The police in the UK are now social engineers

In the edition of the Eastbourne and Hailsham Herald for September 3, Mr Moore writes to the Opinion pages to express his exasperation, as a retired detective chief superintendent of the Sussex Police, at what he sees as the ‘virtue signalling’ of recent police initiatives, such as the rainbow police cars, and what he calls the ‘politically correct nonsense’ of the ACC of the Gloucestershire Force’s objective of improving the lot of her women officers by a culture of fairness click here to read.

Mr Moore labours unnecessarily under a misapprehension.

In part he has stumbled on the reason for these initiatives when he writes that policing should be about serving the public equally whatever their background, but without understanding the full implication or origin of the changes he laments. Hence his discomfort.

The sort of police force that Mr Moore describes that once was and, in his opinion, should be again, one that arrested criminals to keep the public safe, was part of a criminal justice system that was based on the belief that crime was the product of human wickedness. The only and necessary response to that was to punish and deter.

However, the ‘politically correct’ changes that Mr Moore describes are a result of the criminal justice system now being based on the belief that crime is the product of poor social conditions of a variety of sorts. The only and necessary response to that is social engineering. Recruiting advertisements for the police that declare that officers pursue such things as equality of opportunity, fairness and inclusion demonstrate that the police are now social engineers.

Under this belief, just desserts has a very different meaning.

Mr Moore’s confusion would have been prevented if the police forces ceased to use their historical name, stopped trading on the rapidly exhausting fund of the kudos banked by others, and called themselves by a name that reflected their new role in society. Something like The Social Justice League.

Then neither Mr Moore nor anyone else would get upset at an entire fleet of police cars striped through like Eastbourne rock.

Virtue signalling is an age-old practice that has no more effect than self-promotion.

The initiatives of the police forces that disturb Mr Moore have a very earnest objective and real-world application.

Sir Robert Peel could never have predicted that his police would serve as social engineers. And to think that Sir Robert’s contemporaries feared that they might become a sort of Praetorian Guard.