When we think of police spending we mainly think about the cost of training officers to patrol the streets, the cost of police equipment and vehicles, the cost of developing new technology to try and stay one step ahead of the criminals and generally costs that are in some way benefiting the community.
However, we rarely consider the cost that goes on behind the scenes in terms of administration and the general day to day running costs of police forces and the UK police as a whole. Recent statistics from Police Review have revealed that for the financial year 2008/09 the UK police force as a whole purchased nearly 840,000 pens and 441 million sheets of paper with an estimated cost of £2.26 million. The biggest contributor of this was the Met Police force that went through 213 million sheets of paper at a cost of over £660,000 and the equivalent of 23,000 trees. This is a staggering statistic and one that should be examined rather than just finding its way into another report like so many do.
With nearly 840,000 pens being purchased every year each officer, providing the pens got shared out equally which one accepts is unlikely to be the case, would receive around 16 pens per year. Now this really begs two questions, is the police spending an unnecessary amount of resources on pens or are the quality of pens so bad that officers need to keep going back for more. This statistic is also unlikely to take into account the fact the officer purchase and use their own pens on a daily a basis.
Police Review also revealed some interesting statistics regarding refreshments with a total of £2.9 million being spent on refreshments and £10.5 million on stationary in 2008/2009. Of all these statistics the most worrying is probably the amount of paper that police forces are getting through. Surely to improve efficiency and reduce the levels of bureaucracy the number of forms that officers should be reduced and officers should only be completing forms that are necessary not completing forms because they have to tick the right boxes. This would have a profound effect not only from a environmental perspective in terms of reducing the amount of paper used each year but would also cut back on funds that are being consumed elsewhere.
The current financial climate has meant that many forces have had to cut back and re examine budget levels to meet targets and often the first aspect that is reduced is police recruitment. The hiring and training of police officers is significantly reduced as this is an easy way to cut cost and this is reflected by the fact that very few police forces are currently hiring and if they do they only open the doors for a few short space of time.
The final point to make on this issue is that if we looked further into the police administration costs and reducing the levels of bureaucracy we could save money in these areas which would mean cut backs would not need to be made in the most important areas namely the hiring and training of new police officers.
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