Voters are losing faith in the police after a spate of scandals and a rise in offences including shoplifting and cybercrime, polling has revealed as The Times launches a groundbreaking year-long inquiry into the future of the criminal justice system.
The YouGov survey finds a devastating lack of confidence, with more than half of the public saying they do not trust the police to solve crimes and over a third saying they have no faith in the authorities to maintain law and order.
The Times Crime and Justice Commission, which will report next April, will take evidence from across the criminal justice system and draw up a radical blueprint for far-reaching reform. It follows The Times Education Commission and The Times Health Commission, the findings of which have been endorsed by both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer.
The commission comes against a backdrop of worsening detection rates, lengthening delays, record court backlogs and overflowing prisons. It follows the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan police officer, Wayne Couzens, and the jailing of the serial rapist David Carrick, who was a member of the firearms unit.
The YouGov poll calls into question the principle of “policing by consent”, which is the basis of law and order in this country. Only 26 per cent of people believe the police would arrest and prosecute someone if they were burgled, and just 7 per cent are confident a pickpocket would be caught.
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Over a third think it is unlikely that the perpetrator would be arrested and prosecuted if they reported a sexual assault.
Public appetite for reform is highlighted by the fact that only 37 per cent of voters believe the police are doing a “good job” and more than half think they are doing a worse job than 30 years ago.
• What is the Times Crime and Justice Commission? Its aims explained
The Times Crime and Justice Commission is made up of experts including police, business leaders, lawyers and academics to help inform policy on how the criminal justice system should change.
Dame Sharon White, the chairwoman of the John Lewis Partnership, Peter Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police, Lord Burnett of Maldon, the former lord chief justice, Sir Tom Winsor, the former chief inspector of constabulary, and Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, are among the commissioners.
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White said shoplifting was now the “number one thing” for many retailers and had gone from “what felt like low-level crime to something much more systemic” in the last year.
“It’s organised. I was in one of our Waitrose stores. They said they had a couple of people who came into the store and there was a very particular brand of gin that they wanted to shoplift. We didn’t have the brand in store and they said ‘oh don’t worry, we know you’re going to be replenished over the weekend so we’ll come back early next week’. There was a brazenness. It was shoplifting to order.”
The police were not taking the problem seriously enough, she warned. “More than 80 per cent of shoplifting doesn’t have a police response, so there’s this sense that you can shoplift and you can be pretty guaranteed that there is not going to be a comeback,” White said.
“Unless somebody is dealing with your supposedly low-level crime issues, it creates enormous issues for faith and trust in the broader criminal justice system.”
• Crime and punishment: ‘The system is stretched to breaking point’
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She said crime was a growing concern for staff in John Lewis and Waitrose stores. “Normally you’re talking about ‘what are we doing for Christmas or Easter?’ or some new product we’re launching, and increasingly the first conversation that partners are wanting to have with me is that actually they’re starting to feel a bit unsafe.”
According to the British Retail Consortium, shoplifting has more than doubled in a year, with 16.7 million incidents of customer theft in the 12 months to August 2023. The annual loss to retailers was £1.8 billion, up from £950 million the year before, and 61 per cent of businesses rated the police response as poor or very poor.
Dame Sara Thornton, former chairwoman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, who is also a member of the Times commission, warned: “The whole idea of the criminal justice system with prosecution and punishment as a deterrent is in danger of falling apart.”
Anne Longfield, the former children’s commissioner, said carrying knives had been normalised for too many young people. “There are urban areas where people have got fatigued. They just expect to see violence and that’s deeply worrying.”
Winsor said lessons had still not been learnt from the mistakes of the past. “The police circle their wagons,” he said. “The quality of vetting is pretty poor in some places. Sometimes the kind of people who want to join the police are the people who really shouldn’t get into the police and the police are not good enough at weeding people out.”
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Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism for the Met, said many retired officers felt “disappointed and quite angry” about recent scandals. “Policing should never have been stereotyped by the so-called canteen culture. It should also always be about compassion, courage, courtesy and doing things for the community.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “As the home secretary has previously said, society cannot function properly when trust in the police is eroded. Officers at every level must play their part in improving standards and delivering for the public they serve.
“We are also doing our bit: recruiting more officers to keep the public safe; securing commitments from the police to pursue all reasonable lines of enquiry and attend every home burglary; as well as making it easier to sack officers who are unfit to serve.
“Since 2010 crime, excluding fraud and computer misuse is down 55 per cent, but we know confidence in the police is too low. Policing have rightly faced a watershed moment and we are committed to working with them to regain the confidence of the public by relentlessly focusing on tackling the crimes that impact our communities.”
