Are we missing a good opportunity to share skills and spread the workload?

Are we missing a good opportunity to share skills and spread the workload?

YOU may not have been following this closely, but Guernsey’s Committee for Home Affairs hasn’t been having the best of times lately.

That’s largely its own fault, because it asked HM Inspectorate of Constabulary to review its performance – and got panned for a lack of strategic thinking and for being beastly to its senior staff.

So far, so amusing, if you like your political departments under a bit of pressure. But the suggestion that perhaps Guernsey prisoners might be accommodated at La Moye because our own prison is close to full indicates that maybe our Committee for Home Affairs is more than averagely accident prone.

The thing is, the president of the committee said in Guernsey’s States that consideration had been given to ‘exporting’ our villains to Jersey because its own nick at Les Nicolles was close to full.

But that came as a surprise to your Home Affairs Minister, Len Norman, prison governor Nick Cameron and the press office, which does rather make you wonder what’s going on.

Unfortunately, Guernsey’s Committee for Home Affairs is running out of credibility. It was earlier accused by consultants PwC of not doing enough to cut costs – solutions identified by staff weren’t politically palatable – and so it now finds itself in the equivalent of special measures and being carefully monitored by the big boys on Policy and Resources, the closest Guernsey has to a Council of Ministers.

While this is of little interest to Jersey, the reverse would be. By that, I mean a dynamic and strategically focused Committee for Home Affairs would be in active and meaningful dialogue with their Jersey counterparts over a range of collaborative projects to mutual CI benefit.

Initially, I thought the hiccup over Guernsey access to La Moye was simply due to staff level ‘what ifs?’ not being advanced enough to be pushed up to the minister. Not involving the prison governor, however, suggests the ‘staff level’ discussions never left the Guernsey office. This, too, is unfortunate. As we now know, there are some legal obstacles to transferring prisoners between jurisdictions – handy though that might be – but you would like to think that these were already under consideration on a just-in-case basis.

One of the problems of an under-performing Committee for Home Affairs is that the opportunity to merge Customs, the Guernsey Border Agency, with the States police has been lost. Not because it isn’t a good idea, but because the politicians involved, one of whom used to head Customs, are opposed.

Why, we’re not sure. Greater co-operation between the services is a no-brainer: they already operate under a single head and many of the skills required are already shared by officers. So if you like, any separation of duties is more a function of the uniform they wear than anything else.

Stop referring to police or Customs and instead to Bailiwick Law Enforcement (as Guernsey’s more collaborative set up is known) and you’ll see what I mean.

Personally, I’d go further that that. The policing, customs and immigration requirements – certainly when it comes to border security – are the same irrespective of which island we’re talking about.

Having a merged and pan-island law-enforcement capability seems to tick many boxes, not least efficiency, cost reduction and looking for economies of scale.

Nor is this particularly fanciful. There is already considerable co-operation between the two islands in this area. As HMIC found, ‘[Jersey and Guernsey] have recognised that having a collaborative digital forensics capability could provide operational and financial benefits’.

These joint-working arrangements have made it possible to undertake complex digital device examinations to support Bailiwick Law Enforcement’s investigations, and have increased the speed of digital forensics provision.

Since the Jersey-based high-tech crime unit is larger and more skilled in complex examinations than its Guernsey counterpart, it conducts these for police and Customs investigations in the other island.

In addition, because the unit in Jersey is the larger of the two, it takes on some of the work from Guernsey during busy periods. For example, in Bailiwick Law Enforcement investigations that involve the examination of many digital items, like mobile phones and computer hard drives, some are processed in Jersey in order to minimise delays.

Looking slightly further ahead, the plan is to install a high-speed data link between the two units, which would remove the need for devices and staff to move physically between them.

So, as you can see, considerable progress has been made at staff level on meaningful co-operation between the two islands and some Guernsey cops even come to Jersey for training and career development.

This appears, however, to be more driven at a staff level than by Guernsey’s Committee for Home Affairs and that’s a missed opportunity.

So whether the department deserved the kicking it received from HM Inspectorate is, to a degree, irrelevant, because where it had control over events – use of La Moye for Guernsey prisoners – it has, at best, confused the issue.

If the islands are seriously to get their heads together jointly to improve law enforcement and get some economies of scale and efficiency, they need to get off to a much better start.

– Advertisement –
– Advertisement –