*ribabooks.com
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ROBBIE GRIFFITHS reported for The Standard on 18.6.24:
“…The effects of police station closures on crime have been significant, according to academic Dr Elisa Facchetti, the author of a new analysis published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Facchetti found three effects, all of them negative, and argues that the unexpected costs of closing the stations have fallen on other parts of society.
One reason, she argues, is that when police stations close, the most serious crimes seem to go up. “The areas where there was a closure of the nearest police station saw an increase in the number of violent crimes — such as assaults and murders,” Facchetti says. She estimates an 11 per cent direct rise in violent crime compared with areas where the police station did not close. Separately, overall knife and gun crime in London went up 20 per cent last year.
Secondly, police response times go up, which impacts “clearance rates” — the number of crimes that officers can solve. “Instead of getting there in five minutes, now it takes [the police] 10 minutes,” Facchetti says, time that can be vital for interviewing witnesses. “The consequence is that they’re less good at solving cases.” The third effect is on reporting of offences — with locals less likely to report “petty crimes” such as shoplifting or bike thefts if there is no police station nearby. “People think that ‘the police are not going to be able to do anything’, so they don’t bother reporting it,” Facchetti says.
Criminals are also more likely to work in places where they can see police stations are abandoned, she believes. “Potential offenders target those areas, especially for property crimes [such as burglary],” Facchetti says.
She argues that the police station closures have been a “false economy” in the long term. “They saved money at the beginning, but then the costs related to the closures went higher than the savings,” she says. When crimes are committed, the state has to pay, such as to help victims who need medical attention, or in the justice system. Her study estimates that for each pound “saved” by the closures, they raised costs faced by society by £3.
But Facchetti thinks the police force cannot really be blamed. They were told to make cuts, and wanted to implement them without reducing the number of officers. However, it was the wrong choice, she says. “They underestimated the importance of the stations for both their operations as well as for their communities. You can make savings and become more efficient in a different way… by allocating resources better.”
For Facchetti, police station closures are one of a number of the “false economies” of austerity. “I think it’s becoming more and more evident, as all the negative consequences of these austerity policies are appearing throughout the domain of public life.”
Her report is, of course, only one view of the impact of police station closures but there was more ammunition for those who think the policy went too far in the report on the Met published last year by Baroness Casey…”
https://sites.google.com/view/elisafacchetti/home
From London Police Stations (2020), by Eileen Sanderson:
“Home Office approval for a police station at Penge was given in 1868 and a year later a Mr William Gibson of the Parochial Offices, Anerley Road, wrote to the Commissioner urging the building of a police station as winter was coming and there would be increased crime, growing poverty and unemployment of the lower classes. He pointed out that the Hamlet of Penge paid £3,000 a year to the Metropolitan Police and had been begging for a police station for three years. A temporary police station was opened in 1870, followed by a permanent building in 1872, which remained open until 2010. The freehold was sold in 2011 for £625,000 and it is now a college with a number of private residences in the old police yard called Old Police Station Mews.”
Julia Upton 