worth revisiting is Herbert Edmund-Davies.

As for Police and Crime Commissioners? Another Tory hobby horse that galloped away (sadly not into the knackers’ yard). There have been great PCC candidates, but how in the name of holy fuck is a police force dedicated to serving ‘without fear or favour’ meant to be under the supervision of a party political figure? Sorry, PCCs are poison here at the Schloss Adler. I’d like to have seen Policy Exchange be brave enough to suggest a radical rethink of the entire experiment. Very few people vote for PCCs or know what they do. They simply add a new layer of blobocracy. This recommendation gets an E-minus and a detention. I’d even suggest suspension, but I don’t think those are allowed any more.

As for ‘Taking Back the Streets’, the report offers another lucky dip of treats and mousetraps. The call for a renewed focus on neighbourhood policing is a familiar bromide. This bit, though, is genius. I’ve had this discussion with former police colleagues and come to similar conclusions (as ex-army reservist);

The Special Constabulary should be remodelled entirely as the Reserves Constabulary – based upon the contribution made by the armed forces reservists. This should entail a substantial increase in the size of the Reserve Constabulary which enables a minimum annual commitment and long-term deployments into emergency response and specialist capabilities.

I won’t elaborate too much, as the point makes itself. Furthermore, I might write a piece on what such a force might look like. The possibilities, though, are exciting. Hybrid service arrangements, properly funded and supported, would work even better if forces were allowed an element of local discretion and subsidiarity…

…then my excitement turned to disappointment. It was like ordering pizza and discovering Dominos delivered a Hawaiian by mistake.

The College of Policing and National Police Chiefs Council should rewrite the Approved Professional Practice for Neighbourhood Policing to recast this as principally a crime-fighting role.

Regular readers will know I consider the College and NPCC the acme of policing blobocracy. The pineapple on the pizza. Now, I appreciate Policy Exchange is in the business of suggesting changes for the world they live in, not the one they’d like to live in. Yet I can’t help but feel they might have questioned the tick-box tyranny of ‘Accredited Professional Practice’, which has resulted in policing by committee and the death of discretion. This is the College’s speciality - telling people what to do without actually doing it themselves.

As for the NPCC? How any rational actor might think the current crop of police leaders are capable of ‘solving’ core policing is genuinely beyond me. Very few of them have actually done any. This is where I suspect criticism of think tanks - that they’re paid to rearrange apples rather than dynamite the applecart - might be justified.

Then, mercifully, the report gets back on track. It even hints at the need for ‘zero tolerance’ policing in designated hotspots and increased sneakiness (i.e. devolved surveillance capability). This works. I fully support it. Why? Because I’ve done it myself. I describe my adventures on a 1990s robbery squad, during an operation called Eagle Eye, here.

It’s a shame the College of Policing - who Policy Exchange considers suited to redraft local policing - view zero tolerance-style policing as verboten. It’s like suggesting a vegan restaurant puts steak on the menu.

Zero Tolerance has a place in the toolbox. There’s a saying in the Job; in God we trust, the rest we stop and search.

The report concludes;

The baleful effect of crime in our society is largely the result of two key failures of public policy:
(1). The failure to spend sufficiently on the police, the prisons and the courts; (2). A timid and permissive approach to both policing and sentencing. In principle, these can both be fixed… but this is far from being all about money. The failings that derive from the structure, ethos and behaviour of the police and the criminal justice system, are completely unnecessary self-inflicted wounds.

No shit, Sherlock. Wounds partly inflicted by Policy Exchange-style wonks over the years. Oh, the irony!

It also fails to explore how and why this ‘timid and permissive approach’ developed before blithely suggesting it can be fixed. How? I mentioned the Blairite legal nexus earlier. The cards are stacked against law enforcement. Human Rights and equalities laws are weaponised against the majority. Is this too radical a subject for Policy Exchange to broach?

Were I being cynical (which I am), I would suggest Policy Exchange has crafted a semi-bespoke manifesto piece for Badenoch’s Reform-lite Conservatives. A piece of Blairite-style triangulation; enough red meat to keep the Brexity / Red Wall / GB News-watching fringes of the party happy, but with punches pulled for the One Nation faction. The Wets who think leaving the EHCR might augur an apocalypse.

In short, Policy Exchange have posited potentially transformative ideas, albeit stymied by legal and political reality. At the warm-white-wine buffets in Westminster, the report probably looks fine. It’ll play well with the focus groups and on social media. But from the back of a police van, with a three-year service copper wrestling with a bloody, rage-filled junkie?

It’s all wishful thinking.

Tailors don’t tell their customers they’re fat and need to lose weight. They simply cut more cloth to hide their girth. This, I fear, is what Policy Exchange might have done. I’d make the lot of ‘em do late turn at Forest Gate nick for a month.

Except for former DCI David Spencer, who’s already got that tee-shirt.

Thanks for reading. Blatant plug: you can find my latest book here. It’s about a secret policeman in a counterfactual Soviet Britain. Well, it was counterfactual when I wrote it.

Later,

Dom