Reforms to British policing: Does performance equal progress?
Reflections on performance and productivity markers in the 2026 police reforms white paper
By Mattie Jones, PhD student, Violence & Society Centre, City St George’s University of London
In January, the British government released the white paper ‘From local to national: a new model for policing,’ outlining sweeping proposed changes to the police in England and Wales. To date, the media has primarily focused on the proposed National Police Service (NPS), calling it the “British FBI.” While the creation of the NPS is a major section of the paper, it is simply one piece of a much larger effort to reform British policing in a new and developing, post-Casey Review era.
As a policing researcher and former United States police officer, what gave me pause when analysing the proposals were the pervasive underlying themes of improving productivity and tracking performance. Alongside the white paper, the Home Office introduced the Police Performance Framework. This framework sets out performance metrics that clarify parameters of success and identify areas for improvement. While performance metrics are useful for informing evidence-based policing, elements of this framework appear to lack specific direction on how forces will achieve the objectives, and it does not properly contextualise the desired outcomes that coincide with the numeric change.
An example of this from the framework is to ‘increase the volume of crimes’ where a suspect receives VAWG-related charges. While commendable, goals like this might lend themselves to target-driven enforcement. Officers may feel pressure to chase targets and demonstrate productivity, which could lead to unnecessary minor arrests without actually reducing serious crime or benefitting victims. In 2015 the Home Office interrogated issues of target chasing, directly attributing it to mis-recording crimes and shifting efforts to minor or ‘volume crime’ to meet metrics. The proposed framework, combining a focus on performance indicators and a prioritisation of productivity, raises similar warning signs for a policing environment inclined toward quota-driven enforcement.
Quotas are a loaded term in police practices, and it’s important to not over conflate all performance metrics with quotas. Police quotas combine four elements: formal channels and/or informal mechanisms of implementation, quantification of an acceptable threshold, requirement to meet the threshold, and negative action upon failure to meet the threshold (Ossei-Owusu, 2021). Policing in a quota-based system leads to officers and forces focusing on meeting metrics which may be at odds with discretion and focusing on positive outcomes for the public (Ossei-Owusu, 2021). These, along with issues of discrimination, are why many scholars, practitioners, and the public push back against their implementation (Ossei-Owusu, 2021). With the introduction of the Police Performance Framework, the Police Performance Dashboard for data monitoring between forces, a Tiered Performance System, and a “more active, ‘hands on’ Home Office,” the white paper outlines an environment ripe for quota-driven enforcement.
The line between creating quality metrics that provide data to drive improvements and encouraging forces to adopt quotas or enforcement targets is very fine. To strike the right balance, the Home Office will need to take care and offer specificity when operationalising the objectives and quantifying the outcomes of these proposed changes. Quality data on policing and performance is necessary, but we must be cautious that we don’t let the pursuit of quantification and measurement lend itself to ill-advised practice.
For further information, please contact Mattie at mattie.jones@citystgeorges.ac.uk
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