The Law of Averages
The Special Constables Blog starts off its latest post with a mention from the Conservative police reform. I'll reproduce the quotes here:From BBC News:
Mr Cameron said there was little evidence that police performance had increased in line with increased resources, with each officer making less than 10 arrests on average every year
I read this a couple of times. And then read it again. Each officer making on average 10 arrests a year? Thats absolute nonsense I thought. I happen to know how many arrests I made a year, as our force has a handy piece of software which lets us keep count of arrests and other statistics. Its mainly used by the office based bean-counters to let them create pie charts, but I still use it to see how my stats are looking. My number of arrests is closer to 100 made a year, and I am by no means one of the police officers with the highest tallies at my station. In fact, I am more or less 'average' on our number of arrests.
So why do the conservatives make the claim that each officer makes an average of ten arrests a year? Simple. Because of all the office based monkeys, getting paid our wage for doing our job, whilst they make the aforementioned pie charts. They don't arrest anyone, but still get included in the count, and thanks to that, every other officers 'average arrests' drop. Think of it this way: I said I made 100 arrests a year. Between me and the Domestic Violence Officer at our nick, we both made an average of 50.
I find the comment that each officer makes only ten arrests a year insulting to say the least. I would like to ask whoever wrote this to try getting your statistic again, but only counting the response officers (who aren't permanently sick, or suspended for pathetic reasons), and then lets see the real quota.
posted by A non mouse
13 Comments:
So what are your thoughts on performance related pay? and do you think that it should be applied evenly accross the board to all officers desk bound or on duty?
Doesn't that tell you that they shouldn't be confined to a desk and be out on response?
OR is that too clever an idea?
So the "average arrests for officers who make at least one arrest" is likely to be an order of magnitude higher? In other words, for every beat cop there's 9 sworn administrative staff? That sounds like true bureaucrazy...
One solution would be to pay the plod based purely on how many arrests they make ;-)
Cameron is another Blair .... everything sacrificed on the altar of spin ..... we can say goodbye to any idea of ever being Governed again by sensible none partisan Government, in place by the people for the people. Welcome to the future........ roll on retirement and relocation
My thoughts on performance related pay: The police force is not a 'business' in which people can be paid in this way.
Totally agree... utter nonsense.
Welcome from Texas. It is truly odd to read that a portion of your government will bad mouth the police...concidering I have never been to europe and its a totally different world. I am a police officer here in San Antonio, Texas. and one thing I know to be true is that every portion of the government will complain about "having" to provide a police department that is always average. one constant truth is all governments, and its citizens will always mock those who wear blue...until they need us.
Nice blog nonmice.
I've added you to my daily reads.
Blues And Twos
Nice point.
got to admit i too read this quote and was initially really annoyed...but then i got to thinking ...the next time i have a "performance related review" i can honestly turn round and say that i am 10 times as many arrests as the average officer...i can even use the goverments figures to back it up!...i am indeed supercop :-)..now wheres my pay rise?
Nice one Non PC PC let us know how
you get on ...:-)
Don't stop blogging...
In an announcement released by a senior HM Customs offical this year, it was stated that Officers make on average one seizure (of prohibited/restricted articles)in every 7 days. My colleagues and I added up ours for the previous year. It worked out at something like one in every 1.76 days, far better than our Senior Official had calculated, and in the scheme of things there are far more successful teams than mine in the department!
How these things are worked out is nearly as great a mystery to me as why they are worked out in the first place.
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