We must radically overhaul police recruitment to prevent the next Wayne Couzens from slipping through the net

Meticulous, thorough and measured as Elish Angiolini’s report into the murderer Wayne Couzens undoubtedly is, it begs yet more questions about the quite astonishing series of blunders made by a series of police forces – mistakes and negligence that led to the rape and murder of Sarah Everard.

For all the investigations, inquiries and intense public debates about the conduct and morals of the police in recent decades, it seems that something as basic as ensuring that a known sex offender is not given a police uniform, warrant card and a gun eluded three separate police forces.

Her report represents a tragic and distressing account of successive missed opportunities, “red lights” that should have taken Couzens out of circulation. Those mistakes – and other high-profile, shameful scandals – have left public confidence in the police shredded. It is intolerable and unspeakably dangerous for women in London – and elsewhere – to feel too nervous to approach a male police officer. Lady Elish’s initial report (two more will follow) goes some way to documenting what went wrong and how to fix things.

As Lady Elish observes, without a thorough overhaul of police recruitment and vetting, there is nothing to prevent another Wayne Couzens from infiltrating another constabulary. Reform is urgently needed.

One urgent question immediately presents itself: how many more miscreants, perhaps operating at a lower (but still serious) level of criminality are still at large in the UK’s police forces? How many more actual or potential sexual predators are presently tolerated by their colleagues, all too ready to give them the benefit of the doubt over their language – “banter” – and suspicious behaviour?

The “fix” lies in technology and cultural change. It is, for example, many decades since our police forces transitioned from paper and fax machines to interactive databases and rapid digital communications.

Couzens had committed a serious sexual assault on a child before he joined the police in 2002, as well as acts of indecent exposure when he was on the force – these heinous crimes were not picked up or acted upon, either through administrative failings or incompetence.

That he ever became an officer is almost inexplicable – that he remained one for so long is an even graver concern. Given what we know, it is possible that Couzens may have committed other offences, entirely undetected.

The problem is also cultural. Indecent exposure and other “non-contact” acts of sexual depravity perpetrated, generally, by men against women have never been taken sufficiently seriously by the police. In the same way, domestic violence, including rape in marriage, against women and girls was also actively avoided by police officers. Such attitudes created a vicious circle.

Female victims knew that the police would not take their complaints seriously, which only served to embolden the men involved and escalate and normalise such behaviour. There are still so many practical obstacles to women escaping violence and intimidation that if a woman cannot even find safety via police intervention, then the system is plainly not serving half the population.

Couzens is merely one of the most extreme and notorious examples of what happens when that culture reaches its logical conclusion. Lady Elish is entirely right to conclude that Couzens’ crimes “sit on the same continuum” as sexist and misogynistic behaviour within wider police culture.

Lady Elish has made a series of extremely wise recommendations which the Home Office may be expected to implement. All are important – and all will help reform procedures and attitudes.

Perhaps the most fundamental is the proposed changes to recruitment – the granting of some citizens the power of arrest, so misused by Couzens. New hiring processes should include in-person interviews, home visits for everyone applying to be a police officer, plus thorough background checks and a robust assessment of their psychological suitability.

It would be wise to have more women involved in decision-making – women are often the best safeguards in an overwhelmingly male organisation, and more women at the top of policing would only prove beneficial.

It should go without saying, but Lady Elish is sadly obliged to add that anyone with a sexual offence conviction or caution should be automatically rejected. Such checks are even more crucial now that the pace of police recruitment has stepped up as the drop-out rate of recent recruits remains relatively high.

The police, in short, need to get recruitment right first time, and not take risks simply to hit manning targets. Random extensive vetting checks on existing serving officers of any vintage would also help reassure the public.

Bitter experience, not least the Stephen Lawrence affair, tells us that reforming the police is unusually challenging – and the culture of the force unusually impervious to change. It is a task without end, but that is no reason to postpone it and dump it in the “too difficult” file.

“Policing by consent” remains the guiding principle of the British approach – and consent requires public confidence. They know what needs to be done. The police need to get on with the job.