Plain English policing

This is fun. Interesting to see it being picked up elsewhere, too - churnalism at work, I guess.

But you have to feel a bit sorry for Cambridgeshire police. For one thing the headline (or subhead, if you read elsewhere) was written in 'plain English' - people just didn't like what it said! Perhaps if it had been written in police professional jargon they wouldn't have found it so annoying - "Local teams continue to prioritise intelligence-led policing techniques in order to target known offenders. We aim to reduce recidivism within this key demographic".

More broadly, it might come as a bit of a shock to Telegraph readers but policing isn't just about 'targeting offenders'. The largest part is of course responding to calls for service (emergencies and other events), but there's also public order policing, street patrol etc. etc. Resources allocated to these other activities are resources that can't be used in targeting offenders (and vice versa) so, from an internal point of view, the leaflet is simply telling people about how money and time is being spent.

That the article appears to have gone down badly (among reporters, at least) points to one of the dangers inherent in police using newsletters and freesheets to communicate with the public. This can be a useful and desirable thing to do - people have a right to know what their local police are doing and why - but getting even a small element wrong seems to hold the potential to annoy the intended audience and be very counter-productive.

Shameless self-promotion: see here (and here) for more on this issue.