Community Safety Initiatives Research Articles

Baseball Injury Prevention Through a Community Outreach Initiative.

Sports-related craniofacial injuries account for 10% to 42% of facial fractures in the US pediatric population, with the incidence of injury peaking at ages 6 to 7 and 12 to 14. The National Survey of Children's Health reported ~5.6 million children between the ages of 6 and 17 participated in baseball in 2021. National Electronic Injury Surveillance System reported 861,456 injuries resulting from baseball and 511,117 injuries resulting from softball in 2021, with ~500,000 of those injuries being to the face/head/neck. While participation in baseball and other youth sports has tremendous physical and mental health benefits, facial and other athletic injuries are concerning beyond the pain and disability caused by the incident itself. Severe injury can result in lost time from school as well as other social activities. Players and their families often experience financial strain as a result of physical trauma as well. The use of protective equipment has decreased the incidence of emergency department visits due to baseball-related trauma, especially mouthguards. However, adherence to using mouthguards is relatively low in baseball, with over 80% of players reporting not being told by a coach to wear mouthpieces. Youth from low-income areas often lack financial means to provide protective equipment and health insurance in the case of injury. The authors, along with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Miami Marlins RBI Program, created an outreach program by which over 400 mouthguards were given to players and caretakers at inner-city baseball and softball programs. Two community outreach events took place in South Florida. One event was held at a University of Miami Men's Baseball Game, and another was held on the opening day of the Miami Marlins RBI Program youth baseball league. In addition to handing out protective equipment and informational pamphlets, a question and answers session was held to discuss injury prevention. In conclusion, our community safety initiative created an interactive dialogue and message to hundreds of youth baseball players about the importance of protective gear to prevent injuries.

Insights on the use of community policing forum for crime prevention

The objective of this study was to explore existing insights on the use of Community Policing Forums (CPFs) for crime prevention, focusing on the Brooklyn police station in South Africa. With the adoption of the phenomenological research design and the qualitative research approach, about Ten (10) participants were selected purposively at the Brooklyn police station, various data collection methods, such as the documentary sources and unstructured face-to-face interviews, aided with the application of direct observation technique was employed. The inductive Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) was employed for data analysis. The findings of this study revealed that the larger part of Brooklyn police station’s officials portrays a professional image despite this demanding career. However, participation on the ground level based on crime prevention actions is not always viable. By utilising the consulted studies and empirical data, three (03) recommendations for policy intervention are made. Firstly, respective communities should urgently avoid paying for the crime prevention private services to provide detailed crime information to the local SAPS. Secondly, the local ‘Private Security Companies’ should collaborate with the CPFs and SAPS to aid the failing crime prevention responsibilities, while working on the restoration of SAPS’s trust by the local community members. Thirdly, the SAPS management should consider persuasive strategies such as frequent education and training of community members and their officials [Undergoing refresher courses], relating to community safety initiatives and implementations of legislative frameworks and policies.

Prevent

This reflection presents a cautious look at Prevent from a youth workers’ point of view. It has been written with reference to first-hand experience and conversations with fellow youth workers and attempts to shed some light on why many in the youth and community sector may be reluctant to engage with the UK Government’s Prevent Strategy. Although the ideas presented in this article have been developed through personal experience, they also constitute the basis of planned future research on the way Prevent is being received within the youth sector.
 As such the paper will first set a policy context for the strategy outlining how community safety and crime prevention initiatives which once relied on voluntary involvement, are now increasingly being reinforced by a legal duty on particular professional groups of people to participate. I then look at the focus on the concern around the potential radicalisation of young people considering why they feature so significantly within the UK Government’s counter terrorism strategy. This viewpoint will be assessed against terrorism related conviction statistics and data on Prevent referrals and interventions, both of which suggest that the counter terrorist focus on youth radicalisation could be misguided. The article will close with some reflections on experiences gained as a youth worker regarding the realities of what can happen when youth organisations engage with Prevent as well as presenting an example of the pressure felt when organisations actively state that they have nothing to offer in terms of information on potential radicals.

Living in Fear

While urbanisation has always been welcomed as a driver to economic amelioration, it has also been criticised for raising expectations and complicating the lives of urban residents. With urban development, wellbeing is often compromised as income disparity increases, quality of life decreases. Of late, crime has been a major concern. Criminal activities have eroded the sense of urban wellbeing and caused the desertion of neighbourhoods. While the Malaysian government tries to achieve sustainable urban development by containing urban sprawl, crime is undoing these efforts. Interviews with residents in crime-prone areas show that many are increasingly threatened by criminal activities in their neighbourhoods and have shown high tendencies to move out of the neighbourhoods. Steps to contain this problem is by having neighbourhood-level security measures as well as heightened involvement in community safety initiatives

The ethical dangers and merits of predictive policing

Predictive policing is an emerging law enforcement technique that uses data and statistical analysis to aid in the identification of criminal activity. Its intention is to proactively reduce crime by providing police forces with likely areas of high risk variables. While this is a noble pursuit, every new tool must be accompanied by the ethical considerations of its potential consequences. Predictive policing is still in its infancy, borne from crime analysis and big data; however, the Western criminal justice system in the traditional sense is a reactive institution with a diverse history. The use of predictive policing presents a new challenge for law enforcement in that it allows for a divergence from the distinct reality of modern policing. Using the United States as an example of the dangers and flaws of predictive policing as a discretionary tool used to justify questionable processes and biases, this paper will analyze the potential opportunity that predictive policing and new holistic forms of law enforcement and community safety initiatives can use in partnerships with communities and policy makers.

Mobilizing and engaging your community to reduce victimization and reinvest police resources

The Ontario government released its most recent Ontario Mobilization & Engagement Model for Community Policing (OMEM) in 2010, but many police services in the province are just now starting to move toward implementation. OMEM emphasizes having all community members and human services agencies working with the police to keep neighbourhoods safer, more secure, and healthier. The most appropriate service takes the lead in any community safety and wellbeing initiative. The new model requires considerable cultural change from all participants to be successful. This article outlines the Ontario Provincial Police efforts to implement OMEM and some of its early successes and ongoing challenges.

Fire and rescue service community safety initiatives: measuring impact

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss methods of capturing the impact of fire and rescue service (FRS) community safety work which directly aims to reduce the occurrence of specific incidents. Design/methodology/approach – The impact assessment method described focuses on addressing one of the major problems with regards to attributing outcomes to FRS community safety work; the influence of external factors. This paper looked to assess the incident trends within a case study UK FRS within the context of the following external data sets: first, incident trends within other UK FRSs; second, demographic trends; and third, incident data from other public services. Findings – There were instances, either across the whole region served by the case study FRS, or within specific districts, where evidence suggested a strong likelihood of the community safety work of the case study FRS contributing towards an observed reduction in incidents. These findings were established through filtering the impact of widespread external factors, which could impact upon incident figures. Research limitations/implications – The utility of this impact assessment relies upon FRS consistently recording the specific aims and focus of individual community safety activity, so that any positive outcomes can be attributed to a particular group of community safety initiatives. Originality/value – This paper discusses how an evaluation process, to determine the likelihood of community safety impacting upon incident numbers, can be practically applied to a FRS.

Community Safety and Crime Prevention Partnerships: Challenges and Opportunities

In many jurisdictions around the world, community safety and crime prevention activity is supported by interagency committees. In the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), local government Community Safety Officers (CSOs) lead, support or participate in a range of interagency and ‘whole of government’ networks, most of which were established to support central NSW state government crime prevention and community safety initiatives. Research was conducted with the aim of exploring the CSOs’ experience of the ‘whole of government’ partnerships established to support community safety and crime prevention in NSW.[i] The findings support international research which suggests that central-local partnerships are inhibited by different agendas, responsibilities and power dynamics across different levels of government. Some of the key contextual challenges for this work include concerns about costs shifting from State to local government and about shifting State government priorities; barriers to funding and to accessing crime (and other) data; and various administrative burdens. Consequently, we argued that there is a need for formal engagement and negotiation between, on the one hand, State government agencies that steer NSW crime prevention and, on the other, community safety policy initiatives and local government. Such engagement could help overcome the perception, indeed the reality, that shifting and dumping costs and responsibilities to local government is creating a range of burdens for CSOs. [i] The authors thank the NSW Local Government Community Safety and Crime Prevention Network and the individual local government CSOs who kindly assisted and contributed to this research.

Can design support community safety and crime prevention programmes in areas of socio-economic disadvantage?

Community projects that involve design students and stakeholders associated with Housing NSW have been carried out as part of the Community and Environment Project (CEP). The CEP is a partnership between Housing NSW and two universities. Designing Out Crime at the University of Technology Sydney is one of the partners. The work focuses on developing design explorations addressing community safety, urban renewal and crime prevention initiatives in Mount Druitt, NSW. This article discusses how these design processes have influenced partnerships and community development. The two design projects presented addressed safety and security, image and perception, and misuse of public spaces. Findings show that design processes could influence strategic directions within partnerships and organisations in charge of urban management. In addition, design projects offer rich visualisations of proposed future scenarios that influence image and perception. Finally, design explorations help relationship building, open communication, self-reflection and changes in the practices of partnerships. Language: en

Exploring the VLI, for Identifying Priority Neighbourhoods, in the Context of Multi-Agency Community Safety Initiatives

The Vulnerable Localities Index (VLI) emerged from the collaboration between Centrex and the JDI Centre (UCL) as a method of identifying vulnerable communities. This study analyses the effectiveness of the model in a strategic multi-agency project across the Merseyside area. The aim of the project was to prioritize the most vulnerable location in each of the six police divisions to deliver more effective partnership working, including the reduction of crime and disorder. The research shows practitioners found the model simple and accessible to use, requiring limited training. Further, the six multi-agency criteria used by the model appears accurate in highlighting areas that suffer from a disproportionate level of multifaceted problems. Although practitioner expertise is still necessary to prioritize the areas most in need of intervention, it was found the VLI creates a more partnership-oriented forum, to target resources effectively.

Getting deterrence right?

In recent years, scholars have begun to argue that police interventions provide an effective approach for gaining both special and general deterrence against crime. A series of experimental and quasi-experimental studies has shown that the police can be effective in preventing crime (Braga, 2001, 2005; Skogan and Frydl, 2004; Weisburd and Eck, 2004), and that such crime prevention benefits are not offset by displacement of crime to areas near to police interventions (Braga, 2001; Weisburd et al., 2006). Durlauf and Nagin (2011: 14) drew from this literature to argue that, “Increasing the visibility of the police by hiring more officers and by allocating existing officers in ways that heighten the perceived risk of apprehension consistently seem to have substantial marginal deterrent effects.” Indeed, they concluded that crime prevention in the United States would be improved by shifting resources from imprisonment to policing. A recent innovation in policing that capitalizes on the growing evidence of the effectiveness of police deterrence strategies is the “focused deterrence” framework, which is often referred to as “pulling-levers policing” (Kennedy, 1998, 2008). Pioneered in Boston as a problem-oriented policing project to halt serious gang violence during the 1990s (Braga, Kennedy, Waring, and Piehl, 2001), the focused deterrence framework has been applied in many U.S. cities through federally sponsored violence-prevention programs such as the Strategic Alternatives to Community Safety Initiative and Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) (Dalton, 2002). Focused deterrence strategies honor core deterrence ideas, such as increasing risks faced by offenders, while finding new and creative ways of deploying

Developing effective child death review: a study of ‘early starter’ child death overview panels in England

AimThis qualitative study of a small number of child death overview panels aimed to observe and describe their experience in implementing new child death review processes, and making prevention recommendations.MethodsNine...

From reducing fear to improving community confidence — a change of emphasis for practitioners

Although the ‘fear of crime’ has generated significant academic interest, the lack of clarity concerning definition, prevalence and concentration has generated difficulties for community safety practitioners when implementing operational initiatives. This article explores the experience of the Norfolk Constabulary, and shows how the positive concept of ‘improving public confidence’ allowed the organisation to more effectively design and implement community safety initiatives, to change public perception.

How low should you go? Neighbourhood level interventions in the crime and community safety theme of New Deal for Communities

Neighbourhoods are viewed by policy makers as key to the renewal of citizen engagement and improvements in the delivery of services. The national evaluation of the New Deal for Communities offers empirical evidence of the possibilities and limitations of neighbourhood level service delivery. A review of crime and community safety initiatives in six case study NDC Partnerships suggests that neighbourhoods have been appropriate spaces in which to address some key issues, in particular property related crime and anti-social behaviour. NDC Partnerships have brought together communities and agencies to focus on local needs. But there have also been tensions: NDC Partnerships have struggled to maintain community participation and some agencies do not engage at the neighbourhood level. There are issues which require interventions at different spatial scales and sometimes neighbourhood level priorities are out of step with other initiatives and strategies. There is a need for neighbourhoods to be integrated into wider governance arrangements.

Averting ghettoisation: the role of educational services in reducing crime and victimisation in the ethnic minority community in Anderlecht, Brussels

A successful multi‐level intervention in a high crime low income, innercity Brussels neighbourhood, with a large minority ethnic community, has important implications for how educational and community safety initiatives might be brought together to achieve the goals set out in Every Child Matters, Youth Matters and Narrowing the Justice Gap.

Civil Renewal and Community Safety: Virtuous Policy Spiral or Dynamic of Exclusion?

Civil renewal is an emerging policy priority for the UK government, aiming to build stronger, more cohesive communities and to encourage individual citizens to be active members of such communities. The promotion of social capital and trust relationships is central to this approach. Strategies to improve community safety and reduce crime and disorder are closely related to the drive for civil renewal, with the two sets of policies seen as mutually supportive. This article shows, however, that many community safety initiatives are founded on relationships of suspicion between citizens. This generates a dynamic of exclusion that is likely to undermine attempts at civil renewal.

Hotel Crime: Who Cares?

This paper emanates from an evaluation of a burglary reduction initiative targeting hotels in a tourist area of southern England. In carrying out the evaluation a second, control area was included, and the paper focuses on hotel crime as a problem in these two areas. Police statistics are described to illustrate the extent of the problem. Victim survey data are then used to supplement this picture and to assess the differential risk suffered by different types of hotels. However, despite the extent of crime against hotels, data from structured and semi-structured interviews demonstrate that hoteliers do not perceive crime as a particular problem. The paper thus concludes by discussing the implications of this for crime reduction and community safety initiatives.

Safer Guildford

There has been an increasing trend in recent years for public agencies to work in partnership with each other and with commercial organizations, which has presented special managerial issues and problems. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 gave the police and local authorities a statutory duty to work in partnership in order to promote and improve community safety. One such partnership is Safer Guildford, which was formed before the legislation came into force and which consequently already had a range of community safety initiatives in place. However, the partnership still had to comply with the new legislation and had to conduct an audit of crime and disorder in its area and publish a strategy for dealing with it. By examining the progress of Safer Guildford using a management perspective, a number of lessons can be drawn that will inform the future management of community safety partnerships.

Beyond ‘community’ safety? The new governance of public safety in Europe

This article sets the scene for the contributions in this special edition of Community Safety Journal. It examines the political contexts of community safety initiatives, compares transatlantic and European traditions and discusses convergent and divergent themes.

Critically Reviewing the Theory and Practice of Secured-by-design for Residential New-build Housing in Britain

The UK government has projected a need for some 4.1 million homes by 2021 (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999a) and a stated policy objective of achieving 60 per cent of new-build housing on ‘brownfield’ sites (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999b). The government is clearly committed to ‘designing out crime’ (Department of the Environment, 1994; Crime and Disorder Act 1998), and this paper explores the secured-by-design schemes (SBD), one of the most important community safety initiatives available to planners to assist in achieving these complex aims. The rise in premises liability cases (Hanson, 1998) and the Human Rights Act 1998 illustrate the increasing importance of tackling such issues. A critical review of both the theory and practice of SBD is presented as it applies to the new-build residential environment in the British city. The implications of reviewing SBD's theoretical basis and its application are discussed.