It must be 15 years since you published my opinions concerning what I considered then to be the most obvious failings of our policing policies.

I claimed then that we were moving from crime prevention to crime response. Police officers were getting less visible on the streets whilst their appearances at crime scenes after the event were rising exponentially.

With the shocking wastefulness of austerity, we never see a police officer unless there’s been an accident or some other offence.

Meanwhile, crime against the person is rising exponentially. You can’t prevent crime by sitting in a car or at an office desk and computer waiting for the phone to ring.

You need to be outside ready and waiting.

Instead of spending money on rehabilitation, youth support and social involvement to give the young a purpose and cut down reoffending, we are locking up people in jails where they can learn ‘new tricks’ and reinforce their antagonisation with society.

‘Bobbies on the beat’ provided a distinct deterrent to vandalism, violence and robbery but most importantly, it kept friendly police officers in touch with things ‘on the ground’ by providing someone people could talk to and communicate with.

Information Techology can be a real aid to solving crime but with the limited numbers of police officers caused principally by huge cuts in their budget, all that’s happened is that there are even more crimes to be solved. It’s a vicious circle. It’s cheaper by far to prevent crime than to try and solve it after the event.

CCTV isn’t the panacea we expected. We’re heading towards a dystopia. We’ll soon all be numbers in robots’ watch lists.

Mike Joslin

Dorchester