The Democratic Promise That Became a Political Mirage
In 2012, the Coalition government introduced Police and Crime Commissioners with a bold promise: to revolutionise police accountability by placing elected officials between chief constables and the communities they serve. David Cameron declared it would end the "democratic deficit" in policing, giving voters direct control over local crime priorities and police performance.
A decade later, that promise has curdled into something far more troubling. PCCs operate with budgets averaging £200-300 million annually, wielding enormous influence over policing strategies, yet face scrutiny so minimal it would make a parish councillor blush. The office has become what critics warned it would: a political stepping stone for party loyalists, insulated from meaningful accountability and deaf to the communities most harmed by policing failures.
The Accountability Mirage
The fundamental flaw in the PCC model was always its conception of accountability. True democratic oversight requires transparency, regular scrutiny, and mechanisms for removal when officials fail. PCCs enjoy none of these safeguards in any meaningful form.
Consider the numbers: PCC elections routinely see turnouts below 20%, with some areas recording participation as low as 12%. The 2021 elections, held during a global pandemic, saw an average turnout of just 34.1% — hardly a ringing endorsement of democratic legitimacy. Yet these barely-mandated officials control budgets that dwarf those of most local authorities, with virtually no interim accountability between four-yearly elections.
Police and Crime Panels, supposedly the scrutiny mechanism, are toothless by design. They can reject a PCC's budget or precept only with a two-thirds majority — a threshold so high it has been used just twice since 2012. They cannot initiate investigations into PCC conduct, cannot compel attendance at hearings, and cannot remove a PCC from office regardless of performance or misconduct.
The Human Cost of Institutional Failure
This accountability vacuum has real consequences for communities that rely on effective policing oversight. In areas with high levels of police complaints — disproportionately affecting Black and minority ethnic communities — PCCs should serve as champions for reform and justice. Instead, many have become cheerleaders for the status quo.
Take stop and search, a practice that continues to disproportionately target Black men at rates up to nine times higher than white men in some areas. Despite mounting evidence of its ineffectiveness and discriminatory impact, most PCCs have failed to challenge chief constables on these practices. The Metropolitan Police's own data shows that just 17% of stop and searches in 2022 resulted in any police action, yet Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley faced minimal challenge from London's Deputy Mayor for Policing — the capital's equivalent of a PCC.
Photo: Metropolitan Police, via image.shutterstock.com
Similarly, during the Sarah Everard vigil controversy, where Metropolitan Police officers manhandled mourners during a pandemic, the institutional response was defensive rather than reformative. The lack of meaningful PCC oversight meant public anger had nowhere institutional to go, further eroding trust between communities and police.
The Political Sinecure Problem
Defenders of the PCC system argue it provides democratic legitimacy that police authorities lacked. This misses the point entirely. Democratic legitimacy requires more than an election every four years — it demands ongoing accountability, transparency, and responsiveness to community needs.
Instead, PCC roles have become comfortable positions for party loyalists and retired politicians. The average PCC salary of £74,400, plus expenses and pension contributions, creates an attractive sinecure with minimal scrutiny. Many PCCs spend more time on media appearances and political positioning than on challenging police practices or addressing community concerns.
The recall mechanism — supposedly allowing voters to remove failing PCCs — is so restrictive it has never been successfully used. A PCC must be convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to more than two years in prison before recall can be triggered. This sets the bar for accountability somewhere below that expected of a local councillor.
What Real Accountability Would Look Like
Genuine police accountability requires structural reform that puts community voices at its centre. This means moving beyond the failed PCC model towards systems that prioritise transparency, regular scrutiny, and meaningful community involvement.
Successful models exist elsewhere. Community oversight boards in cities like San Francisco and Oakland have real powers to investigate police misconduct, subpoena evidence, and recommend disciplinary action. They include community representatives, particularly from groups most affected by policing, rather than just elected politicians.
Photo: San Francisco, via images.squarespace-cdn.com
In the UK, this could mean replacing PCCs with community safety boards that include representatives from affected communities, trade unions, civil rights organisations, and local government. These boards would have powers to investigate complaints, review police data in real-time, and initiate independent inquiries into police practices.
Transparency requirements should be strengthened dramatically. Police data on stops, searches, arrests, and complaints should be published monthly, broken down by demographic and geographic factors. PCCs currently control what information is released and when — a clear conflict of interest when they are supposedly holding police to account.
Beyond Electoral Theatre
The current system treats police accountability as an electoral theatre performed every four years before audiences that largely don't attend. Real accountability happens daily, through transparent data, community involvement, and institutional mechanisms that can respond quickly to problems.
This matters because policing is not politically neutral. Decisions about where to deploy resources, which communities to prioritise, and how to respond to different types of crime all have profound political implications. When these decisions are made without meaningful oversight, they inevitably serve existing power structures rather than community needs.
The communities most harmed by policing failures — those subjected to discriminatory enforcement, those failed by inadequate responses to domestic violence, those criminalised for poverty-related offences — deserve better than the accountability mirage of PCC elections.
The Path Forward
Reforming police accountability means acknowledging that the PCC experiment has failed on its own terms. Democratic legitimacy cannot be achieved through low-turnout elections every four years when the office itself is designed to avoid scrutiny.
Real reform would create ongoing accountability mechanisms that centre community voices, particularly those most affected by policing decisions. It would establish transparency requirements that make police data accessible and comprehensible to the public. And it would create removal mechanisms that respond to community concerns rather than criminal convictions.
The silence of the sheriffs has lasted too long — it's time for accountability that actually works.
Police and Crime Commissioners were supposed to democratise policing, but instead they've created an accountability-free zone that serves political careers rather than community safety.
