I'd say there is plenty of justification as a lot of people got wise to the fact there were no on-board checks and fare evasion has shot up. Also a larger proportion of people travelling have been the undesirables running drugs across the country.
Most of the drug dealers I've seen during lockdown have been on bikes and cars, so you aren't going to catch them by doing a revenue blockade.
Do we have any statistics to back up this justification that revenue blocks are catching a large amount of drug dealers during lockdown?
In my view it is a waste of money as the wages cannot justify the amount of revenue collected at the present time and it is also encouraging unneccessary close contact of staff with passengers at a time when we are trying to bring case numbers down, not to mention the volatility factor of people being in lockdown and being extremely stressed - It is potentially causing unnecessary stress and tension plus the most compelling reason of all- aren't we trying to prevent the spread of COVID or are rail staff immune to catching and transmitting it a symptomatically?
Going back to the earlier point there is no financial basis for putting staff in close contact with every passenger that passes through - it just isn't necessary during a lockdown for the sake of beating a few fare dodgers. Of course rail staff will be like - Why should people get a free ride during a lockdown? Perhaps on the flipside - why should staff risk giving people COVID for the sake of a few quid. Also the other factor will be - We are entitled to carry out a revenue block , collect revenue and people are not justified to get stressed and volatile during a lockdown - I think that is completely the wrong attitude to have during such a serious national event.
Before it peaked many staff were getting unnecessarily close to passengers and look what happened - the case rates went up and it is likely that some transmission did occur on trains.
If there is a need to catch drug dealers let the BTP and local police go out and stop people, given they are the ones trained to catch and detain criminals and there is now a decent percentage of the 20,000 pledged extra officers out on the beat.