ABSTRACT
Being a policeman in the 21st Century is like being the man who was standing on the bank of a very fast flowing river. In that river he could see hundreds of people being swept along struggling to stop from drowning. As each moment passes their numbers swell until there are thousands of people all gasping and shouting to the man on the bank to help them. What do we do as police officers? Go in and help as many as we can? Or do we take a walk upstream and find out who is throwing them all in? I have a feeling that most of the time police have been wading in to the rescue! And so begins a reactive cycle of uncontrolled demand and equally uncoordinated response. The police become like lifeguards frantically swimming against the tide from one incident to another, employing different tactics in a disjointed and unfocussed manner with little or nothing to show for it at the end of the day. (Stevens 2001: 2)
Sir John Stevens, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, strikes a great analogy in the statement above, one that can be quantified through the crime funnel, as I do at the beginning of this chapter. The crime funnel can be used to estimate the implications of changes to one part of the crime funnel and how these changes will likely affect the rest of the criminal justice system.
