Fighting Crime: Can the Police do more with less?

The coalition government's austerity programme has resulted in some sizeable reductions in the police workforce, yet crime has continued to fall. A key question for the next Parliament is whether further real-terms reductions in police budgets can occur without more deleterious effects on crime. This paper explores the evidence on the trends in crime and the police workforce, and factors that may have led to the continued fall in reported crime.