The fiercest objections on these grounds have come not from the media or our elected representatives, but from backbenchers in the House of Lords.

Unelected appointees rally to the defence of unelected appointees.

Oh, and this:

November 2012 will see the election of 41 new Policing and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), directly elected by the residents of each police area outside London.

Would rather seem to be at odds with this:

the limited mechanisms that will exist for holding the PCCs to account.

They are subject to the greatest accountabilty method possible – the chance to throw the rascals out.

At the very least PCCs will be accountable to the electorate. They can be booted out. There could scarcely be less accountability than at present. Police Authorities are ‘invisible’ to the general public. How many know they exist, let alone could name the Chair, or any members, or how they became members? How many police authorities hold public meetings, consult upon police strategy for their areas, or report back in any meaningful way? But if the public are dissatisfied with their police authority can they boot them out? No.

Oh, sure, you can throw them out…after years of having someone who pays no attention to the science or who hates all drugs users or is a virulent racist or…

It’s putting policing very much on a politicised basis, and is yet another reason to distrust the police.

Oh, sure, you can throw them out…after years of having someone who pays no attention to the science or who hates all drugs users or is a virulent racist or…

A very cogent argument for the abolition of democracy tout court.

@Tim J #1:

They are subject to the greatest accountabilty method possible – the chance to throw the rascals out.

I don’t remember a recall mechanism being mentioned – is there one?

5 – An election. Although if they commit actual crimes in office I suspect they’d be removed as well.

@3
It puzzles me when there is a view that PCCs will somehow politicise the police – as if the police were not politicised at the moment. Now it is the politics of the Chief Constable which dominates the activities of a specific force, in future there will be two strong beasts expressing their views about the strategy of policing in an area. That does not worry me because we live in a democracy in which everything has a political dimention, how could or should the police be immune?

TimJ @6:

One could argue that quite a number of MPs committed criminal offenses and weren’t removed from office. Equally that more than one Murdoch has done so, and that in fact several senior Met officers have done so during Labour’s tenure… also at least one Prime Minister, etc.

Point being, our system is designed with great strength in depth to make it virtually impossible to get rid of someone for professional (as opposed to sexual) misconduct these days. It’s the Sir Humphrey principle, again; “The Official Secrets act isn’t there to protect secrets! It’s to protect officials!”

@7 – If the police are political agents, then they cannot properly enforce the laws of the land.

This will just lead even more politicized police force. Which is what the tories want. Their army of little tory trols and media will insure the public only elects those officers who have shown their brownshirt credentials. Promising to turn blind eye to speeding motorists, and demonstrating a hatred of brown people, will get you high marks,with the tub thumpers. Corruption is guaranteed. You only have to look at local planning committees to see the idocy of the claim that you can throw the bums out..

This is just another example of the tories favourate poli y. Call lt ‘THe Northern Ireland principle’ Ring fence, opt out gerrymandering.

[deleted]

@Tim J #6:

An election. Although if they commit actual crimes in office I suspect they’d be removed as well.

“An election”? A “recall” election? Or will an incompetent commissioner whose qualifications for office consisted of his/her political affiliation remain in office for 4 years.

And then when elections do come around? You are aware, I take it, of the studies on the States that show the effect of elections on the “professional” conduct of elected office-holders in the criminal justice system? For example, during election season, elected judges sentence 10% more severely, IIRC.

What exactly is gained by giving the power to second guess a professional doing the job for which s/he is trained to a political hack on the ground that s/he has the right party-political label around his neck?

@Merrymaker #7:

That does not worry me because we live in a democracy in which everything has a political dimention, how could or should the police be immune?

Because, ultimately, allowing the Government of the day to arrest people because they are the wrong party is not true democracy?

Again, once a party politically elected Commissioner is in office, it will be assumed by all and sundry that the Chief Constable shares his party political views (because the Commissioner has the power to fire) and hence that police operational decisions will be influenced by party politics.

So we get less effective policing, and less public approval of policing, all at the same time.

@13
I cannot follow how electing PCCs somehow gives the Government of the day the power to arrest people. PCCs will not have the power of arrest, and Chief Constables will have no more nor any fewer powers than they have now. At present, however, Chief Constables have de facto unlimited powers to decide which laws shall be enforced with vigour and which shall be ignored. One only has to look at the differential arrest and charge rates for (say) domestic violence to see how that choice is exercised. I do not quibble at that difference provided that there can be public accountablity for those decisions. There is no public accountability at present. The police cannot be immune from politics because they use public money – either from the taxpayer or from the council taxpayer via the precept. I adopt the old principle: no taxation without representation (and hence accountability). That is why I support PCCs.

I adopt the old principle: no taxation without representation

The police don’t tax us. In the monetary sense at least.

I’ve yet to hear a cogent argument why this particular arm of the state, at this particular level, needs to be directly elected given that we don’t get to vote directly for generals, admirals, members of the Bank of England’s monetary committee, head teachers, bin men, head librarians, public prosecutors, judges, hospital managers or indeed, the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, etc.

It’s doubly confusing to me, since the arguments for ‘more democracy’ in this one particular instance and no other are often coming from people who not only hate the idea of an elected president, but also think such an idea can be completely dismissed simply by naming the sorts of tossers who might win.

There’s also the issue of the timing of the election – November will guarantee low turn-outs, which may help extreme candidates do well. What happens if a far-right candidate gets elected, and changes priorities accordingly?

Will the candidates be vetted (they will have access to confidential information, after all)? What happens if a local criminal big-wig gets his candidate elected? There seems to be an assumption that it will be a candidate backed by one of the main parties – the Mayoral elections have proved that is not always the case.

Pat

Boirs Has massively taken Police from outer london to Inner London, resulting in crime rising disproportionalty in Outer London, during the Riots Police from County forces came to london, not sure if Elected police would allow this, (could they be overruled like Labor council leaders trying to not loet the Met go up North for the miners strike?) any way, some county forces don’t have the resources to have Child abuse/Rape squads, Armed squads (witness Raol Moat case having police from other areas come to where Moat was) If elelcted commisioners feel the obvious Anti social behaviour is the thing that the public want, then Will the elelcted police chief not send their resouces to sink estates or spend money on human traffciing organised crime that doens’t effect the middle class parts of their Counties?

Tim J @ 1

They are subject to the greatest accountabilty method possible – the chance to throw the rascals out.>/b>

You will not be happy until you vermin have destroyed every indpendant organisation and replaced them with corrupt Tory scum.

Well said Jim , and of course you are dead right. This is about creating lots of little Northern Irelands all across England. Police forces, schools. All allowd to opt out, be ring fenced , and then a small thug majority holds sway.

But it is the tory way. Like Gummers law, which allowed the rich to opt themselves out of the planning system. All tory polices are about allowing their supporters to opt themselves out of real democratically accountability. Peter Lilley suggested a few years ago that people should only pay welfare for their own area. So the rich would pay no taxes in their local area because there would be no poor people. All tories are scum.

Tories lie about everything. When they say they creating democracy, it means the opposite. When they say “we are all in this together” it means fuck the poor. Of course we know what tories are like, they have been doing it for hundreds of years. But the Lie Dems, have lost the plot. They are being played like a Steinway.

Sally @ 10:

“Their army of little tory trols and media will insure the public only elects those officers who have shown their brownshirt credentials.”

One wonders why, if the Tories have such power over the voting public, they don’t use it to win themselves large majorities at Westminster every General Election.

@19 – That’s highly offensive to Steinways!

If we’re going to have direct elections to public bodies, why not have the BBC Trust directly elected by license payers instead of the present system where they are appointed by the government?

@Tim J

Oh, sure, you can throw them out…after years of having someone who pays no attention to the science or who hates all drugs users or is a virulent racist or…

“A very cogent argument for the abolition of democracy tout court.”

Nonsense (and unimaginative nonsense at that). The ancient Greeks trialled a number of solutions to these problems:

1) he who had abused his power most egregiously during any given year could be ostracised by popular vote, as a result of which he would spend ten years in exile. And why not? Vote the buggers off the island… pour encourager les autres.

2) candidates for most posts were selected by lottery (rather than by party affiliation, networking and/or the brown-nose factor) – on the basis that pure elections favoured the ancient Greek equivalent of Eton/Westminster-educated Oxbridge grads, as well as the very rich. The oligarchy/clique problem is demonstrably real, although the lottery solution may not hold up so well in a country with 60 million inhabitants.

Pointing out problems with our implementation of democracy doesn’t mean that democracy is fatally flawed. It means that, in some contexts, there is a problem with our implementation. The existence of flaws might have been news over 2,500 years ago; nowadays it’s just a known bug.

Paul Cartledge’s ‘Ostracism: Selection and de-selection in Ancient Greece’ is a good read.

Apparently Nadine Dorres is a big fan of Inspector gadgets blog,
hopefully sh’ell read this

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/elected-police-commissioners-are-pointless/

@Merrymaker #14:

I cannot follow how electing PCCs somehow gives the Government of the day the power to arrest people.

It doesn’t, and nor did I say it did. What however you have forgotten is that the Home Secretary already has power for example to impose internal exile on those she considers, on evidence provided by those increasingly politicised police forces, to be “terrorists”. She has also today called for the Human Rights Act to be repealed (sorry, “amended”) because it makes it difficult for her to send terrorist suspects abroad to be tortured and worse. You don’t need to be sally to see a problem here.