Does a targets culture exist in Police Scotland?

The message that has emerged from the meeting of frontline police in Dunblane is that it does. Leaders of the Scottish Police Federation claim the force is focusing on targets to the exclusion of the discretion which has always been exercised by the officer on the beat. "We don't have discretion now," said Andrea MacDonald, chairwoman of the west area of the Scottish Police Federation. "It has become a numbers game."

The leadership of Police Scotland has always denied this. From the start, Sir Stephen House, the chief constable, has said he wants the force to be performance-led, but he also insists there are no targets imposed on individual officers.

This may be true, but it is also true there is a disconnection between what Sir Stephen says about targets and the reality on the ground. Police Scotland does have national and local targets or Key Performance Indicators and it is the job of divisional commanders to make those happen. As a consequence, commanders put pressure on staff to meet the targets. In theory there are no targets; in effect, there are.

There was evidence of this in August when The Herald was shown a memo issued by an inspector to Glasgow divisions. The memo told officers to use overtime "solely for the purpose of targeting stop searches", although Police Scotland said at the time it was a misunderstanding.

If true, the possible effects of such an approach are worrying. First, there is the danger that the police will focus on areas where it is easy to meet targets rather on activities where their time could be better spent. For example, on speeding; no-one questions the fact keeping drivers within the speed limit can save lives, but the danger of a target-driven culture is officers will focus on roads where it is easy to catch speeders - and these are not necessarily the same roads where accident rates are high.

The second possible danger of a culture focused unduly on targets is that the relationship between the police and the public is damaged. Ms MacDonald says this is particularly so in rural communities, but across the force the risk is that otherwise law-abiding members of the public feel alienated from the police when they are stopped and fined for a relatively trivial offence - urinating in public for example - where a warning would suffice. This so-called witness alienation is a particular risk in Scotland, which has always had a much more community-based approach than many of the big forces in England.

The third risk of targets is that it can lead to "gaming", by which figures are manipulated to show improvement year on year. This is not a problem in Scotland yet, but it has been seen in England and Wales and a focus on targets carries the risk of bringing about a similar culture in Scotland. There are some police officers who believe it is inevitable.

Yesterday, Police Scotland reiterated their position that there is no policy of individual officer targets. However, the use of the word "individual" is dodging the issue. Officers say the focus on targets is having an effect on how they do their job. But just as importantly, it appears to be damaging the relationship the officers have with the public. That is the basis of the good working of the police in Scotland and it cannot be put at risk.