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Sunday Telegraph - Let the people police the police, by Elizabeth Truss

This month Reform released The Lawful Society, a report that called for the public to take a more active role in criminal justice. The postbag in response was crammed with letters from frustrated people who wanted to get involved or had reported incidents to the police, only to find themselves ignored or, even worse, accused. People simply do not believe that the police are on their side.

What should be done? First, we need to wrest power from the hands of politicians and senior officials and place it back in the hands of the law-abiding public. The police could, for example, get out of their patrol cars and make it easier for people to talk to them about what is going on in the locality. We could have police boxes as they do in Japan, where people can drop in and report incidents to a local warden, rather than ringing a remote call centre.

The police should be made directly accountable through the abolition of national targets and controls and the election instead of local justice commissioners, responsible for policing, prosecution, legal aid and correctional services within a local authority area. These commissioners would be directly elected every four years, with operationally independent forces accountable to them.

It would be their decision how crime would be deterred, detected and dealt with, subject to the scrutiny of local people.

Further, the public should have access to detailed information about what crimes have been committed in their area, what action was taken by the police, whether anyone was caught and prosecuted, and what the sentence was.

What a concept.

(I saw a police box! While walking around Edinburgh with Red! He took a picture of us in front of it! Not that it was functioning or anything, but there it was! Blue, just like Dr Who’s!)