Helping to reduce 'empathy fatigue' among officers when dealing with victims is part of Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner's (PCC) plan to improve the 'culture' of policing.

PCC Jonathan Ash-Edwards appeared at a Police and Crime Panel on Thursday, November 21, when he revealed details of his upcoming Police and Crime Plan – which PCCs are required to create by law.

Mr Ash-Edwards was accompanied at the meeting at East Herts District Council offices by his director of strategy Rhiannon Sawyer, who said a whole section of the report came under the subcategory of 'culture'.

She said: "Part of culture is looking at officer norms. So when officers become normalised to a certain type of harm, or a certain type of victim, the evidence and theory behind this is that the normal, neurological response to seeing human suffering every day is that your mind starts to become normalised to it.

"But what the force must do strategically is to help officers reset that so they don't start seeing all victims as the same, or they don't start seeing all specific crime types as the same, like domestic abuse or missing children, for example.

"What are the metrics for that? Well, victim attrition [continuing to press charges] improves, so actually if victims feel like the officers are taking them seriously and they are being seen as unique and individual, they will want to engage more, so victim attrition will improve.

"Timeliness will improve, because officers will want to do that case, because they will feel passionate about it. They won't feel empathy fatigue about the case. Obviously the quality of contact will improve.

"These are things that are measured. Timeliness is measured. So that's an in-depth example of the range of different metrics that we might put against one specific delivery plan action."

The PCC then said: "I talk quite a lot about how to free up time. Officers spend a lot of time doing reporting on systems and data… I don't think the answer is to impose more, so we need to be quite smart around how we do that and it needs to run with the grain of what we're wanting the constabulary to do."

Andrew Scarth, Three Rivers district councillor, said: "It's mind-boggling what you went through there. So you've got in your plan all these ones and I always think of the policeman out there and the dissatisfaction they're not achieving what is required of them and the stress level builds up hugely.

"So, my suggestion is do certain things well and the others can come later on, rather than slam dunk the whole lot. Because you just end up floundering and drowning and you end up with the stress level in the force rising and police officers leaving.

"It's so important that the criticisms of the inspection are dealt with obviously, but in a way that people think, 'Yes, I can do that' and that is really important."

Cllr Scarth added that officers are "the most precious item" in a force.

Chairman Dr Malcolm Ramsay added: "You were talking about trying to enhance neighbourhood policing as a specialism. That might help, to support the officers who are doing that sort of hard grind neighbourhood work day in, day out, to raise their status. It's not been a high status role within police forces traditionally. So if things can be done there, that might help to prevent attrition of officers."

Ms Sawyer said: "Your point is really important, so in the culture piece within the plan, we're doing a bit around good news stories. We want to move from pressure to pride and we want people to know the PCC is proud of the work they do, so we've put that in the plan.

"Again, in the theory behind empathy fatigue, officers sometimes feel that they're not doing a good job, so then they think, 'Well, why am I bothering?' and that's where empathy fatigue comes from. And that's where victims get a poorer response. So for us, it's clear we need to help officers to feel valued and to know that we know about the good news stories that they're doing.

"The measures and the timeline, they'll be over a four-year period, so we're not expecting all of this stuff to be delivered straight away from April. We've been really clear about that with the force."