How the career of the British bobby is changing

BEFORE he first put on his uniform, Paul Clements had never seen a bar fight, still less joined in one. Fisticuffs had sometimes seemed inevitable when he was negotiating bail-outs at the European Commission, but they never broke out. “I hadn’t had any exposure to the police except for a speeding fine in 1996,” he says. But after only a few weeks as a constable and a year’s training, the former Bank of England official was put in charge of 100-odd cops.

He is one of a new breed of policemen who could reshape the service. The new home secretary, Sajid Javid, gave his first big speech to the conference of the Police Federation, a cops’ union, this week, assuring officers that he would be “standing with you”. But reforms carried out by a previous home secretary—Theresa May, who is now prime minister—could soon overturn the service’s make-up.

As well as allowing outsiders like Mr Clements to be appointed as inspectors and superintendents, Mrs May set up a College of Policing to raise standards. From 2020, all new bobbies will need to pay for a policing degree, persuade a force to pay for them to study a “degree apprenticeship” or, if they already have a degree, take a conversion course. Recruits will learn sociology as well as practical know-how.

Crime has been falling since the mid-1990s. But whereas the number of burglaries has dwindled, officers face a growing caseload of complicated crimes such as fraud and sexual offences. They must grasp laws tackling female genital mutilation and modern slavery. Rachel Tuffin of the College of Policing says the ideal recruit combines brain and brawn: “Lots of spinach and a code book in one hand.”

Ms Tuffin thinks better-educated junior officers will challenge their superiors. The current training to be a constable, the lowest rank, “prepares you to follow orders” rather than question authority, she says. Hierarchy may be useful in policing a riot, but it stifles innovation.

The new cadre of “direct entry” middle managers, who join from outside the service, are another way to promote innovation. The scheme is too new to judge its success (there are just 25 such superintendents and 34 inspectors), but the recruits come from diverse backgrounds. One cohort included former employees of banks, hospitals, local government and the armed forces. One of them, James Collis, who used to manage housing in Croydon, is now in charge of about 500 uniformed officers. “I still think like a member of the public sometimes,” he says. Mr Clements took a pay cut of £20,000 ($27,000) when he joined from the Bank of England.

Some grumble that high-flyers will struggle to order their constables to carry out tasks they have not had to do themselves. They also fret that the requirement to get a degree will put off poor applicants. The police service has historically been a better driver of social mobility than many professions. In 2012 the Sutton Trust, a charity, found that 13% of senior police officers went to private schools, compared with 63% of lawyers. At the Police Federation conference, some claimed they would never have joined if they had needed a degree. But policing will remain a well-paid and secure career, and some recruits will benefit from apprenticeships.

The degree requirement could improve diversity in other ways, by encouraging ethnic-minority parents to view policing as a suitable career for bright offspring. Only 6% of England and Wales’s police are non-white, compared with 14% of the population; just 29% of officers are women.

Still, even the brainiest recruits have to master the basics. On his third week of training, Mr Clements leaned against a clothes rail while arresting a shoplifter. The handcuffs on his belt quickly snapped shut, locking him to the rail. When a smirking colleague finally turned up, he took a picture before releasing the cuffs. Mr Clements tweeted it. He says: “We hold our hands up when we make mistakes.”