Rod pulls out the key messages from the Home Office’s Ministerial statement of 26 Mar 2012:

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I saw my first GEOAmey vehicle one afternoon last week, a freshly unwrapped white van that was probably returning some prisoners after their day at Brighton’s courts.

The Ministry of Justice awarded new contracts for prisoner escorting in England and Wales in March 2011, and as of late August GEOAmey are the newest entrant and largest player in that market – they’ll be managing approximately 2,600 daily prisoner movements.

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Detail emerges on the National Crime Agency from the Home Office announcements, the NCA plan and commentary elsewhere.

The problem statement is summarised in paras 1.2, 1.3 and 2 of the NCA plan: “the national response to serious and organised crime remains patchy [...] absence of a cross-government organised crime strategy, the lack of strong national tasking and coordination, [...] tendency to operate in silos”, and the NCA aims to address that.

What will the NCA do?

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The budget cuts are starting to hurt, but the pain is now internal: this week we saw sharp words between the Police Federation, who are a union-like association for 140,000 rank and file police officers, and ACPO, who perform the same role for chief constables and other senior officers. The Police Federation are annoyed with Sir Hugh Orde’s non-attendance at their conference, believing it to be a symptom of a wider failure of ACPO to prevent/resist the cuts. They’ve written a critical open letter to ACPO, who are no doubt annoyed that the Pol Fed and so have offered a equally public rebuttal.

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