An initiative has been sweeping the police forces of England and Wales in the past 18 months, rather enterprisingly and ominously called Too Much Bling? Give Us a Ring. The campaign is aimed at encouraging covetous members of the public to report their friends and neighbours for living the high-life without any obviously visible means of support. Heard an unsubstantiated rumour that the chap with the Lexus three doors down is claiming income support? Let us know and we will use the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to investigate them and, if there is evidence that their gains are ill-gotten, strip them down to their underwear and turf their children out into the street.
Were I writing this piece for any other media organ, this revelation might provoke street parties and hastily-convened denunciation committees, but it is worth considering the implications of such a strategy. Up until now, these undoubtedly useful provisions have been used post-conviction to systematically impoverish career criminals by way of seizure orders.
Now, the act is being used to instigate financial investigations against those who may have thus far managed to evade police attention, obviously without their knowledge in the first instance. The very minimum that would be required to substantiate a tip-off would presumably be a check with the benefits office and enquiries into the subject's employment status. If the allegations were discovered to be unfounded, then that person might never be any the wiser that the police had taken an interest in their assets, but the fact still remains that intelligence has been generated in their name based on little more than the status envy of a neighbour or acquaintance.
Of course there is more to this than simply asking members of the public to perform their civic duty – what about the money? The Home Office have earmarked 50% of the proceeds of any investigation for use by the police force that seized it. Despite the fact that the police are facing a £3 bn shortfall in funding over the coming year, New Labour is still only too keen to cite the fact that they have recruited 14,000 extra police officers since 1997 (albeit with scarcely any impact whatsoever on visible street presence). Given that over 80% of any force budget is spent on wages alone, it is obvious where the current shortfalls will be met. If the police continue to rely on the Treasury coffers to fund them through an increasingly likely recession, it is quite conceivable that Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith will have returned the service to the position in which it was inherited by the time the next election is called.
Essentially, the police are asking the public to provide funding by shopping their neighbours and the Home Office, ever keen to publish detailed performance league tables, seem willing to push forces into the uncomfortable position of prioritising investigations based on their asset-recovery potential rather than the relative moral desirability of a prosecution. Drug users, who tend to smoke or inject their assets as soon as they obtain them, will represent poor value for money compared to the average two-bit millionaire with his flashy jewellery.
It is worth noting that assets need only total £1,000 and be unaccountable to initiate a seizure order. That's about the price of decent HD flatscreen or budget used car, so the quite reasonable argument that it will encourage the police to target the dealers rather than the users does not necessarily hold – there are any number of ways to illegally enrich oneself that might not make it onto the public's checklist of priorities.
At the very least, it is worth asking how many innocent people will end up on intelligence databases for the crime of "ostentatious display of wealth".