No wonder crime is out of control

The average time taken by police to process a single arrest is now an astonishing 10 hours and six minutes, it was revealed.

Officers are spending more than their standard eight hour shift filling out dozens of forms and waiting for lawyers to arrive.

This is despite repeated pledges from ministers to cut red tape and cut back on the number of forms required for completion.

Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said that officers found the delays 'hugely frustrating'.

Previous studies have suggested that as many as 33 forms need to be completed to process a single mugging suspect.

Senior officers say that this approach ties up policemen and women and takes them off the streets for a day at a time.

This is absolute stupidity. Much needed police officers are being taken off the streets for sometimes the whole day leaving crimes to be committed. I do agree that some forms must be filled in by the police officer who makes the arrests but I don’t think other forms need to be. If the forms can’t be scrapped then why not hire administrators to fill them out? Some of the forms that I think are needed that could be done by administrators are:

· Copying information from officer’s notebook to put on a formal record

· Strengths and weaknesses of a case

· The form listing witnesses and their addresses

· Bail forms

· Forms detailing previous convictions

· Compensation forms

· Documents for stolen or damaged property

· Expert evidence

· Summary form

I seriously don’t see why administrators can’t do all of that. Yes it will be very expensive (it would take 1 administrator per crime per day seeing as how it takes 10 hours) with more police actually doing police work and actually catching criminals.

The new administrators would come from the Quangos and other bloated civil service departments that would actually be downsized.