Current Affairs Digest: Home Affairs (May 2024)

Falling confidence in policing: Does media influence public perceptions?

1. Policing by consent

In the UK, there is a long-standing tradition of policing by consent.^[1] This model of policing evolved in the 1800s and remains in place today. It emphasises the need for the public to approve of and cooperate with the police, as opposed to their power coming from fear.^[2]

For policing by consent to be an effective model, the public must have trust and confidence in the police. Research in England and Wales has shown this by reporting that high levels of trust and confidence in police have facilitated compliance and cooperation.^[3]

2. A fall in trust

Trust and confidence in the police has recently fallen. The Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) ‘Crime survey for England and Wales’ (CSEW) has reported on levels of public confidence and satisfaction with the police.^[4] The survey found that from 2017/18 to 2021/22, the number of people who thought that the police were doing a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ job fell from 62% to 52% and overall confidence decreased from 78% to 69%.^[5] Of note is that data collection for the CSEW was interrupted in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and that the data for 2021/22 is from a smaller sample than in previous years.

Other research has also shown a decrease in the public’s trust and confidence in the police. YouGov’s monthly tracker on ‘are the police doing a good job?’ found that between July 2019 and November 2023 there was both a decrease in the percentage of people who thought that the police were doing a good job and an increase in those who thought that they were doing a bad job.^[6] A further YouGov poll on ‘how much confidence Brits have in police to deal with crime’ found that those who had a fair amount of confidence in the police had decreased from 46% to 36% between July 2019 and November 2023.^[7]

3. Does media coverage of policing have an influence?

There are various factors which can affect public perceptions of the police. These factors can include negative media coverage, police misconduct and negative perceptions of police performance.

In recent years, a significant amount of media coverage has centred on several high-profile incidents involving criminality by serving officers. Although it is difficult to assess the impact of this coverage, research has suggested that the media can affect public perceptions of the police. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) has focused on this issue and highlighted research indicating that the media is the primary source of information about the police for most people.^[8] For example, the CSEW reported that 74% of adults in England and Wales had no contact with the police during the year to March 2020. This suggests that the public’s perception of the police is usually driven by factors other than personal experience.

Despite these findings, it is hard to assess the impact that media coverage has on perceptions of policing.^[9] POST has argued that this is in part due to high profile incidents involving the police being unexpected events. It is also related to difficulties in causally attributing changes in public perceptions to media coverage. However, POST has also noted a growing body of evidence suggesting that media coverage of high-profile incidents can have a negative impact. It gave several examples of recent events. These included the reports of multiple failures by West Midlands Police in the murders of Raneem Oudeh and Khaola Saleem in Solihull in 2018 and the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police office in 2021.^[10] POST also noted the murder of George Floyd by police in the US in 2020, which despite happening in another country still had an impact on perceptions of policing domestically.^[11]

4. Calls for change

There have been various calls for the police to improve public levels of trust and confidence. For example, in the strategic policing requirement 2023, which sets out the home secretary’s views on current national threats and the policing capabilities to tackle those threats, the government said that improving trust and confidence in policing was a key objective for police as part of their response to tackling violence against women and girls.^[12] More recently, the government has also said that one of the purposes of its Criminal Justice Bill is to strengthen public confidence in policing.^[13] For instance, it would currently require the College of Policing to issue a code of practice about ethical policing, including a duty of candour on the police. The bill was introduced in the House of Commons and the first day of report stage took place on 15 May 2024.

Labour has also said that restoring confidence in the police would be a key aim were it to become the next government following the general election.^[14]

Others calling for improvement have included His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke, who warned in 2023 that trust was at its lowest level and must be improved to protect the principle of policing by consent.^[15] In addition, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has argued that policing must prioritise re-establishing the model of policing by consent.^[16] In its November 2023 report, ‘Policing priorities’, the committee argued that policing must take this action “not only because it is the right thing to do”, but because:

[…] without public trust and confidence in the police, the success of attempts to prevent and detect crime will be reduced, no matter how impressive the strategic thinking behind them may be.

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Cover image by Andrew Martin on Pixabay.