A crime that gets the resourcing, and one that doesn't

The story

West Mercia Police have been sending officers dressed as joggers out on runs, backed by colleagues in a nearby vehicle, so that drivers who beep, catcall or harass them can be stopped and confronted on camera. Six such operations have taken place so far, with harassing behaviour identified on three of the six. In April, a change to the Public Order Act made it an aggravating offence to cause harassment, alarm or distress based on a person's sex, with culprits facing up to two years in jail. Inspector Liz Warner said the aim is to send "a clear message" that misogynistic remarks and predatory behaviour are not acceptable, and there are plans to roll the scheme out more widely across Worcestershire.

The reframe, with the manuscript

This is proactive, resourced, targeted policing: officers pulled from other duties, briefed, dressed, paired with a backup unit, and sent out on a schedule against one specific category of offence. None of that is wrong. But it demonstrates something the press release doesn't dwell on, which is capacity. A force able to build and run six bespoke sting operations for horn-honking has that capacity available to it. It does not appear from nowhere and vanish again; it exists, and it gets pointed somewhere, according to priorities set above the level of the individual officer.

Chapter 13's account of what enforcement actually optimises for is relevant here, even though this case shows something closer to the opposite of neglect:

Enforcement gravitates toward what is manageable rather than what is meaningful. The system optimises for defensibility, not resolution.

A jogger sting is manageable. It has a clear target behaviour, a clean method of proof, a satisfying before-and-after, and a story that writes itself for a press office. It is defensible in exactly the way the manuscript describes: easy to point to, easy to justify, easy to expand. None of that tells us whether it is the most meaningful use of six operations' worth of officer-hours against the harassment women describe, only that it was the version of the problem the system could most cleanly act on.

The book's discussion of what enforcement performs, separate from what it achieves, applies just as directly here:

Enforcement also performs a symbolic function. It creates the impression of control even when underlying conditions remain unchanged. This appearance is politically valuable. It deflects responsibility, absorbs public anxiety, and postpones more difficult questions about systemic causes.

Inspector Warner's own language, sending "a clear message," is symbolic-function language, offered without embarrassment because the operation genuinely did produce three confirmed incidents from six attempts. But the same force that can find the resourcing for this kind of visible, camera-ready sting is, like every force in the country, simultaneously making quieter decisions about which other reported harassment does not get this kind of attention. The sting is not evidence that enforcement is now comprehensive. It is evidence that enforcement is always selective, and that this particular selection has, this time, been made visible and given a press officer.

That visibility is itself worth noting, because most enforcement discretion isn't announced. A case quietly not pursued, a report filed without follow-up, a caution rather than a charge: none of these come with an inspector's quote attached. Here, for once, the institution has chosen to publicise its own discretion as a virtue, look, it says, at what we decided to prioritise today. It is a useful reminder that discretion is not hidden because it must be. It is hidden, usually, because publicising it would show the shape of everything else the system is not doing at the same time.