Daring to confront reality: Transforming a policing monolith

Within a scenario where the Police Force is facing a rapidly evolving society, new modes of criminality, a realworld/virtual world dynamic and multidimensional requirements to tackle crimes, the need to embark on a strategic approach to policing is ever m

Keeping up with the Laurels

Society has changed, the three institutions of state have striven to change, with affects on the legislative, executive and judiciary being made on a regular basis. Albeit some have not, amongst which the Malta Police Force comes to the fore. Whether due to its comfortable power base, its historical construct, a fear of change or pure resistance to change the status quo, the force has enmeshed itself into a dystopian operand that leaves little room for manoeuvring. Society has changed: the force has not. It has struggled to understand new modes of social norms, values and beliefs, but primarily has been swept by new legislation and norms emanating from national, European and international agreements. The fact that processes survived was only due to the perseverance of dedicated individuals, to whom society owes a lot.

Early morning whims

Little has changed since the 1960s, even more so during the past 20 years when a primary effort was made to change the structure but which strategy was shelved due to inaction, disinterest or merely the inability to understand the need to change. Hats off to Spiteri Gingell and Silver for their 1997 work, starkly relevant today, revealing another 20-year stagnation. Whilst change for change's sake may be futile, stagnation renders the dysfunctionality that is the Police Force today. A Force weighted by a draconian law that gives absolute power to the Commissioner such that the early morning whims of such a person dictate policy, a lack of strategy and business plan, internal mechanisms that police the police, a self-serving entity aimed at serving the upper echelons, capacity wastage, low educational levels and brain drain, are but a few issues that have resulted to date. A low police morale that hits 1-2 on a 10-point scale, 92% stating that they have experienced the stifling situation for decades, health issues primarily obesity, non-existent decision-making, a downward order-giving and blame-forwarding flow and the fear of reprisal or internal investigation stand out starkly as requiring major change.

The courage to confront the Hydra

Many have tried to change an entity steeped in tradition and power; taking the proverbial horse to water .... but none prevailed. Thus the need to tackle the problem once and for all. The efforts put in during the past months have resulted in the factualisation of overused terms about the force. A threepronged activity employing Ministerial direct visits to stations and branches, a documentation review and a bottom-up survey amongst the police have rendered the first fruits: the actualisation of practices, norms and values, targeting the options for change.

This implied understanding the perceptions of members of the police force on their job and their targets for enhancement of the force whilst facing a rapidly evolving society, new modes of criminality, a real-world/virtual world dynamic and multi-dimensional requirements to tackle crimes was crucial to the process.

The need to embark on a strategic approach to policing is deemed ever more urgent and through criminology and policy-making the changes can be wrought. To state that the work ahead is smooth does not ground readers, however, the road is rough but the results should render the force into an exemplar operational construct.

A three-pronged approach

The main outcomes of the work point towards the initiation of a process to effect such change will be targeted at the modernisation of the force, a functional transformation and an intelligence-based approach to policing.

Modernisation: This posits the need for transformation of the force from a colonial remnant that is currently serving itself to a dynamic entity that serves society, eliminate the current dystopian operands that are stifling the force and have effectively rendered the entity into a policing-the police dysfunction that looks inwards. The drive now is to change the focus onto offenders and societal crime-mitigation, whilst delivering to the public a modern force whose main role is to protect citizens and ensure crime reduction.

Functionality: the process elicited the need to effect drastic restructuring of functions to form the new Force. A restructuring of the functions is envisaged that sees a two forked split into the policing aspect and the administrative aspect though still within an integrated entity. This points towards the implementation of a review of the entire policing concept from recruitment through training through deployment, through shift-leave-operand functionalities through continuous professional development. A change that will result in a CEO engagement to manage the administrative function, restructuring the capacity issues effectively releasing officers to work on real policing where 300 to 600 officers could be released through functional displacement. Most importantly, this effort will result in the identification of functions that can be partaken through civilian employees who to date are anathema within the force. This has to change: we cannot entertain police officers as clerks, as carpenters, as cooks, as archivists, as operators and any other vital role that is not policing. They have to be out in the physical and virtual streets mitigating crime and increasing safety and security.

Knowledge-Intelligence Based Approach: the final pivot is tantamount to brain-surgery where the long-term strategy will effect change. This will morph the force from a reactive entity into a proactive one where the experts can predict crime based on the flow of data-information-knowledge and ultimately intelligence. This requires that a skills audit and knowledge audit be run to ensure that placements are relative to the efficiency and effectiveness expected from the Police Force, rendering a service to the public. This implies the introduction of training regimes as well as continuous professional development, the integration of technologies and socio-technic forms of investigation. Finally the force needs to revitalise the counselling and psychological perspective to ensure trauma reduction and rapid take-up that goes away from the current perspective that the police are machos who can take any shock to the system. Police officers are humans and the system is a s vulnerable as the wellbeing of its officers and the society it serves.

The Police Force is set to change. We have set the ball rolling and need to nurture it to fruition.

It is useless howling into the wind without a mandate to change. The mandate is here and the time for sitting on one's laurels is past: the Force must evolve.

The need to embark on a strategic approach to policing is deemed ever more urgent and through criminology and policy-making the changes can be wrought