Press Release

CSOs need strict evaluation

7 October 2007

Community Support Officers (CSOs) have been subject to intense media attention following the drowning of 10-year-old Jordan Lyon in Wigan.

This focus has highlighted the ignorance and confusion which surround these personnel in people’s minds.

But it is not just the public who are in the dark about the value and effectiveness of CSOs. Much of the criminal justice system is, too.
The Metropolitan Police Federation believes it is time for a full, independent evaluation of the work of CSOs, their impact on public safety and, at a time when the Police Service is grappling with tight budgetary restrictions, their cost-effectiveness.

CSOs were introduced in London following the attack on New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001 and their remit was simple, sensible and strictly limited.

They were to carry out security patrols in the boroughs of Westminster and Tower Hamlets to help guard against acts of terrorism in the capital.

But in the few short years since then, they and their job have changed out of all recognition.

Some research into CSOs was carried out in 2005 (Home Office Research Study 297) but it raised questions as well as answered them.

It suggested, for example, that while CSOs freed up the time of some police officers, their need for supervision added to the burden of others.

It found that while many residents appreciated the re-assurance provided by patrolling CSOs, they would rather have had that re-assurance provided by fully-sworn police officers.

It also found that CSOs had no discernable impact on crime levels.

The researchers said that CSOs were at their most valuable when patrolling a small area on a permanent basis.

Yet in London, CSOs have been appointed to staff police station counters, while elsewhere in the country, according to media reports, some of them are to be used experimentally in crime investigation.

Communities will surely expect that police funding – which comes from their taxes and is limited – is used to optimum effect.

An independent evaluation will provide some definitive answers in this respect.