Last word - promise!

COPPERSBLOG VISITORS: WELCOME! A warm welcome for those visitors who may have strayed here via the link from coppersblog.
This site was never really intended to be anything more than a shop window for my own particular branch of specialist research and I certainly can't pretend my working day currently provides as much opportunities for dark humour and dry wit as wielding the biro of justice (or even stacking a supermarket shelf for that matter). Nonetheless, if you've made the effort to pay a visit there's a good chance you may have a passing interest in the state of ICT in the police service.
There are plenty of commentators out there volunteering hastily scribbled takes on this subject. Depending on the particular combination of pundit and soapbox, the UK police are either institutionally incompetent, bic-wielding luddites grimly hanging-on to ancient and lucrative Spanish practices, or else they are a dangerous new breed of digitally enhanced super-snoops complicit in the building a sleek new Orwellian state and absolutely itching to start data-mining the reading habits of the middle-classes. Neither stereotype stands up to much scrutiny.
Although there is a fair bit of ground to cover between two such polarised opinions, in truth, much of it will appear dull and featureless to the untrained eye. The Home Office, tripartite police authorities and the 52 forces that make up the service in the UK had been trying to wrestle a coherent national ICT service into place for over ten years, before a public inquiry into a tragic double-murder finally forced the issue. Even today there is probably less chance of over-hearing a canteen discussion between officers on the implications of CorDM and CRISP than there is of seeing the subject emerge as a sub-plot of a Sun Hill cliff-hanger.
Concepts such as 'value for money' and 'cost-effectiveness' can leave a sour taste in the mouth when used in the context of policing. As the Met recently demonstrated, it is the responsibility of the police to step up and take control when our worst nightmares manifest themselves on our streets, and this carries a heavy weight of expectation. The public want their police to be even-handed and accountable as well as an informed, accessible and visible part of their communities, yet they also want them to pursue criminality decisively and relentlessly without a second thought to time or cost.
Car chases and collars are infinately more entertaining than paperwork in triplicate. Even still, I'd hazard a guess that a majority of both the police service and the citizens they serve would prefer paperwork in triplicate over a discussion of how commoditised data-integration techniques and process-based applications can potentially deliver efficient, effective and transparent policing. Spend a little time on this site and you'll probably begin to see why.
So, if you're here because you are interested in what it's like working as a police officer in the UK, I'm going to politely redirect you back to PC Copperfield. If, on the other hand, you are interested in how ICT can be used to protect civil liberties, or are one of the thousands of IT workers involved in the massive program of ICT-led reform of criminal justice underway in this country � have a nosy about this site and, if there's anything you're interested in - or want to put me straight on - drop us a line and let me know.