Letter to Sir Robert Peel to Explain Why His Principles Could, or Could Not, Be Used Today

Letter to Sir Robert Peel to explain why his principles could, or could not, be used today.

Sir Robert Peel played a major role in Policing back when he was alive and up until this day he is discussed.  Sir Robert Peel was considered to be a social reformist and held different roles such as Home secretary, Prime minister and held positions in other offices as well.  Some of the information that I feel would impact a policing system in London is when the Policing A Liberal Society reading stated that “Only one in 58 police officers is out on patrol at any one time in some police force areas – that’s about four per town of 90,000 people – yet England and Wales has a record 143,000 officers.”  This is definitely disturbing to me since the crime rate has been going up and an effective way to reduce it would be to have more officers out in the field policing the different neighborhoods in the communities.  A big part in effective policing in different communities would be the funding because without it officers and their police department would not be able to have the right amount of officers that are needed to secure our community and also be able to pay them if they need to work overtime to keep our streets safe.  Not being properly funded also holds police departments back from doing their jobs as quickly and efficiently as possible due to them not being able to keep up with all the new technology that needs to be purchased to be as effective as they can be.  The Policing a liberal society reading stated that “In 2004/05, the Metropolitan Police spent £104.4 million on investigating robberies and house burglaries and almost as much – £101.9 million – on non-incident-related paperwork.  The fact that more money is spent on non-incident related paperwork is very troubling for UK and should be investigated to figure out a way to reduce the cost and put those funds towards more important paperwork for cases that are happening in the area.    An interesting observation is when the chapter stated that “A US study has proved that solo car patrols are no more dangerous than working in pairs, possibly because police are more inclined to take risks when partnered.”  I agree with this assessment due to the fact that the officers has a person to watch their back when they go into any situation.

When it comes to policing and the information that the chapter “policing a liberal society” provided it was interesting to see the differences between the United States policing system vs how the system in the United Kingdom is ran.   According to the Policing a Liberal society reading it stated that they have two things in common which would be “Firstly, they are willing to question received ideas and expose myths about policing. Secondly, they are able to focus their entire effort on preventing crime rather than attempting to solve it long after the villains have taken off. And their results show that it is not necessary to recruit more officers in order to reduce crime.”  Sir Robert Peel who was the founder of the London Metropolitan Police believed that the primary goal should be to “prevent crime and disorder and that the ‘test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it’.”  This is easier said than done but I agree with this sentiment because that should be the primary objective of police.  There are plenty of times where either people in the community don’t trust the police enough to want to go to them or don’t feel as if it would effective so they do not report crimes which I feel does not help the community when that happens.  According to the Policing a Liberal Society reading it stated that “A 2004 survey showed that 38% of people do not report crimes, half of them because they believe the police will do nothing,13 and a recent analysis of crime statistics suggested that 3 million crimes were omitted from official figures because of a cap on offences against the same person by the same perpetrator. For violent crimes, this figure goes up to 83%.14 But, in any case, figures detailing crimes solved are no guide to effectiveness – rather the opposite, as the basis of a clear-up is failure to prevent a crime.”  According to the LACP.org site “Serving as Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel introduced a number of important reforms to British criminal law. His changes to the penal code system resulted in fewer crimes carrying a death penalty sentence and education for inmates. Often remembered today as “The Founder of Modern Policing,” Peel created the “Metropolitan Police” based on nine principles he developed for law enforcement.”