Preventing Crime & Creating Safer Communities
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Crime Prevention Information & News

CLD conference practice workshop: Henry Shaftoe and Steve Osborn, 10 Feb 2000.

Community Involvement in Crime Prevention asset or liability?

Sustainable reductions in neighbourhood crime and insecurity are best maintained if local people have been involved in defining the problems and "owning" the solutions.

Traditionally crime control was seen as a job for the police. However, there has been increasing recognition in government and even amongst the police themselves, that citizens have a key role to play. This role can be performed in three different ways, as outlined in the diagram below:

fig1

These three approaches are not mutually exclusive and, over time, one type of action may transform into another. For example an issue campaign instigated by local residents frustrated by the proliferation of drug misuse in their neighbourhood may lead to them setting up their own drugs information and support network, which could then lead to collaboration with the local authority/health authoritiy drugs prevention strategies.

Community involvement in crime prevention has large potential assets, but there may also be liabilities from a professional and rational viewpoint.

The potential assets are: better information (local people are experts on some aspects of local problems and trends), sustainability and "ownership" (local people live with the problems, so are inclined to stick with the solutions and make sure they work), and participation in action (local people may be involved in delivering the solutions, eg: mentoring and training).

The potential liabilities include: delay (community participation is always time consuming), the risk of sectional domination (adults over young, included over excluded etc.), lack of knowledge of what works (eg: the regular demand for more police and faster response times which do not, according to available evidence, lead to reduced crime), bigotry (black people, single parents etc. are to blame), expense (of surveys etc.) and more complicated implementation (involving local people).

In view of the above liabilities, it is maybe understandable (although not excusable) that professionals in the police and local authorities are inclined to pay (at best) lip service to community involvement. They then backslide into traditional "command and control" responses, which generally lead to short term projects and quick-fixes, as they do not have the staff resources to embed crime prevention into permanent functions.

Unfortunately, the democratic party political process at both central and local government levels also undermines any attempts to achieve crime and disorder reductions through community participation, because, as stated above they are slow, expensive and only lead to long-term payoffs. Elected members favour quick visible results amenable to photo-opportunities and claims for re-election.

In the long term, the assets of community involvement outweigh the liabilities, and this message has to be conveyed to professionals and politicians alike.