Crime Reduction & Community Safety: Strategies and Impact

This study delves into the topic of crime reduction and community safety, focusing on various aspects such as crime recording, strengths and weaknesses of police recorded crime and CSEW, impact on victims and communities, community policing, multi-agency policing, and evaluation of crime reduction strategies. It provides insights into the strategies used to reduce crime and ensure community safety, along with their effectiveness.

UNIT 8: CRIME
REDUCTION &
COMMUNITY SAFETY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
UNIT 8: CRIME REDUCTION & COMMUNITY SAFETY TABLE OF CONTENTS...................1
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
Section – 1............................................................................................................................................3
Crime recording by police and its comparison from CSEW............................................................3
Analysis of Strengths and weaknesses of police recorded crime and CSEW in measuring crime
rates..................................................................................................................................................3
Section – 2............................................................................................................................................4
Impact of crimes on victims and communities.................................................................................4
Multi agency policing and its benefits.............................................................................................5
Section – 3............................................................................................................................................6
Evaluation of effectiveness of national and local crime reduction strategies towards community
safety................................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Crime reduction and community safety is majorly associated with the police department of
the concerned jurisdiction. Police officers operating in the particular region are responsible for
ensuring that there must be appropriate strategy towards reducing criminal acts in place in order to
reduce crime in that particular region (Geldenhuys, 2018). This can be done through enforcing the
laws and regulations made by the government towards protecting and ensuring safety of the
community. In the present report, in the context of UK, it will be explained that how crimes are
recorded, adoption of community policing philosophy and various crime reduction strategy and
their effectiveness are explained.
Section – 1
Crime recording by police and its comparison from CSEW
Home secretary requires police constables in England to provide crime related statistical data in the
prescribed form. For this an independent body known as Crime Statistics Advisory Committee has
been formed in 2012, following the suggestions of National Statistician’s Review of Crime
Statistics. CSAC, is a body at higher level meant for advising ONS and HMIC on specific matters
related to how crime should be measured, collected and presented for England and Wales. The data
so recorded by police related to crimes must be in adherence to the section 44 of the Police Act
1996 and accordingly known as notifiable crime (Mummolo, 2018). The first principle that has
been followed by police authority is to register the report of crimes from victims, witnesses or any
third party. As and when the victim reports to police regarding any kind of crimes, the police
officers are required to record the crime on the basis of victim’s statement to the police. The two
prior conditions for recording crime is the situation so reported must be identified by police based
on their knowledge of the law that it must be accounted as a crime along with reasonable evidence
for the same.
CSEW is a face to face survey where residents of England and Wales area asked about their
experience of any form of crime in the preceding 12 months. So, CSEW records both types of
crimes, that is, reported and unreported and thus utilized alongside the police recorded crimes to
obtain more comprehensive picture. It aims to measure the extent of crimes by interviewing
residents regarding their experience of the crime, such as assaults and burglary and drug offences.
The survey provides valuable information by measuring the nature and extent of crimes in England
and Wales. However, the survey majorly records unreported crimes, thus unable to provide perfect
and complete figures of the crime. The basic purpose of CSEW is to facilitate national level analysis
while police recorded crime is meant for facilitating regional level analysis of the crime. It provides
for better indicator of trends over long term with reference to the type of crime associated with the
concerned population as it is independent of the police recording practices of crime.
Analysis of Strengths and weaknesses of police recorded crime and CSEW in measuring crime rates
Two sources for recording crimes which can be compared with each other are used within UK in
order to measure the rates of crime. Police recorded crime includes offences that are notifiable
committed over a certain period of time within the region under the constable officer. Here the
crime statistics are obtained, collated, analysed and presented through official publications in the
year. On the other hand, second method for recording crime is CSEW is a form of statistical
research, established with purpose of having complementary system beside police records. It serves
dual aspects that is, collecting intelligence of public regarding various forms of crimes and their
views related to judicial system (Hunter, May and Hough, 2017).
Strengths of police recorded crime

 Considered to be easier and good measure of crimes both at regional and national level.
 Low cost of obtaining and publishing information just related to analysis and evaluation.
 Trends and hotspots associated with crimes can be easily identified and tackled accordingly
to assess and manage risks.
 It indicates the level of performance of police constable throughout the country.
 It helps in identifying the need of placing patrolling officers by recognising the area of
highest criminal cases.
Weaknesses of police recorded crime
 The crime is not recorded until and unless it is reported and classified as criminal case.
 It excludes from recording minor crimes and offences such as theft and drug offences.
 It creates discrepancies while analysing data between police recorded crimes and British
crime survey or CSEW.
 The uncovered crimes may lead to rise in such form of criminal acts causing unfavourable
impact on society.
 Many time false recording take place in order to meet administrative targets which results in
misleading information to society.
Strengths of Crime Survey for England and Wales or CSEW
 CSEW data are independent of government reports and also not affected by the changes in
crime reported and documented.
 This method of surveying is flexible and cover wider population (Pasha,2018).
Weaknesses of CSEW
 it is a very costly affair in terms of man power, time and resources required to conduct
successful survey.
 It excludes from recording commercial and heinous crimes like murder.
 Also the information so collected through this method is from general public, which creates
problem of ensuring personal honesty and insights and leads to false information.
Section – 2
Impact of crimes on victims and communities
Impact on victims
There are multiple effects of crime on victims which may be short term or long term. Effects of
crime can be categorized into many categories like mental, social, physical, psychological and
financial impacts. Some of the common impacts are as follows:
Loss of faith in society: The individual who has experienced a crime may loss trust in community
or social group or place of crimes. Shock of crime may last for short term but the trust loss lasts for
many years (Ceccato and Paz, 2017).
Guilt development: A sort of guilt usually gets developed in an individual that they could have
avoided such occurrence of offence even if it is not at all possible.
Permanent incapacity: sometimes physical injury either severe or minor which may have its
impact over long time and even may cause permanent incapacity.
Psychological impacts: Like fear, depression and anger, this may last for short term but in many

cases it takes a long term impact like sleeplessness, constantly reliving threatening event including
flashbacks and anxiety.
Social effects: changing lifestyle and avoiding the context in which the crime has taken place like
not going to certain location or place(street). Some social effects even disrupt the earning potential.
There are common instances of workplace offences. It may be both long term or short term
(Armitage, 2018).
Consequential impacts: changes in perception that the crime will occurred again. There is always
possibility of re-victimisation causing higher vulnerability to crime.
Impact on community
It should be kept in mind that such crimes are not meant for affecting only victims but also
their families, colleagues and friends known as indirect victimisation. Also, it can be said that such
crimes have impact on the whole community of the victim. Some form of high profile crimes, like
multiple victim molestation would definitely have an impact on all the members of the community.
Many crimes like kidnapping, drunk driving crashes and sexual assaults must have a wider impact.
Many communities have initiated the use of community victim impact statements to identify the
impact of crime. Such statement helps judge in court for considering the wider impact of crime
rather than considering impact on primary and secondary victims only (Hunter, May and Hough,
2017).
2. The community policing is commonly used by people in the public safety sector. It refers to
a philosophy of law enforcement which is meant for allowing officers to functions continuously on
the same area, with the aim of creating strong bond with the citizens or people living or working in
that area. Through this policy, officers in the public safety sector allows for engaging themselves
with local people in order to avoid any kind of crime from occurring rather than responding to
crime once they have occurred. The main focus of this strategy is to build relationship with the
community members. Here the concern individual for practicing this philosophy is police officers
who focuses on building and maintaining stronger relationship with the motive of identifying and
finding appropriate solutions that may be faced by communities if the same will not be identified in
advance.
There are many benefits of having an effective structure of community policing:
 Citizens will have more friendly and optimistic views of the police department of their area.
 There seems improvement in trust between citizens and law enforcement.
 Adequate and accurate information can be obtained from residents related to the criminal
activity connected with their area.
 A good and reasonable understanding can be developed regarding the needs and
expectations of the community from the police department of their area (Braga and et.al.,
2019).
Legislations associated with community policing
In order to achieve the objectives of community policing, it is required from police officers to
identify and satisfy the needs of the community it is responsible to serve. With the growth and
diversification of the British community, in order place to enforce various laws in the society, there
are various patrols that must be in place to meet the needs and expectations of the community.
Patrols like, foot patrol, mounted horse, air units, marine units and vehicle patrols. Through
programs and patrols, the various law enforcement can become easier and facilitate the adoption of
community policing philosophy.
Role of public services in community safety and crime reduction
 Public service officers are responsible for providing education related to safety and security
measures to residents and media (Ratcliffe, 2018).
 they must take reasonable steps for promoting the development of safety for community.
 Aid provision to victims and resolving disputes and conflicts associated with the

community.
Multi agency policing and its benefits
Multi agency approach gain popularity due to the application of the same towards anti- social
behaviour along with the issues and tensions that occur in the at large. Multi agency approach was
introduced for crime reduction purpose, where it has been proposed that there must be tie up
between local government and police department of the area. The emphasis gets increased with the
election of new labour government in 1997, as they are more concerned about the crimes and causes
associated with it. This leads to implementation of national standards, audits, performance targets
and control of professional autonomy along with ensuring effective use of available resources.
It is a form of arrangement for public protection requiring police, prison and probation services to
work jointly as an authority responsible for protecting public interest in the various region of
England and Wales (Crawford and Evans, 2017). The purpose of this arrangement to facilitate the
early identification, assessment and management of risks posed by potentially violent and
dangerous persons. So, it can be said that such cooperation among agencies facilitate reduction in
risk of cases escape from the safeguarding system, thus helps in early prevention from occurrence
of crimes and offences.
There are many benefits associated with the adoption of multi-agency policing approach. They are
as follows:
 Early identification of risks: While working through a multi-agency approach, police can
with the help of services from partners can identify various risks associated with the
residents and can even take preventive steps in collaboration with their agency partners. This
would definitely helpful in reducing crimes and residents can be protected accordingly.
 Improved information sharing and publishing: This allows police to obtain relevant
information from partners in case of multi-agency policing, and also make other’s
responsible for taking up the responsibility of what is not coming under their criteria (Tilley
and Sidebottom, eds., 2017).
 Joint decision making can be achieved due to better understanding between
professionals.
 Coordination in taking action to assess, manage and reduce the risks: Everything cannot
be possible to be done by a single body. The same is true in case of police officers. So
through the strategy of multi-agency policing, coordination can be formed between different
partners to take appropriate actions towards reducing risks through timely assessment and
management of risks.
 Higher efficiencies in resources and processes: When more than two body work together
towards fulfilment of individual objectives, this would definitely help in achieving
efficiencies and effectiveness.
Section – 3
Evaluation of effectiveness of national and local crime reduction strategies towards community
safety
Crime reduction strategies are built with the help of research and modern techniques which have
made changes to the way one think about how crime can be prevented. The various drivers of crime
identified are profits, effectiveness of justice system for crime, opportunity, drugs and alcohol. It
acts as an action of government and law enforcement body towards reducing criminal acts.
Local crime reduction strategy

Target hardening and removal: Target hardening refers to making the access of offender harder
towards the property in order to ensure that the target property cannot be viewed or found out by the
offender (Crowl, 2017). This includes the removal of all those means that acts as an encouragement
in committing an offence.
Effectiveness of the above strategy are as follows:
 Target hardening and removal can be helpful in making the access of offender impossible.
Like for example upgrading the locking system of doors, windows and outbuildings and
password protected account can be helpful in making online accounts inaccessible to
offenders.
 Target removal strategy educates that one should not kept valuables at a place which can be
easily viewed from windows. For example, when people on their online accounts various
information about their current status, this leads to facilitation of locating an individual to
undertake a crime, so target removal strategy can be applied for being cautious in many
cases.
National crime reduction strategy
A new approach towards fighting with crimes has been introduced in UK, to cater to the needs and
expectations of the residents in terms of their protection from crime reduction strategy of the
government (Lawson, Rogerson and Barnacle, 2018). The strategy is: giving higher level of
autonomy to police and their partners in carrying out their jobs as per their discretion.
Effectiveness of giving higher autonomy to police officers are as follows:
As police are considered as the representative body of the government and their power in front of
the citizens, so giving them autonomy in performing their duties allows for effective tackling of
crime and offences in an impartial way. Public judgement towards police authority can also be
improved and leads to enhancement in their success.
Police officers and constable associated with the particular jurisdiction have more knowledge of
their resident’s behaviour. So they are capable of handling criminal cases associated with their area
in a much better way.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that, how appropriate judicial, policing and
crime reduction strategies in place can be helpful in preventing and reducing crimes in the
jurisdiction under the particular police department. From this report, it has been learnt that how
community policing and multi-agency policing are helpful and aid in functioning of the police
department with higher effectiveness and efficiency. Also various strategies adopted for the purpose
of crime reduction in UK are helping in reducing and preventing criminal acts.

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There are many benefits of having effective