The Act contains 121 sections that cover a whole range of changes to the criminal justice system as never seen before. It has three main goals, which are to; introduce local crime and reduction strategies; dealing with young offenders; and the new powers offered in relation to youth crime and youth justice. An underlining theme of this Act is to ensure the community, through the creation of a ‘Responsible Authority’, become one of a number of partners who actively participate in reducing crime in their neighbourhood.
The responsibility to decide upon local crime reduction priorities historically lay with the Police. The involvement of the community is now well established through the three staged Crime Audit process that the Act has introduced. Stage one puts a requirement upon the ‘Responsible Authority’ to actively gather local crime and antisocial behavioural information that is present within their community through partnership with other statutory and voluntary agencies. The rationale being that an analysis of this information would identify the main themes.
Stage two is a simple process of publishing the results and one of consultation with the community to invite their views on the findings. With stage three being the production of a locally based crime and disorder strategy. This sets the communal priorities for the next three years, based on the overall findings. The key to this whole process is the open and effective exchange of information between all partners and the statutory requirement for the audits to be done every three years. This process of ensuring that the community are better informed in respect of their crime and anti social behaviour issues, should ensure that the ‘Responsible Authority’ are directing all partners in the right direction most of the time.
‘As the audit and strategy formulation process must be repeated every three years it is necessary to learn from the first round in order to inform the next round in 2001/2’. (Phillips, Considine and Lewis 2000)
This process is pivotal to the success of the strategy and as such we have to ensure that it is completed correctly and fully. Loveday (2000) has seen that not all partnerships are fully committed and as a consequence are not gathering their evidence correctly. These difficulties are perhaps understandable when the police who would be more comfortable with this type of evidence-based approach are not always taking the lead. If the evidence is not gathered because the process is not conducted properly, the partnership will not always be working towards the needs of the community.
Loveday has also noted that there has been reluctance on the part of some partners to contribute fully. The NHS trusts and local education authorities have exhibited the belief that they do not have the resources to commit to the crime audits and also had grave concerns with regards to professional standards and data protection issues (Loveday, 2000). The publication of documents, which highlight the failings and internal problems within schools, may also have an adverse affect. The underlying need for all to contribute openly is required if crime and disorder reduction partnerships are to be effective. This resistance on behalf of some not to contribute, or contribute fully, will lead to an obvious problem immediately, If they don’t all participate how can we get it right.
Such a sweeping piece of legislation, which introduced a new method to be adopted by so many different agencies and organisations, should have been complemented with some form of basic training. This may have helped alleviate problems in the evidence collection process of the crime audit, explained the need for all to contribute fully whilst at the same time lessoning the anxieties of those who saw the avalanche of government intervention and new legislation increasing their work load to a point where partnerships perceived that they would be unable to cope. A further difficulty in inter agency cooperation was the need for partners to overcome the issue of language within their own organisations. ‘Police speak’ for example, incorporates a whole host of terms and abbreviations that would not be understood by those outside of the service. The Home office evaluation in 2000 found that there were wide variations in understanding precisely what the terms used by the respective agencies actually meant. This could become of critical importance as partnerships began to ‘jointly commission, disseminate and publish documents’ (Home Office 2000).
This process is still evolving and some of the issues raised thus far have highlighted some of the initial difficulties that the partnerships have found in conducting the crime audit process. This said there are a number of obvious benefits. Quite obviously by open and honest consultation with the community will allow all access to better information. Local people who form part of the community can be experts in some aspects of local problems and trends. They are, in reality, experiencing them at first hand. Sharing ownership with local people, who live with these social problems, will lead to shared responsibility and sustainability, making them more inclined to stick with solutions and ensuring they work.
One of the central elements of this legislation is the shift in emphasis in terms of crime control reduction. Traditionally this has been seen as one of the core responsibilities of the police, who have long argued that it could not expect to do so alone.
‘We will only be successful in reducing crime, tackling the fear of crime, and bringing more criminals to justice if the police service can work effectively in partnership with many other agencies. This is a key part of our wider agenda for social regeneration and building a civil society’ (Home Office, 2001).
This has been addressed with the police now only being one of the ‘Responsible Authorities’ and not the sole ‘frontline’ exponent in this field. Another major change in relation to policing has been the introduction of the National Policing plan, one of the provisions of the Police Reform Act 2002. What does this mean in terms of policing, other than the shift in emphasis in terms of crime prevention? Historically, the policing commander, in response to crime figures from the previous year, would decide upon local policing priorities. The introduction of the National Intelligence Model now requires a local strategic assessment to be conducted. The results of which allows for the production of a local control strategy. The local strategies feed into a force assessment that in turn produces a force control strategy. This process is replicated at a regional and national level. It is the control strategies that should decide the local, force, regional and national police priorities and objectives.
The introduction of a National Policing Plan allows central government control in deciding local and force wide policing priorities. Central government direction in this area can cause conflict with the local crime reduction process. Mr Blunkett's common use of setting crime reduction targets for particular offences places the whole process and ethos of local partners dealing with local problems in turmoil. Central targets override local ones and are in places largely irrelevant to the communities. It is also a diversion from the long-term solutions in place as part of this social crime reduction response, in that in order to achieve centrally imposed short-term objectives, such longer term initiatives would be abandoned. This was highlighted with the ‘Street Crime Initiative’ in 2002, where forces selected to take part were forced to cut street crime by 50%. ‘Whether or not street crime was an seen as a problem locally, police forces involved in this central initiative quickly concluded that it had become one’ (Loveday and Reid, 2003).
This was exasperated by the introduction of over fifty new targets for the police, as part of the new police performance monitoring requirements set by the Police Standards Unit. These again will not always be in line with local crime and disorder reduction partnerships. A dissemination of budgetary control, in relation to crime reduction funding, from the Home Office to local police commanders seems to ensure that local policing priorities will be geared more towards central governments targets (National Policing Plan), rather than locally (CDRP) agreed ones.
The introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act has laid the foundations for what is the most comprehensive and joined up approach to crime prevention and reduction that has ever existed. The combination of social and situational interventions should deal with local problems in a way, which allows for long-term solutions, in line with reducing crime and the fear of crime. This exemplified no better than, in the work that is ongoing in gathering local information via the crime audit. What better starting point is there, than knowing exactly what and where our real problems are. This will allow for some very innovative thinking and the development of locally shared solutions to these problems. The transfer of authority and the legislative framework, which exerts central control, is needed to ensure all parties commit the time effort and resources to make the process work. Short-term failings that have been identified have, or are in the process of being, overcome. The dedication to do so has probably required this central bearing and control.
However, it is my assumption that by insisting that the police service implement centrally informed targets that are in conflict with locally identified needs, places the whole process in jeopardy. By taking responsibility away from the police and sharing it with others through a process that ensure they all embark on a joint course of action is to be welcomed. But to then direct funding to the police locally and impose central initiatives and performance targets upon them, that are contrary to what has been identified and, more importantly, decided upon locally, will isolate the police and cause mistrust and division. It will be seen as the police service still trying to control what occurs here and even not contributing to local delivery of the crime and disorder partnerships programmes. This is quite obviously not the case. The crime audit process should allow for the formation of better informed policing plans, as the police will have access to residents surveys, probation, employment, health and education data. The audit cycle will provide a framework that would allow for greater evaluation of strategies, measure more accurately the impact of crime, the cost and the effectiveness of reduction measures, which in turn should make policing far easier and more efficient. Instead, it is my view that central crime reduction and performance targets do not inform local initiatives; they are in fact in conflict with them.
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Taken from www.crimestatistics.org.uk