Community Safety Partnerships Research Articles

The Safer Sutton Partnership Service: Blueprint for the Future?

The Safer Sutton Partnership Service (SSPS) is a unique partnership between the London Borough of Sutton and the Metropolitan Police Service. It brings staff together within a single structure and provides services in the field of community safety, and tackling drugs and alcohol abuse. This paper looks at the history of SSPS and its likely future in the light of the continued reduction in resources, the community safety fund no longer being ringfenced and the election of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). It concludes that this could lead to fundamental changes in police structures and behaviour, e.g. the possibility that some PCCs could be tempted to seek political popularity and reelection by giving lower priority to community safety partnerships, on the grounds that solving crime is more popular than preventing crime. Based upon SSPS’ success over many years, the paper aims to show that partnership services such as SSPS give extremely good value for money and their use should be extended rather than curtailed.

External validation of the Cardiff model of information sharing to reduce community violence: natural experiment

BackgroundCommunity violence is a substantial problem for the NHS. Information sharing of emergency department data with community safety partnerships (CSP) has been associated with substantial reductions in assault attendances in...

Targeting prolific and other priority offenders and promoting pathways to desistance: Some reflections on the PPO programme using a theory of change framework

The Prolific and Other Priority Offender (PPO) programme was introduced in 2004 to target the most prolific and persistent offenders within Community Safety Partnership areas. Based on identifying offenders through local crime analysis, intensive supervision and targeted intervention, evaluations have shown promising results. By using a ‘theory of change’ approach as an analytical framework and a local PPO project as a case study, this article begins to question whether the rationale behind the PPO programme can be viewed as ‘plausible’, if key strands of implementation are ‘doable’ and if the desired outcomes are ‘testable’. The article argues that although the rationale for the PPO programme might be plausible, doubts are raised over its likely impact on local crime rates and the extent PPO projects might be able to target prolific offenders effectively. Finally, it suggests that although testable outcomes can be established, the extent to which the programme has enhanced our understanding of desistance is questionable.

Situating community safety: Emergent professional identities in communities of practice

Community safety has often been studied from an institutional perspective as an important adaptation to late modernity, or from a practice perspective as a set of professional activities that are of especial interest because they are developed across institutional boundaries, through partnerships. This article will introduce Wenger’s communities of practice perspective in order to demonstrate how both of these strands of research need to be understood together. Drawing upon an empirical study of the development and working of community safety partnerships in Scotland it will explore the ways in which professional identities and practices around the concept of community safety have been negotiated through practitioners’ participation in emergent communities of practice that need to be understood within the particular institutional, social and political contexts that frame them. It will be argued that to understand practice as ‘situated’ in Wenger’s terms is to acknowledge the dynamic and mutually constitutive relations that connect institutions and lived experience. Such an analysis suggests that there is much transformative potential in partnerships, and that theorizing on broad national and international trajectories of transformation needs to be tested through the study of locally negotiated practice.

Building safer communities: Knowledge mobilisation and community safety in Scotland

This article examines the contribution of a knowledge mobilisation project to the practice and delivery of community safety in Scotland. There is no statutory responsibility for the delivery of community safety in Scotland and no governmental definition of its object. The longstanding and emergent challenges faced by community safety partnerships in Scotland, however, mirror those encountered in other jurisdictions. The Building Safer Communities project, through a range of capacity building exercises inclusive of the development of web-based resources and the establishment of practitioner fellowships, sought to address some of the information and training needs underpinning these challenges. The establishment of this initiative rested in its timeliness in relation to broader policy and practice developments, established academic-practitioner partnerships and its resource base. The outcomes (the engagement with knowledge mobilisation resources and their impact on practice) and sustainability of this endeavour, however, are subject to the very same challenges that provoked its establishment.

Lose your bottle: young people and alcohol

When a problem with underage drinking in the seaside town of Hastings was highlighted by an analysis into public place violent crime, the local community safety partnership ‐ the Safer Hastings Partnership ‐ turned to 175 local young people to ask them directly about their experiences and perceptions of underage drinking and antisocial behaviour. The findings were both enlightening and concerning, but have enabled more effective enforcement activity and have led to local young people themselves using the findings of the consultation to develop educational resources targeted at their peers.

Making community safety work for Scotland

In 2007 the new nationalist Scottish Government delivered its first budget and 3-year spending plans and set out the terms of new relationship with local government. This ‘Concordat’ included a...

Fife Cares

‘Fife Cares’ is an integral part of Fife Community Safety Partnerships work to improve the safety of vulnerable residents and deliver the community safety outcome Fewer injuries and losses of...

Developing an offender problem profile

Community safety partnerships have a new statutory duty to reduce reoffending. A key stage in developing a strategy to do this is to understand the problem. The development of offender problem profiles will be an important part of the process. This article, drawing on experience from local partnerships, discusses how partnerships might go about developing offender problem profiles.

Direct elections and the local governance of crime in the United Kingdom: A view from the ground

In the latter half of 2008, proposals emerged from the Home Office for the creation of a completely new elected office in England and Wales, the Crime and Policing Representative. These were to be directly elected and would chair Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) in England and Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) in Wales, as well as automatically become members of the police authority. However, before the proposals were even debated in parliament they were dropped because of concerns extremist parties may win them. This article presents findings from interviews with a range of councillors, police officers and other officials working with or for CDRPs/CSPs in a representative mix of authorities. It shows that although extremist parties winning were a concern there were many more compelling reasons to reject this policy. The article ends with a brief discussion of alternative proposals that could be considered.

Crime and Disorder Act Review 2006: implementing the findings

This article concerns the implementation of the proposals from the Crime and Disorder Act Review. The Review focused on developments in policy and practice in crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) and community safety partnerships (CSPs) since the introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act (1998). These developments, the recommendations promulgated by the Review and their implementation are all discussed.

Losing the Plot? Researching Community Safety Partnership Work Against Domestic Violence

Abstract: This article considers the role of feminist community activism and academic research in the context of contemporary crime reduction policy. We draw upon experiences and knowledge gained from our involvement in comprehensive evaluation studies of community responses to domestic violence against women (in two areas of the South East of England) completed in 1996 and in 2004, before and after the present government's crime reduction initiatives. We consider the perils and prospects for academic ‘experts’ and feminist activists, of the increased emphasis on ‘what works’ in crime reduction, and the development of new technologies of control, especially in the areas of risk management and performance and monitoring.

Flotilla or armada? Interpreting the practices and politics of three Community Safety Partnerships

This paper is concerned with the practices and politics of three community safety1 partnerships. Community safety has been developing in England and Wales since the late 1980s, but was recently formalized by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Police Reform Act 2002. The paper is based on observation of meetings and interviews undertaken in three partnerships between April 2002 and February 2004. I assess the utility of the typologies employed by Liddle and Bottoms, and Belbin, and argue that they cannot take account of changes in the socio-political context of the CSPs. Instead, the paper develops a nine-pronged typology, based on a nautical analogy, which takes account of the likely impact of changes in governance, managerialism, funding and performance monitoring arrangements. The nautical analogy implies that roles and responsibilities within the CSPs are in need of reform and that there are continuities and changes within the CSPs, which are illustrative of the shift towards late modernity. In addition, the analogy suggests that CSPs are more of a collection of loosely affiliated agencies, that is, a flotilla rather than an armada.

Standing at the crossroads: Community Safety Partnerships

Standing at the crossroads: Community Safety Partnerships

Intelligence Led Policing, Managerialism and Community Engagement: Competing Priorities and the Role of the National Intelligence Model in the UK

This paper revisits the earlier claim of one of its authors that a fundamental shift is taking place in policing towards a strategic, future-oriented and targeted approach to crime control—broadly represented in the concept of “intelligence led policing” (ILP)—built around analysis and management of problems and risks, rather than reactive responses to individual crimes. Some doubt may be cast on this view by recent government promotion in the UK of “reassurance” and “neighbourhood” policing, which prioritise responses to community fears and perceptions (rather than analysis of “objective” crime data), and through drives to improve detection rates in reactive investigations. However, ILP need not be understood narrowly in terms of proactive operational methods based on police intelligence, and is not necessarily incompatible with these new concerns. The National Intelligence Model (NIM), now adopted by all police forces in England and Wales, offers a framework of business processes for the management of policing priorities of all kinds: it can incorporate the perspectives of partner agencies and local communities, and can set parameters for reactive as well as proactive responses to crime. The structured use of analysis within the Model potentially takes full account of these factors, yet retains an essentially evidence based process of decision making and prioritisation, as well as a “forward looking” focus on threats to community safety. It may also in time facilitate closer integration of police and Community Safety Partnership processes. This represents an ideal rather than a present reality, and there are major risks to its realisation, including police cultural attitudes and misunderstanding, over-dominance of centrally set targets, and “silo thinking”.

Evaluating Community Safety Programmes and Community Engagement: The Role of Qualitative Methods and Collaborative Approaches to Policy Research

This article explores the role of qualitative and collaborative methods when undertaking evaluation research into local community safety partnerships and neighbourhood strategies. It draws on recent examples of research and evaluation studies of regeneration and community safety programmes in a number of cities and towns in England. The discussion is set against the background of the major changes in policy relating to crime and community safety, particularly the introduction of Crime and Disorder Partnerships and their engagement with local communities. The value of qualitative methods in exploring some key questions is discussed, particularly within a collaborative approach to policy research.

The development of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and the implications for community safety

The emergence of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) represents a major restructuring of the criminal justice sector which, in time, is likely to have a significant impact on the community safety field. New approaches to commissioning services, the management of offenders and the potential for a service more strongly focused on community interventions all present challenges and potential opportunities for community safety partnerships and partners.

Crime Prevention/Community Safety Partnerships in Action: Victorian Experience

IntroductionPartnership forums have become the accepted mode of strategy development and program delivery in the field of crime prevention and community safety internationally (Crawford 1998a; Crawford & Matassa 2000; Hughes 1998, 1996; Walters 1996; Sutton 1994; van Dijk 1991; Wikstrom & Torstensson 1999). The partnership model is underpinned by the key assumption that community safety by its nature is a multi-faceted problem and beyond the capacity of any single agency to address. Partnerships are understood as affording an holistic approach to crime and safety, with responses being problem-focused rather than bureaucratically-premised, allowing for the co-ordination and sharing of effort, expertise and information and the pooling of resources (Crawford 1998a; Gilling 1993, 1994, 1996; Rosenbaum 2002).An extensive literature already exists on the operation of community safety and crime prevention partnerships, with a number of key elements identified as determining the effectiveness of partnership forums. For example it is important that partnerships have unambiguous objectives and a sense of focus, with participating agencies clear about their inputs and responsibilities and what they are required to contribute to the partnership and resulting strategies. To ensure partnerships are open and transparent, formal processes of conflict management should exist. Dedicated support by a co-ordinator, as well as adequate resourcing is also vital in sustaining partnerships. Given partnerships are supposed to be problem focused they need access to good quality data and protocols for information sharing. Members should ideally be drawn from senior levels, so that partnerships possess authority to influence the strategies and practices of their respective agencies in line with partnership recommendations. Finally, there needs to be commitment and consistent participation by all members.This article discusses and analyses the operation of community safety partnerships initiated under the Victorian program Safer Cities and Shires. It looks at how they operated and aims to identify factors that impacted on the dynamics of local partnerships. The author argues that broader State government policy and action (or inaction) undermined the effective operation of local partnerships formed under Safer Cities and Shires. The lessons from this case study highlight that without commitment to the devolution of resources, authority and decision-making powers, partnerships will struggle to effectively deliver State-wide policies on crime prevention and community safety.

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.

Joined-Up Government, `Community Safety' and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender `Active Citizens'

Joined-up government, modernizing government, community safety and multi-agency partnerships are explored here in an attempt to understand the contemporary `policing' of hate crime; in this instance, crimes and incidents motivated by homophobia (and transphobia). In the first half of the article, the focus is on the social and political context of the emergence of `participatory' modes of government and multi-agency `community safety' policing in response to the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and the 1999 Local Government Act. In the second half of the article, the focus will be on the multi-agency response to homo-phobic and transphobic incidents and the policing of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) community in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. In this case study, the main assumptions behind the attempt to create lgbt `active citizens' and `active communities' (active in their own policing) in Southampton, in particular, will be critically evaluated. The main points that will be raised here are: 1) the multi-agency response to homophobic incidents in Southampton prioritizes, first, improving efficiency and raising awareness in the agencies and services that are in contact with the lgbt community, and, second, opening lines of communication and building trust between police and the organizations and agencies `representing' the lgbt community; and 2)empowerment programmes such as these should not be taken at face value, but must be critically examined in relation to some of the following questions: who is and who is not being invited to be the active `lgbt' citizen here? And does the lgbt community's right to fair, sympathetic and equitable policing bring with it hidden and costly responsibilities?