1 in 58 police patrolling the streets

I read today in the Sunday Telegraph that only one in 58 police are patrolling the streets at any given time. This is based on the result that each police person spends about 14% of their duty time patrolling the streets. There are about 150,000 police and around 2500 are patrolling the street.

The reason for this is blamed on the amount of paper work that they have to do which appears to have steadily increased by the government. This is just difficult to fathom. Surely the police in other countries spend much less time on paper work and spend a greater amount of time outside patrolling the streets?

I have mentioned about reintroducing smaller mini police stations around the country. Considering the area of UK to be 245,000 sq km and having three in the mini police station, we can have 50,000 covering just under 5 sq km each. This is of course a trivial calculation but on the surface, it looks feasible. I have assumed a uniform density of these mini police stations so a more appropriate spread of them will make the idea even more attractive.

Some police stations are closed

Some police stations are not open 24 hours a day. I am losing a lot of confidence in the policing in the UK. There is also the problem of not tackling what the police call minor crime. But the minor crime like robbery, burglary and violence are what the general public want tackled. They should be punished severely once caught rather than let off lightly (it appears unlikely because of the lack of space in prisons).

I like the idea of having mini police stations (they used to be called police boxes but I mean something bigger) all around the local communities which are open 24 hours. The police will be much more familiar to the community and they should be able to get to the crime scene quicker. This is what it is like in Japan. I think this is a vital way to create safer communities. At the moment, I feel the police and the community are too distant.

There does seem to be steps being made towards such an idea. I take my daughter out at night to get her to sleep. I bumped into two policemen walking along my street. I have lived here for more than 20 years and this is the first time I have seen any policemen walking along my street. I quickly searched online and I found a mobile phone number to get in touch with them. But Japan I feel is one step ahead because the mini police stations or Kouban (housing maybe 3), are interacting more with the community.

You may question if such a scheme is feasible? I think it is possible if the police are spread out more than now.

Another point is whether the police have enough time to patrol the community when they appear to be lumbered with a lot of paper work? I am in favour of police having less paper work and instead patrolling more of the streets.