From the Misconduct and Misogyny report into police hiring policies, it looks like the fulfilment of the Clockwork Orange prophecy made all those years ago – that thugs and deviants would be hired as police officers enforcing thuggery and deviance. It all came out this week in the Commons, the Lords and in the Home Affairs select committee.

The police hiring and vetting policy seems to be based on a Time and Motion theory of taking criminals directly into the police in order to cut out the middleman, and making crime detection quicker, easier, more effective. Although not that much easier. Rapists, muggers, domestic abusers, fraudsters – all have had long and secure employment in our many forces.

So, in the Commons, the Urgent Question was asked “What in the name of our suffering Saviour do the police think they’re up to?”

The general opinion among MPs was that while the revelations of the report were very shocking, nonetheless, 99.9% of officers do a brilliant job, are honourable, hard-working, dedicated, decent public servants working hard to keep us safe.

In the alternative, reality-based community the opposite is more obvious.

Guido looked at the figures in the report and has constructed a figure out of them, that 15% of all officers ought to be dismissed for criminal or unprofessional behaviour. This constitutes – what? – 20,000 officers? In addition, there will probably be another 15% who need to lose some weight, sharpen up, behave like civilised individuals and mend their manners.

But how to being this about?  The National Decision Model hasn’t helped, even with the Vetting Authorised Professional Practice with its own Vetting Decision-Making Template. Maybe that is the problem. The whole sprawling bureaucracy has been paralysed by process.

Bernard Hogan-Howe in the Lords told his peers that detection of crime was the police’s core duty. He’s so out of touch with modern policing, everything has changed since he ran the Met.

We know this because a professor had told Diana Johnson’s Home Affairs committee that only 24% of police interventions were “crime-related”. Three quarters of police time is concerned with monitoring sex offenders in the community, mental health issues, homelessness, domestics, and answering 999 calls to help an over-refreshed woman find her mobile phone. Any time left over sexually harassing female officers they use to commit their rapes, thefts, burglaries, frauds and assaults.

The report details a score of examples of astonishing delinquencies – we’ll come back to them in Saturday Shorts.

Until then, mind how you go…