For decades, the political mantra on crime has been simple: more police on the streets. But as one of the country’s most senior police figures prepares to retire, his parting message is that this approach alone is a profound failure of policy. Crime, he argues, is not a problem the police can solve by themselves; it is the symptom of deeper, unaddressed societal fractures.
The core message: poverty and opportunity are the real crime-fighters
Sir Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, states unequivocally that the most effective way to stop people becoming criminals is to reduce poverty, increase opportunity, and target prevention strategies at young people. He believes that for those in the most deprived neighbourhoods, opportunity is the best deterrent. This conviction is rooted in a career that began in the economic devastation of 1980s Liverpool.
“I saw first-hand that crime was rarely just a policing problem. It was the symptom of deeper societal failures,” Sir Andy told the Guardian. “This has stayed with me throughout my entire career.” He has consistently argued that poverty and lack of opportunity are fundamental drivers of crime, once stating that if given £5 billion to cut crime, he would allocate £4 billion to tackling deprivation.
A career forged in the front lines of societal failure
Sir Andy Cooke will retire in March 2026 after nearly 40 years in policing. His career, which began as a constable on the beat in Merseyside in 1985, provided a masterclass in the roots of offending. He served as a detective at every rank, led the Robbery Squad and Major Crime Unit, and was the first commander of Merseyside’s nationally recognised ‘Matrix’ team, created to tackle gun and gang crime.
After serving as Chief Constable of Merseyside Police from 2016 to 2021—a period during which the force was graded as the highest-performing metropolitan force—he was appointed the home secretary’s key adviser on policing for England and Wales as Chief Inspector in 2022. Knighted in the 2025 New Year Honours, his authority is born of direct experience. “By the time someone commits a criminal offence, there have usually been multiple missed opportunities where another agency could have intervened,” he said.
Prevention decimated: the cost of ‘early help’ being ignored
Sir Andy’s central critique is that these “missed opportunities” are systemic, exacerbated by funding cuts and a lack of legal obligation. He highlights the concept of “early help”—services that identify and support vulnerable young people before problems escalate. However, as inspections by his agency, HMICFRS, have shown, resource pressures make it harder to prioritise this work.
“Early help aims to prevent problems from worsening, but it isn’t provided on a statutory basis. This puts it at risk of being cut when budgets tighten,” he said. The consequence is a focus only on the most severe crises, a strategy he warns “will only create more problems for the future” and lead to unnecessary criminalisation.
Nowhere is this decimation clearer than in youth services. Since 2010, youth services in England and Wales have faced real-terms funding cuts of approximately 70-73%, according to sector analysis. Sir Andy notes that Liverpool, which once employed 93 council youth workers, now has just two. Nationally, this has led to the closure of around 1,200 publicly run youth centres and the loss of over 4,500 youth workers.
The impact is quantifiable and severe. Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies indicates that teenagers affected by youth club closures were 14% more likely to engage in criminal activity and performed up to 4% worse in exams. The economic logic is inverted: studies suggest for every £1 saved from closures, nearly £3 is lost due to forgone education returns and increased crime costs. The cost of a young person entering the criminal justice system is estimated to be four times higher than the cost of the youth work that could have prevented it.
The cycles that perpetuate: prison and joblessness
The failures continue beyond prevention, Sir Andy argues, with a system that does little to rehabilitate those it incarcerates. “Most are sat in a cell with no work done with them. The cycle keeps going on,” he said. Ministry of Justice data supports this, indicating high reoffending rates and a lack of work and training opportunities in prison, with many inmates spending over 22 hours a day in their cells.
This cycle is fuelled further by a lack of opportunity upon release, intersecting with a broader crisis of youth unemployment. Official figures for November 2025 to January 2026 show an unemployment rate of 16.0% for 16-24-year-olds, with 957,000 young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET).
Sir Andy Cooke’s prescription is therefore twofold: investment and obligation. He advocates for substantial investment in the infrastructure of deprived areas and, crucially, for making prevention services like early help a legal duty, similar to the statutory obligation to provide a police force. “If the government is serious about safer streets, it must invest in the services that stop people from becoming offenders in the first place,” he stated. Without this shift, he concludes, the police will forever be left dealing with the symptoms, while the causes of crime continue to deepen.
