Leadership, Transparency, and Safeguarding . Chief Constable Sarah Crew

[00:00:00] Well, welcome everybody back to The Social World Podcast. I'm Dave Niven and as usual it's a pleasure to have your company. Now I've got a very good guest today, Sarah Crew, who's the Chief Constable of Aden and Somerset Police, but she's been an officer with them since 1994 and is absolutely steeped in the region and has held a variety of jobs over the time. Welcome to the programme, Sarah. Thank you, I'm delighted to be here.

[00:00:25] Okay, just give us a quick intro as to why you felt you wanted to be a police officer in the first place. I wanted to make a difference. I know that sounds a little bit trite, but I wanted, you know, I had a very working class background, but I had great love and support from my parents who worked really hard to put me through an independent school in Bristol, Bristol Grammar School.

[00:00:52] And what that gave me an insight to was a different kind of world than they'd had. But in seeing that world, I also saw that there were others that didn't have that kind of love and support. And I felt that I needed to do something with my life now that I've been given that privilege to make a difference for others.

[00:01:13] So there were various options when I was narrowing down at university what I wanted to do, be a lawyer, be a journalist or be a police officer. And over time, being a police officer seemed really, at 23 when I started doing it, a really kind of up close and personal, real way of being, making a difference to people in real time.

[00:01:37] You must have seen, I mean, with that length of career in the force, I mean, there must have been a bit of a roller coaster at times because it's such a challenging profession. And also public perception and public kind of commentary about it. You know, you must have developed a bit of a thick skin at times on behalf of the force, I suspect.

[00:02:00] Yes, sometimes. I mean, I've had the pleasure to work with some fantastic people who go above and beyond and put their health and safety often risk. And I've worked with them and alongside them to make a real difference for others. So I'm always a bit defensive. That said, policing works on consent.

[00:02:21] And so if public confidence is challenged, it's something that we've got to listen to, take particular care to understand why and try to address it. Because we only, as police officers, we are, you know, as Peel's principal, citizens like anyone else. And we only get our powers and the authority that we carry because other people give them to us. And so to maintain that, we need to be really, really careful.

[00:02:51] And, you know, people do look back in policing and say, well, public confidence was much higher. But sometimes I wonder that it was blind confidence. What we haven't got now is blind confidence because blind confidence hides some things that perhaps now we're seeing. And it's, you know, so it's a lot healthier and as hard as it is to be a leader in the environment.

[00:03:13] Well, one of the things I've seen when, you know, briefly reading a bit of your biography and stuff like that is your absolute confidence in the fact that the police have got to be transparent. And that kind of fits in, I believe, to what you've just said there, I suspect. Yeah, transparency and accountability. Absolutely. And I mean, it works two ways. I mean, I think that if you open your doors and you invite people in, they see those great people that I've just talked about and they win confidence.

[00:03:43] They get to know just not the uniform, but who they are, what motivates them, what they go to. So I think it can help confidence. But at the same time, when bad things happen, I think it undermines confidence if you blindly defend or displace or, you know, deny or just attribute it to one or two people. I think if there are systemic challenges, you've got, we're no different in society, frankly.

[00:04:13] And people know that. So much better to be open and honest and expose them. I couldn't agree more. And remember, you're talking to a kindred spirit here who is defending social work for the last number of decades. And, you know, the kind of roller coaster that social workers actually go through as well. OK, look, I mean, you've got so many different roles. But I think let's leap straight in, if you wouldn't mind at the moment, because I want to talk about something terribly important.

[00:04:41] I see it that you actually are a national lead on. And we're getting into the, is it Soteria Bluestone, Operation Soteria Bluestone. Yeah. Could you just say a little bit about that and what your role is? Yeah. So at the moment, I am the National Police Chiefs Council lead for adult sexual offences, which takes in adult rape.

[00:05:06] Bluestone came about because, frankly, policing the criminal justice system wasn't doing very well at responding to rape allegations. You know, that was seen. And there was lots of debate at the time, which the government actually responded to with a review, a cross-government review on the way rape was investigated in 2019.

[00:05:31] That was spurred by a real dip in conviction rates and cases going into the criminal justice system in the first place. So I came into that portfolio at a time when, you know, there was an awful lot of scrutiny and debate, rightly.

[00:05:48] And very rapidly, things like the murder of Sarah Everard and by a serving police officer, then kind of made that even more of a topic of discussion about how the police deal with violence against women and girls. Do you feel that, I mean, the work that you've been doing in terms of on the law enforcement side, on the development of policy, development of reaction and so forth, have you felt shackled a bit by the actual court system being so slow?

[00:06:18] Yeah. I mean, that's a real challenge now. I mean, initially, the focus was because it was a whole system review and there was a whole system action plan that came out of that in 2021. But, you know, frankly, policing did need to improve and policing and CPS together needed to, the Crown Prosecution Service needed to improve. So we focus really hard on improving and we approach that together and have done so.

[00:06:47] And I think what that means now is there's actually quite a significant risk because there are significantly more cases that are being charged that are heading on their way to a Crown Court at a time when backlogs combined with COVID backlogs, combined with all the challenges we know about, imprisonment even affected, means that the criminal justice system at the court end is really, really constricted.

[00:07:14] So it's a slight problem in the sense that you're almost being a victim of your own improvement. Yeah. Which, of course, is a great shame for all those people who have to wait. I mean, I know it's not a police problem, I'm just saying, but it's a great shame for them having to wait years sometime to have their case heard. I suppose quite a few people drop out, do they? Yeah, some do. And probably more increasingly so now because of the wait.

[00:07:45] I mean, it's incredibly hard. I mean, some people are very young and then they're adults. Their lives have changed completely. You know, they weren't parents and now they are. You know, they weren't married, now they are by the time that the case has reached court. And so, yeah, that is a great concern, you know.

[00:08:07] But across the system, lots and lots of energy and effort is being focused on trying to look at ways of freeing the system up. I mean, unfortunately, with rapists, that does need a criminal justice response. There are other types of offending where deferred prosecutions, out of court disposals, other kind of diversionary things outside of the core crime court might work. But with rape, it doesn't. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

[00:08:37] I mean, but you do feel that there's a momentum at the moment. Oh, hugely so. I mean, the Bluestone started in Avon and Somerset. We invited the leading academics in their field in. They had a good idea what they thought their lines of inquiry should be. We opened up our books, our offices, and they went quite hard on the things we weren't doing so well against their standards. But such was the power of what they came up with.

[00:09:06] We were able to use that momentum in government to want to do better to seek some funding. And that's what's led to a rollout in where Bluestone is turned into Operation Soteria. And it's now being implemented across the 43 forces. So, you know, that in itself is a momentum. I mean, short of the way policing responded after the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry, I've not seen, you know, so much change replicated at scale and pace in the same kind of way.

[00:09:36] And it does feel, and it's been, you know, that it's not just me. The inspectorate have recently done an inspection of some of the forces, not Avon and Somerset, that have been part of the journey and have said, you know, this could be a game changer as a, not just for rape, but the violence against women and girls agenda, but more of a mechanism or a methodology for bringing about change in a large institution that's distributed like ours is.

[00:10:01] The kind of thing else, though, the police as an institution, if you like, do rely on, well, let's be crude about it, marketing and public awareness of what you're doing. So, you know, I believe you, obviously, when you're saying that there is a momentum to the work that you've been involved with. Do you feel that the public understand that?

[00:10:24] Well, I've worked, not fully, because the people, I think the public now get their messages from so many different places. And it's difficult to know. And we try really hard. I mean, what, you know, it comes back to transparency. Even before we started the Bluestone journey, becoming the national leader, I invited journalists and then, a documentary makers, actually, to come in and do a fly on the wall. And they did. They spent a good two years with us.

[00:10:54] So there was, there's a documentary out there called Rape Who's On Trial, which exposed some of the challenges we had before we've responded in the way we have. So I think there are ways of getting a public debate. I mean, something else we've done, again, probably not the mixed views, I would say, Rick met with them. We did a documentary last year called To Catch a Copper, which looked at the misconduct system within the police.

[00:11:22] And it, through the lenses of, you know, how the police deal with mental health, how the police deal with race, how the police deal with sexual misconduct. Again, quite hard-hitting. Documentary makers were there for a very long time. But, you know, that documentary has been seen by millions of people. It started a debate. Police complaints are up this year.

[00:11:48] And part of that is attributed to growth in confidence in the system. It will, things will be looked at, partly to that documentary series. So I am at pains to use every mechanism we've got possible, not to promote, because I think it, I don't want to do PR, but to kind of let people in and see and make up their own minds. Contemporary. I mean, I think today in the Met, of course, you'll have seen where there was a legal ruling against getting rid of an officer or in the particular process of doing it,

[00:12:18] which is going to probably won't be set back for too long, but it's another setback in terms of public confidence. I just think market, I mean, like when I was involved in social work nationally, you know, public confidence was huge and constant. Can I switch it slightly to something that's been my thing all my working life, which is safeguarding? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:44] We used to be sort of the four things, you know, neglect, physical, sexual, emotional, you know, the different ways of kind of divvying up what was being done to vulnerable people and children. But now contemporary safeguarding involves human trafficking, slavery, the Internet, domestic violence, forced marriage, all these huge subjects. Yeah.

[00:13:12] Kind of being superimposed in on law enforcement and on statutory services elsewhere. How do you feel that that's being coped with? Because obviously I know that there are resource issues in terms of personnel and presumably therefore in terms of training. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a real challenge. I think the way you characterise it is right. I mean, if I come back to my strategic threats, if you like,

[00:13:39] that my very bright analysts tell me about in Avon and Somerset, they will boil down to serious youth violence that involves children. They will boil down to child sexual exploitation that involves children. They will boil down to male violence against women and girls where children will be witnessing and be part of domestic abuse scenarios, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there is, you know, we just look at the Southport case, which is obviously horrible.

[00:14:07] But you look there and again, there's a young person that has been somehow exposed to some very harmful, harmful things are on the Internet. So you're right. Everything leads back to children. And from a policing really wanting to do prevention properly, primary, secondary, tertiary, the focus needs to be on children.

[00:14:32] So therefore it takes me into, you know, how do I lean into my safe, the safeguarding arrangements? And there are some challenges there. You know, I, there are, you know, it's important that it's local, but even in Somerset as a police area spans five local authorities with five separate forms of arrangement that are all slightly different. And my staff who are working across them have to kind of adapt into each one.

[00:15:02] That, that cuts across three integrated care boards as well. So I, I don't think the structures help us. And, and I also think sometimes as you say the funding, wouldn't it be great if there were pooled budgets that we could, and information sharing was such that we could identify our priority areas across Avon and Somerset and the priority children who often were trafficking or traffic from one area to another.

[00:15:31] And we could determine where we placed our collective resources, whether that was funding that's available to the police and crime commissioner for violence reduction or youth services in the local authority or health interventions in the, so sometimes I do think that pooled budgets and where the money goes might help us focus together and work together better on those issues and children.

[00:16:00] I couldn't agree with you more. It's just an issue. I mean, I know there's not a bottomless pot of money anywhere. Yeah. Also, I saw that you were particularly keen to promote was the issue of diversity. Yeah. Now, one of the partnership boards that I chaired for several years was Bradford. That had 129 languages spoken. You know, discussion.

[00:16:27] And I know Bristol's got 90-odd languages and so on and so forth. I mean, that brings all sorts of other elements. I mean, I just wondered if you feel that you're actually getting kind of like solid gains in places or whether you feel like you're one of these people, or not you personally, but the force is rushing around with plates on the end of sticks, just keeping them all spinning. Yeah. It does feel sometimes that somebody described it as whack-a-mole.

[00:16:57] You know, one problem comes up, you solve it, and another one emerges. And it does feel that. And I do think a lot of what we do now is hidden from the public. I think the public have a right and an expectation that we're highly visible in their neighbourhoods, and that's where we want to be, but quite often our time and attention is spent doing some of the things that you've just talked about, which are really important in the public wants us to do. I can think of internet-based child abuse, which is a huge problem getting bigger and bigger and bigger

[00:17:26] that needs quite a sophisticated response to it, which I think the public wants us to be doing in knocking on doors of people who may be looking at those images, but it's not very visible to them. So I do think there is a debate and it to be had about the resources we have, the challenges we have, where do we focus and where do we prioritise? I think that's absolutely the case that we do feel we're spinning.

[00:17:54] But within that, you have to prioritise some things. On the diversity question, though, I think if I prioritise children, I look at where the greatest risk is even among those children, I'm looking at children who are probably different in some way, whether that could be poverty or it could be race or family, but there is some special educational needs.

[00:18:24] However bad things are for children, those children it will be worse for. And sometimes I think that the first time people from those groups kind of touch the criminal justice system, which can have such a detrimental effect. We don't want people going there, certainly not children, but the first time is through a safeguarding lens. So there's a real opportunity. It's not when they're arrested or stop and searched. It's when it's in a safeguarding meeting.

[00:18:51] It's the preventative side of it, obviously, as well. I mean, other agencies are just as strapped sometimes as yourself. And I rather suspect it's very difficult. One of the things that haunted me all through my professional life was tying down how do you measure change. Yeah. And I suspect it might be the same for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. I was going to ask you, though, I mean,

[00:19:20] just a sort of a straightforward question. I mean, I know we lock up more people than any other country in Europe. And I just, you know, I've never heard an answer why. And I'm not asking you for magic. I just, you know, why are we so inclined that way? You know, I mean, you could say, well, you're just doing your job better than any other force in Europe. But on the other hand, you know,

[00:19:47] I think it's also inherent within the kind of the social structures. Yeah. I mean, I don't know why it is. There could be politics and all kinds of things involved or, but, you know, that's not my view. You know, my view of, you know, one, you know, I think we need to prevent and deter people entering the criminal justice process. Now, I think policing has got a role there. I don't think it's the whole role. I think it's a societal and a partnership role with, you know, and safeguarding support there.

[00:20:16] I do think when it comes to people who are actively involved in criminality, then, you know, there is a criminal justice system that kind of sets the rules. Policing in that is really important because it has a level of discretion. You know, that's the privilege of a constable, of when to use judgment to apply the discretion of where the rules say. But sometimes, you know, our role is to catch and disrupt.

[00:20:44] But I'm also a big fan of, again, with a different set of partners often, is our job is also to play a part in resettling and rehabilitating afterwards. And I think there's a continuum there that policing either plays a primary or a secondary role. And I'm keen that we do that. And I agree that, you know, my experience of prison, you know, of people that have been through prison, there are some people that I can think of in my career, in my mind's eye now, who, and they're tiny numbers, you know, they're not even,

[00:21:14] I couldn't count them on one hand, who I'd say, gosh, they need to be locked up and locked up because the public will not be safe. And, you know, I'm genuinely, you know, fearful of what might happen. But the other many thousands of people, many thousands I've come into contact with, you know, I think there is, one, there was an opportunity to prevent it. Two, there was an opportunity, and often we succeed in diverting people away or rehabilitating them after.

[00:21:44] And I think the debate on tough on crime and et cetera, needs to take into account the causes of crime and how you address those causes to prevent it happening, but how you also work on those causes to help people out of what is a very desperate, very desperate place, the criminal justice system. What's your take on visibility?

[00:22:11] You know, the old discussion or argument, you know, so I know you've got tens of thousands of police officers at headquarters just sat there doing nothing. But you know what I mean? People say, well, how do we see more police on the streets or whatever? And then on the other hand, people are saying, well, look, you've got all this internet stuff going on, you've got all the grooming going on, they need to be in front of computers to deal with that. And so on. It's a devil you win, devil you don't.

[00:22:41] I think that's true. You know what I mean? If I had three times the number of police officers, I've got nowhere like tens of thousands. I've got about 3,300 police officers establishment. But if I had three times as many, I couldn't deal with all the demand that are there. So there are already choices that are being made and priorities that are being set. And they have to be balanced against all those things. Threats or risks to the public. I do think I go back to transparency. I think we need to have a conversation with the public about it. I do.

[00:23:11] I'm a huge advocate for neighbourhood policing. And I'm a huge advocate, actually, for really targeted, and there's strong evidence base for it, for really targeted, high visibility patrols in particular areas where there's high instance of crime, they call it. But it's very focused. It's 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there in those particular areas at the right time. So you can be quite scientific.

[00:23:36] But even that, sometimes it's a challenge to achieve when the 999s are coming in and we're dealing with that internet-based child abuse. And we're in the safeguarding meetings at the same time. Something a little bit more direct would be county lines and knife crime. And I've got a friend who's working with the Yorkshire Police Forces at the moment,

[00:24:00] and the PCC's up there going around literally hundreds of schools with her graphic novels that she's written for pupils. And they are proving very, very effective. And she's just effectively one creative businesswoman of the year. All the work she's doing with the police center. If you know it already, that's fine. No, no, I'd be interested. I'll get the stuff sent to you. She would be somebody very good to talk with. Christina Gabitas.

[00:24:30] That rings a bell. Yeah, nice and ring. I think she's had somebody from Evening Somerset on because she also does things like poetry competitions for schoolchildren to write about knife crime and county lines. And that helps get it out as a conversation. It's a good thing. I'll send you this stuff. Be useful. But look, if I was, say, a young man or a young woman sat on my sofa listening to this and thinking,

[00:24:58] well, it's going to be journalism or it's going to be the police like you were talking about when you were younger. I mean, why the police? I think this is going to sound really strange, but I do say this to new recruits. I do think if you want to bring change in the world, policing is a good place to do it.

[00:25:17] And I can look to some of the things that, and I say this with the knowledge that a new approach to rape based on what academics have helped us done has been rolled out across 43 police forces. And it's making a tangible difference to victims and to perpetrators, actually. So I think you can make change in the world through policing if you want to.

[00:25:48] And even in the, you know, the ambit of the individual constable, as I said, you get to use discretion. You get to, yes, you work within the law, you work within guidelines, but you also get to be there in the moment and to get to make choices that you only have to be accountable for. But those, all of those choices of those individual constables add up to setting the rules of society, I think, and how we live our lives.

[00:26:16] So I think policing plays a hugely important role in creating the conditions, probably with other partners as well, by which people, you know, that aren't in policing and in policing, literally, can go about their lives in safety and seek whatever they want to do to thrive. And it makes, it doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. It doesn't happen everywhere in the world, but it does happen here, however challenging it is.

[00:26:42] So, yeah, so I say you can have big change or you can make small change, but it's important change. And I would say, you know, people can stand on the sidelines like the critic in the arena, you know, or you can go in the arena and you can try to make a difference. And that's what lots of people do. Well, tell me this then. I mean, when I was involved with social work at a national level, one of the things I was always saying is, look, for goodness sake, don't worry about stealing from the neighbours.

[00:27:12] So, I mean, in effect, talk about our international neighbours. Yeah. Do you feel that you get enough opportunity to examine initiatives worldwide that might well be translatable to Avon and Somerset? Yeah. So, the way that I've seen that happen is through the partnership with the academics in the way we have done on Operation Bluestone, because it's been, they've brought the international evidence base together.

[00:27:43] But we've had to have, I guess, the courage and the humility to invite them in and to let them do their thing and be completely open to it. But then what we've done is we've worked together in a really kind of iterative way. So, my previous experience sometimes of working with academics is, you know, they go away with their research and they, two or three years later, when they've been through all their committees and ethical this and this and that.

[00:28:11] You know, they write a paper and that's the end of it. By then we've moved on. This has been real time iterative. You know, when it started, it was happening at about the time of the COVID vaccine. And I thought there was an important, you know, parallel there that for the first time ever in real time when there was a big threat, you know, academics, medical people, government people all work together around a single mission.

[00:28:39] And it felt like the challenge for rape and confidence that came from it was very similar. And so we're just embarking, actually, on the same journey with the same approach on domestic abuse now, which obviously crosses. So very much more with safeguarding, actually, because of children. So they've allowed me to access, I think, that international evidence base in a really...

[00:29:04] I think that would be really welcome if you could bring that kind of attention to it. I mean, and if I could just say, too, look, please, please, if you ever get a chance or ask somebody to have a look at... You're about the 170th program, as I said, that I've done over 11 years. Lots of them have been international to do with people working and trafficking. Something to do, follow the money is another major kind of thing.

[00:29:29] I've talked with financial kind of criminal analysts as well and people leading up organizations, whether it's organizations in the Pacific Rim or in America, Canada. So all I'm saying is there's lots of stuff out there that, you know, just might provoke something. You never know. I know there's a very good Bristol-based kind of anti-slavery organization.

[00:29:56] Yeah, I've done stuff with Andrew as well there. But, you know, it's always there to be done. And the information is now there and available. And I don't monetize it, so it's all there. Please have a link. I know you've got a bit of a limited time now. Give us a message there for the public in Avon and Somerset. I mean, I'm a Somerset resident.

[00:30:21] So what messages would you like to give out in terms of actual the way you see the force moving at the moment? Yeah, I mean, I think we're on a journey. We've got a vision to have outstanding policing for everyone. That sounds very, very bold. But we've got some really pragmatic outcomes that we're seeking. So, and a strategy to get us there. And we've talked a lot about transparency.

[00:30:50] That's part of it. From the academics, we've really focused on being perpetrator-focused. In that continuum that I've explained, but inclusive too, we touched upon the approach of our own diversity and disproportionality in our systems and how different parts of society are disadvantaged. Innovation is a really big thing for Avon and Somerset. That's there too. And lastly, we're on a journey to becoming a really trauma-informed organisation.

[00:31:18] And that might sound like some kind of buzzwords, but it's not. It's understanding the impact, the trauma that police officers and staff bring into policing, because many have got life experiences there. The ones they gain while they're in policing, but also that every single person we come in to interact with, surely in policing, carry trauma. And so doing that in an informed way, again, is a major part of our strategy.

[00:31:44] So, yeah, I guess the bottom line is we're open. We're not afraid to confront uncomfortable truths. And, you know, we do understand that we need to earn your confidence and we're working hard to do so. Well, I think we've just about come to the end of the time now. Sarah, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you very much indeed. And perhaps we'll follow this up again in a future podcast. But good luck to you and thanks again.