UKH

...faced a criminal charge last year?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/25/revealed-one-in-100-uk-poli...

Is that a big number? I feel that it is, but I'm not really sure. I'm a teacher, I doubt one out of every hundred teachers faced a criminal charge last year, but could be totally wrong on that...

In reply to TobyA:

What's the proportion for MPs I wonder?

In reply to TobyA:

Well this website says:

In the year ending March 2022, there were 1.01 million offenders convicted at all courts, 31% higher than in the previous year, but 13% lower than in the year to March 2020.
 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics...

UK population is 67m. So that’s 1/67 of everyone was charged with something each year. 
 

wonder if any institute type bodies hold stats for their professions. 

In reply to SouthernSteve:

2 in 1

In reply to TobyA:

Let's do an order of magnitude  sense-check on that:

UK criminal charges in a recent year:

• https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics...
• "1.36 million individuals were dealt with by the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in the year ending March 2022," 

UK Population in that year:

• https://google.gprivate.com/search.php?search?q=uk%20population%20in%202022
• 68.5 million

So, population wide, that's (1.36 million people charged / year) / 68.5 million people = 2.0% of the population charged / year.  That's 2x  higher than the rate you quote, so the question is more "why is the rate so much lower in professional circles?"

My anecdotal experience is that being in a "profession" does not decrease the probability that someone is going to break the law, but it does mean they're more likely to be able to cover their tracks, and  it sometimes provides an institution more concerned about their public image than doing the right thing, often an institution endowed with a legal fund and high quality solicitors on a retainer, and who may (if you can believe it) try and help prevent an employee's blatant criminality making it in to the papers or - failing that - medically retire them before the court case to divorce themselves from it all.

Edit: Jinx - in the time it took me to write this (distracted by chores), elliot.baker replied with the same source and a similar estimate; but they're looking at convictions not changes; either way the implication is similar.

Stepping back, how mad is it that 2% of the population are going to court each year?  That'll be a larger fraction of the adult population.  Not a healthy place for society to be.

In reply to wintertree:

Maybe, although that stat doesn't reveal what people are going to court for. In terms of overall crime the UK is somewhere in the middle according to the World Population Review's index of crime rate by country:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/crime-rate-by-country

In reply to wintertree:

Presumably that includes, for example, speeding offences. And some individuals will be getting charged more than once. I really don’t think 2% of the population, or close to it, are actually in the dock every year.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I thought that but the wording is “1.35m individuals” not 1.36m charges (potentially to <1.36m people”. 

also I think the 1m figure will exclude most speeding fixed penalties because they don’t go through court.  

I don’t know where to look next but I would bet that more than 1 in a 100 of every profession commit crimes from bouncers to judges.  

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

The Govt. stats wintertree posted stated: "1.36 million individuals were dealt with by the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in the year ending March 2022" which does seem to indicate individual offenders, rather than cases.

Obviously the bulk of these will be minor, (is failure to have a TV licence still a criminal offence?), but that's per year, not total of the population, so that would mean pretty much everyone would have a criminal record at some point. Unless 'dealt with' includes victims, witnesses etc.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Yes, people that have been done more than once like the nottingham crime commissioner who was done for speeding 5 times. It does seem like our representatives are naturally predisposed to law breaking unfortunately. 

In reply to TobyA:

Not sure about these stats, does X number being dealt with mean X number of convictions or just X number of cases, many of which may not have resulted in a conviction.

So what if "criminal conviction" anyway as this includes a police caution. Remember the ladies during lockdown who were out walking but had the audacity to carry a takeaway (hot chocolate?) so Derbyshire police issued a caution as they said it was a "picnic" while walking. Or speed camera offences are criminal, or climbing a tree in my local park, or TV licence expired.

To be more useful we need to distinguish between people who have been convicted of seriously offences, fraud, violence etc, and people who have become technical criminals due to climbing a tree or whatnot.

We used to have a good working system with the "spent" conviction system under the rehabilitation of offenders act (climbing a tree offence would've been "spent"). Bear in mind serious serious offences don't get spent. However this has become massively eroded recently with people asked to declare spent historical convictions for no real justification and being excluded jobs or university places etc.

Do we want a society where convictions even spent stay forever and used to exclude people from work/education?

In reply to wintertree:

My experience, backed up by research, is the exact opposite and by some margin. If you are in a ‘profession’ you are waaaay less likely have the factors associated with increase risk of committing crimes eg: poverty, deprivation, addiction, ethnicity, being a young male. I guess you may be more likely to get caught (given the types of crime being committed), and you may as you say be more likely to ‘get off’ if you are from the professional class (the legal system does treat the upper classes more leniently). 

The question should be ‘what are the crime rates for people from a similar background to MPs, and my gut feeling is MPs are higher than average.

In reply to elliot.baker:

Could that not be "individuals" as in distinct times someone is dealt with by the CJS, not different people? So in many cases it will be one person being charged or arrested for various crimes?

In reply to TobyA:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics...

The biggest area of prosecution was 632,000 motoring prosecutions and this does include about 200,000 speeding offences.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

The wording about “individuals” is very unambiguous - as others have noted - but it could also be wrong I suppose.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

I’m sure you are right; I was thinking with tunnel vision on certain types of crime not related to poverty (sex offences) and shouldn’t generalise from that.  

Edit: of direct relevance to the link in the OP, the desire of large institutions to avoid bad publicity can I think play an enabling role for some sex offenders.  Although this can work both ways with incidents not making it to the point someone is charged.

Well, I’m still pissed that Dominic Cummings wasn’t done for a decade of council tax evasion and theft of water over his secret underground bunker home.  Literally one rule for them and another for others when you look at other such cases. 

In reply to wintertree:

Form the data info:

There is also a Technical Guide to Criminal Justice Statistics:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

 What happened with Cummings was disgusting. Didn't it include breaches of planning regs as well? He may well be in these stats though, if he was cautioned.

In reply to Offwidth:

Thanks for bringing some clarity, so my take was wrong and they don’t really mean “individuals”.

Re: planning regs - no crime there.  He managed to hide it from planning beyond the 4-year enforcement window and it’s now deemed to have planning permission.  There’s a bill in progress to extend that window to 10 years.  

In reply to TobyA:

I would like to know how many of the police are chafing criminal charges for actual offenses and how many are bogus complaints against them by people who are pissed off at being caught and make a complaint by the arresting officer. 

In reply to TobyA:

Even getting charged in the U.K. now is quite unusual:

https://twitter.com/duncanrobinson/status/1629785524599762946?s=20

As foe the police, I have seen a suggestion on Twitter that the base rate of criminal charges for the whole of the U.K.  is around 0.5%, but obviously that includes small children and old people who aren’t particularly criminal. We’d need to get a sense of the rate for a population that tends to be male, aged roughly 18-45 with a similar mix of qualifications and income. That’s not necessarily that easy. 

Wintertree’s point that professionals can get away with criminal acts more easily surely holds even more so for the police, who both know the system and have the (alleged) protection of a canteen culture that (may) overlook some types of crime. 

In reply to seankenny:

The Secret Barrrister recent posts chart how the CPS is crumbling under Raab... well worth a look. Having seriously annoyed defence barristers (before their appalling pay situation was resolved)  he seems to have shifted over to cause major problems for prosecution barristers. It's having a very significant impact on planning for prosecutions. One thing I'd missed is % rape prosecutions have improved noticably in recent years (edit link added below) but for that they need to get to court: delays of over a year (under horrible pressure for the victim) are standard. He also proves Raab is lying about covid and the strikes

https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret

(Its also possible to use Nitter and enter Secret Barrister as 'user')

https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/rape-convictions-increase-to-75-per

In reply to TobyA:

I wonder what the ratio is for gamekeepers? Especially where they should have faced a criminal charge..

In reply to Dax H:

A complaint is very different from being charged with a crime. I suspect incredibly few bogus complaints would ever end up in someone being charged! We know from the recent horrific rape and murder convictions of serving police, alongside many other less serious cases, that genuine complaints aren't often taken seriously, let alone lead to charges.

In reply to TobyA:

You don't need especially horrible rape cases Toby. Only 1 in 100 rapes that were reported to the police in 2021 resulted in a charge that year. Most rapes go unreported (more than 80%). It's a major national scandal.

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/

In reply to TobyA:

My point is the article doesn't say "charged" it say "faces charges"

If someone makes a serious complaint the officer will be facing charges until its either dismissed or goes to court. As someone above said, the whole ethos of the media these days is to whip up a good frenzy of outrage to increase the clicks and advertising revenue. They are experts at wording things to cause maximum impact whilst staying just a hairs breath short of the line where they can be taken to court. 

In reply to Dax H:

What’s your source for this? Surely an allegation of misconduct is an internal police matter (at least in the first instance) but a criminal charge has to be made by the CPS - two different things right? 

The article says there are 1,387 “claims for legal support from members facing criminal charges in 2022”. The numbers facing misconduct allegations has to be much higher given the Casey report into the Met suggests 18, 589 in that force alone in the period 2013 - 2022, whereas the Police Federation numbers are national. 

If you think reporting to within the limits of the legal system is new then you need to go back and read about how the Sunday Times covered the thalidomide story in the 1960s. Powerful people use the law to shut down reporting of things that concern us all. And police breaking the law in order to abuse the public is absolutely a matter for concern, surely?

In reply to Dax H:

Good point. 

Another other point here is that in the course of their duty, officers have to manhandle non-compliant customers who are likely to complain, and when complained about undergo a level of scrutiny that a normal member of the public would not expect over a minor misdemeanor.

For example, if I make a mistake at work, I don't have to have my whatsapp messages investigated or my bodyworn cctv examined.

This isn't an attempted defence of the bad apples of the Police - the police SHOULD suffer a higher level of scrutiny. But it might give a little insight into why the stats might not be comparable to other professions. 

​​​​​​

In reply to mrphilipoldham:

I'd hazard a guess they're the least prosecuted profession, (apart from the Landowner), in the UK.

They're just in the unfortunate position of always coincidentally being in the vicinity of mass suicides of protected species.

In reply to philipivan:

Yeah, I think she's misunderstood her job title a little bit. She thinks her role is to commission crime.

In reply to TobyA:

That seems very high, though it depends on what you mean by a criminal charge.  If it includes FPNable things like motoring offences, or minor magistrates-court stuff like railway fare dodging, then I might be less surprised.

On the other hand I think if you're going to be a Police Officer I think by default you need to be 100% on complying with the law, as not doing so is grossly hypocritical.  So it's probably less relevant what IT consultants might do - if your job is enforcing the law you need to be 100% on complying with it, just as if you're, for instance, a personal trainer, you're not going to do very well if you go around eating McDonald's twice a day and are thus a fat slob.

In particular I'd say if a traffic cop gets multiple speeding tickets then that should be considered quite seriously, even though it's arguably fairly minor (as long as it wasn't something stupid like 70 in a 30 - I'd say a police officer getting a ticket for that should be sacked for gross misconduct as that's a wilful and serious public safety issue).  Somewhere like London I can see why people can accidentally end up with one, particularly when limits change from 30 to 20 and back almost randomly and quite frequently these days (much easier when everything was 30, and probably easier again once everything is 20 as it looks likely to be moving towards), but more than 3 points at once is either careless or wilful.

(No, I don't have any convictions of any kind, by the way).

In reply to Offwidth:

My point was about complaints against police officers while on duty, and about their police duties. I think Dax was suggesting that police are more likely to face criminal charges because they sometimes face bogus accusations about their police work.

In reply to Neil Williams:

If I’ve read it correctly the figures in The Observer report are based on the numbers seeking legal help from the Police Federation. I find it highly doubtful that officers are seeking legal help to deal with FPNs or minor magistrates’ court cases. 

In reply to Neil Williams:

Do police anywhere actually enforce 20mph zones? My understanding is that they're supposed to be 'enforced' by design (bumps, surface, tight parking, lane blockages etc) rather than policed. The traffic cops round here are always parked up on the higher speed bits of the network (40+).

jk

In reply to seankenny:

Ah.  That's quite different.  It's quite possible that that will be over other things such as neighbour disputes and car accidents rather than criminal law?

In reply to jkarran:

20 Zones are "by design", 20 limits are enforced conventionally e.g. using cameras and speed traps.

20 Zones are better, but almost all of central London and quite a few other bits are just 20 limits.

In reply to Neil Williams:

It’s fairly clear in the reporting that it’s actual criminal matters. Take a look at the Casey review into the Met:

https://www.met.police.uk/police-forces/metropolitan-police/areas/about-us/...

Some of the misconduct being investigated is assault, sexual assault, fraud and sending improper images. I wonder how one sends a dick pic in the course of policing duties. 
 

My problem with this continual making excuse for the police (of the “but isn’t it really…” variety) is that it’s exactly the opposite of holding the police to high standards - just making excuses for behaviour rather than squaring up to the problem at hand. 

In reply to Neil Williams:

Makes sense, around here they're all residential with calming measures built in or unnecessary.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

Generally speaking enforcement of parking, a lot antisocial behaviour and things like u turns in prohibited areas and 20 limits is delegated to the local authority under the local government act. Odd quirks exist though like in London some things might be TFL not local authority, but low level stuff like this is usually council enforcement officers not the police.

In reply to TobyA:

That was exactly my point. 

In reply to TobyA:

Going back to the Casey report - an example of a senior public servant investigating how the Met operates - the first sentence in the first main section is:

“From the day a Met officer or staff member makes a misconduct allegation against another Met officer or staff member, or when an allegation of misconduct is made by the family of an officer or staff member…”

It continues in this vein throughout, at the very least suggesting that many of the complaints against officers (which the Met has trouble acting upon) are *not* complaints by scum bags who resent being arrested but by other police officers. Clearly this report looks at misconduct and not necessarily chargeable offences. But proponents of the “scum bag allegations” view have to explain why the police are taking these complaints, finding enough evidence for the CPS to charge, and then the CPS charging, when in fact the complaints are entirely fabricated. It doesn’t exactly scream confidence in the police and CJS does it? And can anyone explain why we have the police bringing these fabricated cases all the way to their fellow officers being charged when they clearly have difficulty even running an internal misconduct system effectively, as surely those two outcomes are a little contradictory?