...... train ticket inspectors told to catch 28 fare dodgers a month

[whole diary]

[PhilWakely]

From the Exeter Express and Echo (although I suspect this has been lifted from a National paper and the place name inserted).....

Exeter train ticket inspectors told to catch 28 fare dodgers a month

Exeter train ticket inspectors have to catch 28 people a month dodging their rail fares, or face being put on review, it has been revealed.

A number of train companies impose targets on their ticket inspectors dictating a minimum number of people they have to catch travelling without having paid.

Great Western Railways asks its inspectors (RPIs^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context))) to catch 28 people every four weeks, or face three months 'on review'.

But the policy has lead to claims that inspectors will try to hit their targets by punishing train travellers who make mistakes, or who can't buy tickets when machines are faulty.

One Great Western inspector told The Sun: "We're fleecing passengers. Often people can't get tickets because the machine isn't working or they are running late. Now we are being forced to look for excuses to fine them."

Greater Anglia inspectors have been sent a letter telling them they should issue at least three fines a day.

John Williams, an ex inspector who now runs campaign group Penalty Fare Appeal Support, said: "If they have got a target, they come to the end of the week and they need another two to reach it, whether it is someone older who struggled to buy one, the machine was broken, or the queue was out the station, that person is going to issue the fare because otherwise their going to be reprimanded by their manager."

Penalty fares can be up to twice the single fare from where the person got on to the next station, or £20, whichever is the greatest.

A Great Western spokesman said: "Our RPIs would normally check around 8,000 tickets a month, and throughout that period we would expect them to speak to at least 28 people without a ticket (or without the correct ticket).

"We use this as a benchmark and we may have conversations with staff significantly missing that figure, as it might suggest they are not checking the overall number of tickets we would expect them to.

"There will be cases where different steps may be taken towards a customer, but that is at the discretion of the RPI at the time and dependent on the individual circumstances. We do not incentivise our RPIs to issue fines or prosecution notices."

[John R]

So if they work 20 days, an average of 1 1/2 each day.  I'd be very surprised if they weren't picking up many more than that if I'm honest, so it doesn't appear a high bar to cross.

[JayMac]

Catching law breakers (or those who have made a mistake) should never be incentivised.

[grahame]

Catching law breakers (or those who have made a mistake) should never be incentivised.

Interesting / not sure I would go that far.  But where a person's judgement / decision may be influenced by their own income, I would agree with you.  What do you think of "reward for information leading to the conviction of ..."? From The BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

Graphic pictures of horrifying injuries and interviews with inconsolable relatives are tactics police use to pull at the heart strings and attract witnesses. But, when it comes down to it, does cold hard cash prove just as effective?

"For anybody that has got that information it might just be the trigger or tipping point for them to come forward," says Nick Howe, a former chief superintendent with Staffordshire Police and now a criminologist at the University of Derby

And yet, the fact is, where rewards are on offer, very few people ever claim them.

[JayMac]

Catching law breakers (or those who have made a mistake) should never be incentivised.

Interesting / not sure I would go that far.  But where a person's judgement / decision may be influenced by their own income, I would agree with you.

Precisely what I meant. Those who don't reach their targets will eventually be out of that job.

What do you think of "reward for information leading to the conviction of ..."?

I think that is a false equivalence. An offer made to the public to help catch an offender is very different to incentivising the investigators/evidence gatherers.

[ellendune]

It is symptomatic of the whole lack of customer culture on the railways. 

If someone were able to offer a defence that it was a genuine error, then the incentivisation of staff to start a prosecution would be a very good piece of evidence for the defence. 

[ChrisB]

Also symtomatic of a public that, given a chance, would generally avoid paying.

Having experienced travel recently in both Germany & Austria, they have no barriers or other checks in the station & just a few (plain clothes) travelling inspectors.

Talking to one, they rarely catch anyone without a proper ticket & find the vast majority are honest.

There is a difference no one talk about.

[ellendune]

Also symtomatic of a public that, given a chance, would generally avoid paying.

That is a rather sweeping generalisation.  Are you suggesting the Public are dishonest? I think the evidence would suggest that the vast majority of the British Public are honest. 

[didcotdean]

There is plenty of fare evasion in Germany, particularly for short distances. It is why they have started trying to identify persistent offenders and prosecute whereas previously they would only make them pay the 'standard' fare for someone without a ticket each time, which for a regular traveller might well be less than playing a legitimate fare. In all my times of travelling in German cities on local transport over many years, my ticket has been checked precisely once, on the Berlin U-bahn.

Of course they don't accept any excuses for no ticket or an incorrect one.

[Bmblbzzz]

I agree with BNM. The pay should be for doing the job. After all, the ultimate goal of any sort of law enforcement must be a totally crime-free society. Obviously that's never going to happen, but in a system where officers are paid per criminal caught, the nearer they brought us to that ideal state, the less they would earn; creating the obvious temptation to be overly harsh/frame people/introduce new laws which are impossible to comply with/etc – as applicable to various situations. The opposite scheme – pay increasing the more they reduce crime – creates the equally obvious temptation to turn a blind eye/enforce selectively/ignore public complaints/not follow up leads/etc.

[Bmblbzzz]

That said, in this context I'd like to know how many ticketless passengers they're catching on average at the moment. Is one a day maybe about average? It's interesting that Greater Anglia RPIs^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context)) are expected to catch three times as many as GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway). What does that say? I'd like to conclude that we're so much more honest out here in the West, but...

[John R]

According to a parliamentary report (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmtran/84/8406.htm), between 5% and 8% of revenue is lost due to ticketless travel. Accepting that much of this will be for genuine reasons whereby the passenger has not had an opportunity to buy a ticket, but let's just say that 1% is due to someone not having bought a ticket where they had every opportunity to, and no mitigating circumstances.

So how many tickets does an RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context)) need to check to find such a genuine case?  Let's say he errs on the generous side and gives 2 in every 3 he finds (where there are no mitigating circumstances) the benefit of the doubt or the sob story.  So he should find a case every 300 passengers, having let two slip through the net.  Over the course of a day, I am sure the majority will check vastly more than 300 tickets, and where for some reason they don't (say being based on lightly used branch lines in winter) that would be noted.  So if he has to target 1.5 per day, this doesn't appear like a threshold that should be an issue.

If you don't have any target, how do you manage the individual who reports week after week that they are only issuing a handful of penalty fares, when their colleagues are all  issuing many more?

[ellendune]

If you don't have any target, how do you manage the individual who reports week after week that they are only issuing a handful of penalty fares, when their colleagues are all  issuing many more?

That's really the other problem with the railways or perhaps part of the same problem.

I once worked somewhere that had an inbuilt assumption that its staff were not to be trusted.  Although most found this a pain some took it as a challenge.  Since there I have worked in places were the staff were trusted to get on with the job and on the whole they do.  Industries that institutionally distrust their staff end up with poor staff relations, their management typically believe if the rights of management to be dictators and they end up with lots of petty disputes and strikes. It also typically leads to bad customer services as the staff treat the customers the same way the management treat them.

Of course this becomes a vicious cycle that is extremely difficult to break out of. 

In my opinion if the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) were to find a way to break the cycle and were to employ managers who treated staff like their customers would like to treated , trained their staff to help customers rather than punish them, including helping them to have the right ticket, and incentivise them to do that, you might find that both customer and staff satisfaction improves, strikes reduce and ticketless travel reduces. 

[JayMac]

If you don't have any target, how do you manage the individual who reports week after week that they are only issuing a handful of penalty fares, when their colleagues are all  issuing many more?

How do the police manage without arrest targets?

Yes I'm aware of news investigations which showed that local police Inspectors were setting targets without the knowledge or permission of superiors or politicians. But it's not accepted practice condoned by Chief Constables, PCCs^▸ (Police and Crime Commissioner) or the Home Office.

Here though we are dealing with revenue Inspectors who have legal powers being incentivised by management. In private companies that have prosecution powers too.

You can monitor RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context)) performance and address shortcomings without the need to have a target of 'write ups'.  

[chrisr_75]

There is plenty of fare evasion in Germany, particularly for short distances. It is why they have started trying to identify persistent offenders and prosecute whereas previously they would only make them pay the 'standard' fare for someone without a ticket each time, which for a regular traveller might well be less than playing a legitimate fare. In all my times of travelling in German cities on local transport over many years, my ticket has been checked precisely once, on the Berlin U-bahn.

Of course they don't accept any excuses for no ticket or an incorrect one.

I suspect, as is the case in many other European countries, that the Germans have the luxury of a very much simpler fare structure compared to the diabolical mess of a fare system we have on British railways, which makes enforcement simpler and also reduces the chance of being pinged on a technicality.