Mike Hough: Partners in crime

Politicians are part of the problem when it comes to improving the way our streets are policed.

If we believe what we read, we have yet another crime crisis in Britain. Carjackers, street robbers everywhere, no one is safe any more. The prime minister himself has taken charge, and will have street crime back under control by September. Or will he?

We have just completed a major study, Policing for London, which suggests that this sort of aggressive crisis management by politicians is part of the problem, rather than the solution. For two decades now, Tory and Labour governments have struggled with problems of under-performance in public services. One can have some sympathy for their desire to reform. But the tools that they have used - managerialist techniques of priority setting and performance indicators, targets and league tables - work badly. So we have some worries about proposals in the police reform bill now being debated in the House of Commons which will shift the balance of power in policing politics yet further towards the centre.

There are plenty of examples of performance targets backfiring in other public services. Targets to reduce hospital waiting lists can distort access to treatment, favouring patients whose operations can be done quickly. Measuring schools' performance by the number of pupils getting five GCSEs will focus effort on those of middling ability whose performance can be raised across that critical threshold; there is no need to put effort into the high-performers and no point in bothering with those of limited ability.

The Policing for London study shows that this is just as true of policing as for other public services. A recurrent phrase in our interviews with police officers was: "What can't be measured doesn't count and what doesn't count doesn't get done." Government target-setting had had the effect of prioritising crime, and particular types of crime, at that. Burglary and vehicle crime were top priority. Street robbery received less attention. Youth disorder - bullying, rowdyism, vandalism, petty theft - never made it on to the list. Yet these are the obvious precursors to those forms of street crime about which we are now so exercised. Target-setting has also skewed police work away from essential, but long-term preventive efforts, such as community policing and work in schools, and towards ones that yield a short-term gain.

So what about street robbery and the new crime wave? The reality is more complicated than the headlines, of course. Few people realise that overall crime rates in Britain are lower than seven years ago. But there is a real and growing problem about youth crime, and in particular about street robbery committed by teenagers and young adults. Several factors have come together to create a "tipping point", where the robbery statistics have taken off.

The simplest explanation, but only part of the explanation, is that the arrival of mobile phones has simultaneously provided the incentive and the opportunity for street crime. In the past, teenagers made poor robbery victims, because they carried little that was worth stealing. Now they do. But there are other factors. Other crime opportunities have been closed off: it is harder, riskier and less rewarding to burgle homes than a decade ago, for example. Robbery is a simpler crime, and a better bet. The way that youth culture is evolving, especially in the poorer parts of our larger cities, is yet another part of the jigsaw. It is not alarmist to talk about cultures of violence evolving on rough estates, where bullying is endemic among young people.

Obviously there needs to be a concerted effort against street crime; but this should be proportionate, and must not be done at the expense of other important police functions. Our analysis suggests that problems with street crime have arisen partly because the political priorities of the 1990s diverted attention and resources from those policing activities which secure public order and public consent to policing in high-crime areas. A politically driven response to street crime will strip resources away from some other police functions. The robbery problem will be brought under control, but we shall then have the next crisis to deal with - burglary again? Fraud? We shall have to wait and see.

So what can politicians do? Obviously they can give the police the resources they need Progress has already been made on this front. Second, they need to exercise more self-discipline and self-restraint; central government cannot micro-manage such a complex function as policing, and should not try to. Decisions about policing style are complex, subtle and need to take account of local circumstances. There needs to be political accountability, but this should be local, rather than national.

Police performance certainly needs to be raised. But the way to do this is to foster standards of police professionalism, rather than to impose crime reduction targets. Politicians need to grasp that paradox. It is reasonable to expect senior police managers to get their workforce to operate ethically and to standards of best professional practice. It is unreasonable to require them to reduce particular types of crime to meet particular targets within specified times, and then to name and shame those who fail.

Performance measurement will always be important, of course, but there is a need for new approaches. These need to capture quality as well as quantity and to strike a better balance between long-term and short-term goals. Micro-manage intelligent police officers and you'll turn them into demoralised functionaries. Give them the room to do the job and they may manage to do it properly.

· Professor Mike Hough is director of the Criminal Policy Research unit at South Bank University. He is one of the principal authors of the Policing for London report along with Professor Marian FitzGerald (LSE).