The bigger surprise is that they have enough manpower to fill the freedom of information request to begin with. That's probably the reason the other two departments refused to answer.
I can only fathom "viewing illegal streams" leading to arrest in the case of CSAM. Regardless of any staffing or resources, it's a complete travesty to arrest anyone for using their internet connection to view lawfully produced content.
The power to restrain the physical liberty is a substantial corollary of the state's monopoly on violence, which should be employed when those arrested are a menace to other peaceful citizens.
I could see law enforcement getting involved in copyright crimes committed by commercial pirates, issuing fines to consumers or identifying them to the rights holders who can then seek redress in a court of law.
Some teenager watching the latest game of thrones (or whatever's hip nowadays) because their parent doesn't subscribe to Sky, or because they were out when it was on, isn't really the same thing.
On the other hand, I feel that creating and/or distributing CSAM should result in instant death for the creator.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Solon
EDIT: Creating and/or distributing.
Bluetooth keystroke-injection in Android, Linux macOS and iOS:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38661182
These laws which criminalize viewing or reading things need to go now.
It is not acceptable to prosecute someone for the act of viewing a web site, regardless of it's content. Doing so is absolute totalitarianism.
In a free society, people should be able to browse any part of the Web without fear of punishment, it is fundamental. That includes exploring the darknet, one of the most interesting parts of the Web, without having to fear prosecution for unintentionally coming across child pornography.
Is it, though? According to the government itself, funding has increased from 12B in 2015 to 17B in 2023[0]. In real terms, the UK police now has more funding than it had pre-austerity (16.5B in 2023 money).
If they don't have the manpower, it isn't due to a lack of money.
[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-funding-for-...
It is.
Police cuts here in Scotland are dire. If your house gets broken in to they won't even visit.
Squatting is on the uprise including violent behaviour.
The list is too long to even mention.
https://spf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/police-budget-...
They just care about other things way more. Like people writing mean things on the internet.
"..the teenager prosecuted for posting the lyrics of a rap song on her Instagram, because the music in question included the N-word. The 18-year-old girl, who has Asperger’s, was given an eight-week curfew and had to wear a tag, though the conviction was later overturned."
If you don't live here you have no say.
We have a collapsing healthcare, underfunded police force, rapid increase of homeless. Crime increasing.
Not only that I am on my local council so I get the local metrics from my local constabulary.
The police force is spared thin. And if you believe anything the tabloids say about "the police is fine" your a fool to believe so.
If your not from the UK get off your armchair, stop reporting he-say-she-says articles from bias tabloids and see for yourself if your going to argue.
Because I can post them too: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/05/police-still...
This month with crisis in title too.
We have a collapsing healthcare, underfunded police force, rapid increase of homeless. Crime increasing.
Not unique to Scotland.
The police force is spared thin.
Not unique to Scotland.
If your not from the UK get off your armchair, stop reporting he-say-she-says articles from bias tabloids and see for yourself if your going to argue.
The police receive more funding than they used to. The numbers are there.
And again... this is not unique to Scotland.
They may of got more money but the actual monetary value is a lot less. So yes, an increase in sum, but less in value.
Scotland is more less off than the UK. Scotland is UKs taking ground and always the first to get cuts, that and wales too.
Did they ever accomplish much when they did visit?
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-are-the-co...
During this period the UK population has grown considerably, comparing officers or £ spent per capita is probably more appropriate.
It just happens to be when about 7 years of funding cuts ended.
Funding in 2009 was £19.3bn, which is £32bn adjusted for inflation to today.
22/23 funding was £24bn (£27bn inflation adjusted)
I can't find the figures for 2009 (this is most likely due to significant changes in the funding structure in 2015, see [1]), but according to [0] the number of police officers was about the same in 2010 as in 2009 - so the austerity cuts clearly only hit in 2011.
Also, my numbers are for England & Wales - because that's what was easily available. I'm not sure where you numbers come from, but they definitely don't match up with the England & Wales ones the UK government provide.
[0]: https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/bn20...
[1]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
When austerity kicked in, most forces offered redundancy to long-serving officers on good contracts. At the depths of the austerity era, the police practically gave up on investigation - outside of CID and other specialist department, the sheer volume of work forced the police into a purely reactive posture, dealing only with the most urgent and visible problems in the quickest way possible. When funding started to pick back up, they brought new and inexperienced staff into a dysfunctional service. The number of officers isn't down that much compared to pre-austerity levels, but huge amounts of institutional learning was lost.
A lack of resourcing and policy failures in the mental health system meant that the police - the public service of last resort - had to pick up the slack. It's now quite normal for officers to spend a substantial proportion of their time dealing with mental health calls that fundamentally aren't a police matter, or to spend an entire shift waiting to hand over an s.135/s.136 patient to a place of safety.
A lack of funding in the Courts Service and the Criminal Prosecution Service has created a huge bottleneck in the criminal justice pipeline. Cases are taking years to get to court, hearings are being repeatedly re-scheduled and the CPS have tacitly set a much higher bar on the quality of case they're willing to prosecute, all of which has an obvious impact on police resources, recidivism and the wellbeing of victims.
Dysfunction in British policing is part of a much broader dysfunction of the British state as a whole. There's a consistent story across the whole of the public sector - under-resourced services are dealing with an increasingly complex and demanding workload, because vulnerable people are being failed by multiple parts of the state simultaneously. Teachers rarely see students who are [i]just[/i] struggling in school; those kids invariably have home lives that are marred with multiple socioeconomic problems. Doctors spend most of their time treating people who aren't [i]just[/i] ill, but who are also poor and lonely and living in inadequate housing. If you'll forgive the double entendre, it's a death by a thousand cuts - services that don't have the resources to cope with their own workload are having to pick up the pieces for other services, creating a vicious circle of rising demand.
> West Yorkshire Police received the same request (pdf) and was able to confirm that the words ‘UFO’, ‘UAP’, ‘ALIEN’ or ‘SPACESHIP’ appeared in log text 1805 times.
Then there is PICPU and presumably other specialist units that do nothing else.