Police officers are no longer treating the job as a lifelong career as voluntary resignations have trebled in the last decade.
The number of voluntary resignations from the police was 1,158, which accounted for 18 per cent of people leaving the force in 2012.
In 2022, the figure had increased to 3,433, or 42 per cent of leavers, threatening to undercut Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto promise of 20,000 additional officers.
More than 1,800 of the officers hired to increase numbers as a result of the policy have already quit. A total of 15,000 extra officers were employed as part of the Police Uplift Programme, at an expense of £3.6 billion.
Highly trained candidates are taking their skills elsewhere, blaming a poor workplace culture. Careers in the force of 30 years or more had previously been the norm.
Many are also being influenced by policing scandals, including the disclosures of several grossly offensive Whatsapp group discussions.
The departure of both new and experienced officers means that one-third of existing police officers have less than three years experience.
Thirty forces in England and Wales are presently open to new applicants.
Professor Sarah Charman from Portsmouth University told a newspaper outlet that officers are leaving due to poor workplace culture.
She said officers were becoming disillusioned and that this was having an impact on the quality of police services.
Professor Charman conducted exit interviews with almost 100 officers who had decided to exit the force prematurely, and she said that while in the past the police force had been seen as a career for life, officers were becoming disheartened with what she called organisation injustice.
She said that the way the police service recruits and trains people, particularly at the entry-level is about making sure everyone fits in. Forget everything you’ve learnt on the outside, forget all the friendships you have got on the outside, they’re now part of them now, part of their clan.
Professor Charman added that forces need to get rid of the mindset that officers would be easy to replace and that they should be grateful to be working there, and she said policing is in the grand position of having officers who when they join are extremely thrilled and have often wanted to do the job all their lives.
She said that they bring a level of enthusiasm and expectations that other institutions could only dream of and they’re practically wasting that enthusiasm in those early days through the culture and identity of the organisation when they should be capitalising on it.
In 1980 the figures were just as bad but it was a force who wished to serve their community. They saw it all, the Toxteth miners strike and football hooligans, but they did their duty, and we should be horrified at what both Labour and Tory governments have done to this once grand force the world admired.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 