The Best Deterrent
F- one-tenth of the energy expended during the past ten years on campaigns for more and better hanging and flogging had been concen- trated on the obvious problem of a dwindling police force, our crime statistics might look more healthy, for the policeman on the beat is still the best deterrent. When we read of a town in the Home Counties with a population of 110,000 and only three constables, all of them proba- tioners, available for beat duty, this shortage establishes itself as Mr. Butler's biggest challenge; and the report of the Royal Commission on police pay is welcome for drawing attention to the need. Its recommendations are generous : in fact some of its methods will make orthodox industrial arbitrators gasp, for there is an element of 'double the number you first thought of.' A thousand a year, once the coveted goal of the middle classes, has been held before the eyes of the aspiring constable, and it would surely have a dramatic effect on recruiting.
But there is a snag. Already we are getting what industrial relations jargon now calls 'the consequentials.' The prison 'officers and the fire- men, who have been on roughly the same pay scale as the police, have pointed to the disastrous effects such increases will have on their own re- cruiting, unless they get something similar. Post- men and various grades of civil servant and local government officer are quietly noting the implica- tions of the report for themselves.
The Government obviously cannot allow pay increases for the police to be the prelude to in- creases throughout the whole public service. Still, this immediate snowballing of demand is a useful reminder of how badly thought out is our attitude to pay. On the one hand there is an unresolved conflict between the principle of 'comparability,' fathered by the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, and blessed by the Guillebaud Com- mittee on railway wages and now by the Police Royal Commission; and, on the other, the fact of life called 'the forces of the market.' It would be interesting to hear what research is being done on the financial worth of various occupa- tions—and whether it is getting anywhere.
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