Do the public want more or fewer police community support officers?

Abstract

The delivery of neighbourhood policing across England and Wales relies heavily on the increasing number of police community support officers (PCSOs). This study focused on the residents' perceptions of PCSOs and on their views of the impact these officers had on the level of crime and antisocial behaviour (ASB) within the Halton Borough Council area, a unitary local authority in the northwest of England. It used a self‐completion postal questionnaire, which was distributed to 2,100 randomly selected, residential addresses across the borough. In the main, the residents who responded did not know their local PCSO, and felt that locally, crime was not as big an issue as that identified in the British Crime Survey (BCS) 2007‐08 (Kershaw et al, 2008:10). They did feel, however, that six of the seven quality of life issues surveyed by this local survey were worse in Halton than the national picture portrayed by the BCS. The residents did not know that PCSOs impacted on the issues concerning them locally, or perceived that they did not. Despite these perceptions, the vast majority of the respondents would welcome greater numbers of PCSOs.