Creating Safer Communities in Europe: a crime prevention sourcebook

In England and Wales the co-ordination of crime prevention is the responsibility of the Home Office's Crime Prevention Unit. In addition, a large number of studies into crime prevention and related issues have been conducted by the Home Office Research and Planning Unit and, more recently, the Police Research Group. One of their most important ongoing research programmes is the British Crime Survey, which periodically interviews a large representative sample of the population for the perceptions and experience of crime. The Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office have also funded separate research and programmes on crime prevention, primarily through the Estate Action Programme.

The main crime prevention contribution from the Home Office has been through the Safer Cities Programmes, which in financial terms has been relatively small scale and the level of grant has recently been further reduced. Safer Cities projects are now managed by three national agencies. The projects work at local authority level with an advisory steering group and a small grants programme and staff. They aim to initiate or support crime prevention initiatives which have been prioritised either by locality (a high crime neighbourhood) or by theme (e.g.: tackling juvenile crime or burglary). At any one time there will be twenty such programmes in England and Wales. Each Safer Cities programme lasts for three years at which time the grant expires, although the expectations are that some of the work will continue through other means, as a result of the programme's "exit strategy".

Funding has also been made available for local partnerships to tackle urban delinquency through the Government's Single Regeneration Budget. As the name implies, this is a fund to which local authorities and other area-based consortia can apply to assist in the comprehensive regeneration of an area within a town or city.

Residents of Sydenham, a large local authority housing estate in the south west of England, have been actively involved in a major programme of social, physical and employment revitalisation for their area. Professional community workers were briefly contracted to help establish a residents' steering group, carry out a household survey and hold a series of public meetings, including consultations with young people. The results of all this activity were fed into a (successful) bid to the Government's Single Regeneration Budget. The residents then worked with specially appointed officers on a large range of projects including: new play and youth facilities (including a cafe/drop-in centre), a family centre, advice centre, training programme (including training for employment in local housebuilding), security fitting and environmental improvements.

A further development has been the establishment of a "capacity building organisation" called Crime Concern. This is part funded by central government but most of its work comes from local authorities. Its remit is to promote crime prevention good practice at a local level, based on a multi-agency model.

In 1993 the Government established a National Crime Prevention Board consisting of representatives from the police, local authorities, the business and voluntary sectors together with representations from all the relevant Government Departments. It has established several working groups to look at youth crime, car crime and crime against businesses.

A recognition of the links between drug misuse and crime has influenced, to an extent, the Government's response to the growing illicit drug problem. A Central Drug Prevention Unit is located within the Home Office. This Unit funds small Drug Prevention Teams which work at Regional Health Authority level and operate in a similar way to the Safer Cities projects.

For some considerable time local authorities have made an important contribution to the reduction of urban delinquency. The Juvenile Justice Sections in local authority Social Service departments have provided support to children in trouble with the law and to their families. Housing departments have also made efforts to change the physical environment and to introduce new management arrangements such as estate wardens and concierges in multi-storey blocks as means of enhancing neighbourhood security.

Sometimes housing managers, social workers and health workers, and occasionally even police, operate from the same neighbourhood office. In Swansea this local management approach has been taken to its logical conclusion with block managers and estate wardens.

At an approximate annual rate of 12 crimes per 100 population, the South Wales Police Force Area, which covers Swansea, has one of the highest crime rates in Britain.

The Swansea City Council owns 15,000 homes which are rented to tenants. These homes consist of a mixture of houses and apartments, mostly in estates on the outskirts of the city, but with some more central tower blocks.

The scheme in Swansea has evolved gradually over ten years, starting with an experimental block manager which was extended to other areas and then a pilot introduction of estate wardens to complement the work of the housing service on large estates.

Swansea Council Housing Department appointed its first block manager in 1985, to look after a multi-storey housing complex called Jeffrey's Court, which had a bad reputation, was unpopular with tenants and was in a poor physical condition. The job description of the Block Manager was deliberately vague, with the intention that the range of duties would evolve through experience. Unusually for Britain, the Block Manager lived on site and was expected to be on call 24 hours a day and at weekends.

As the maintenance of the block improved the Block Manager found himself tackling new problems at all hours of the day and night. He responded to burglaries and suicide attempts; tenants often left their rent payments with him and he was involved in allocation interviews for prospective tenants. The success of this pilot scheme led to the appointment of Block Managers to live in and look after a number of other multi-occupied housing developments in the city.

There are now 13 Block Managers (renamed "Residential Housing Managers") in Swansea, each one resident in the neighbourhood they are responsible for, with an on-site office. In some cases they cover several blocks or streets and have a more detailed management remit. They use mobile telephones when patrolling and have a closed circuit television monitor to watch the entrance area from their office, where they sit at peak times (morning and late afternoon). When they are in their apartments they can still watch the entrance, using the closed circuit camera linked to a spare channel on their domestic television.

Block Managers wear uniforms for recognition and patrol their blocks from time to time to reassure residents and to ensure that everything is in order. This concept of patrolling to ensure neighbourhood safety was the starting point for another scheme in Swansea to look after one of the Council's low rise housing estates - the Estate Wardens. These uniformed employees of the Housing Department are the "eyes and ears" of the estate management system - they patrol the estate so as to be aware of general conditions, to identify potential problems and to ensure the security of individual properties. They act as a local link between residents, the Housing Department and the police, reporting emergency repairs, vandalism, rubbish, abandoned cars and criminal behaviour. Through their continuous presence on the estate, they aim to deter theft and vandalism, and to be the first point of contact in neighbour disputes and estate disturbances.

After its first year of operation, the Block Manager scheme at Jeffrey's Court was evaluated through a survey of residents. This survey showed overwhelming support - out of the 125 tenants interviewed, only one thought the scheme was not a good idea. Everyone else agreed that the flats were cleaner, more secure and virtually free from vandalism. The tenants pointed out that if the scheme was to be expanded (as it was) it should only be introduced after consultation with residents in the blocks under consideration.

The Swansea City Council charges an extra £1.50 on the weekly rent for tenants who are benefiting from the Block Manager service, and to ensure that residents are satisfied they carried out an evaluation survey. This showed that, since the installation of Block Managers, 80% of affected tenants had noticed a decrease in vandalism, 73% said that there were fewer problems with graffiti and 96% stated that general conditions on the estate had improved.

The remarkable success of the Block Manager scheme is substantially attributable to the zeal and devotion of the staff appointed to these demanding posts. It seems to help that they are residents in the blocks they look after and that they are given considerable devolved responsibility for the management of "their" block, including security, welfare, lettings, repairs reporting and rent collection.

Ironically, the scheme is not unlike the traditional French "concierges". In Britain it is most unusual to have people looking after rented blocks who actually live there themselves, but the Swansea scheme shows the value of this in terms of commitment by the personnel involved and their obvious accessibility to other tenants.

Local authorities are the only fully democratic local service providers and councillors are well aware of the significance of crime to local people. In addition, the services which local authorities provide can have a substantial impact on crime levels.

Recently local authorities have been looking beyond their traditional responses to urban delinquency. Many local authorities now take a corporate approach by locating one or more specialist officers, often called community safety officers, in a central department to co-ordinate the council's relations with the police and its response to crime in general.

Multi-agency partnership arrangements now exist in many towns and counties in England and Wales. These tend to take the form of top level, strategic panels composed of representatives from the local authority, the police, voluntary organisations, local businesses and the probation service.

New government legislation requires local authorities, in conjunction with the police, to devise and submit annual community safety plans for their areas.

Britain has a reputation for concentrating on "situational" crime prevention, i.e.: reducing the opportunity for criminal activity by changing the physical environment, or the "pay-off" (e.g.: by property marking) for the offender. This approach has led to a great number of studies by the Home Office Research and Planning Unit into highly specific situations, such as the use of CCTV to reduce crime.

King's Lynn is a small market town in the east of England. It has a resident population of 33,000 and serves as a regional centre for a large rural area. It would not immediately appear to be the type of place that has a substantial crime problem, and indeed the Police force covering King's Lynn only has an average recorded crime rate. However the problem of security on an industrial estate and town centre crime, particularly in car parks and around the shopping centre, prompted the town administration into finding a radical solution.

In the early 1980s an industrial estate within the town boundary was plagued by theft and vandalism, to the extent that businesses were leaving and it was impossible to attract new ones in. In 1986, as a desperate measure, some video cameras were installed, and almost immediately, the crime problem was dramatically reduced. Encouraged by this, the Town Council decided to extend the video surveillance scheme to the central shopping area and car parks. Installation of this was completed in February 1992, and the scheme has subsequently been extended to cover a housing estate close to the town centre, a hospital and a recreational area. Currently, 60 black and white video cameras are operational in King's Lynn. They send their signals via fibre optic cables to a control room in the centre of the town. Here the images are monitored on 14 split screen monitors by an operator employed by a private security company. The control room is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The operator can control the cameras by moving them up and down, side to side and zooming them in and out. All the images are continuously recorded on to video tape and it is possible to print out still photographs from any of the images being received by the monitors. The operator has a direct video and telephone link to the police station.

The most spectacular effect of the King's Lynn CCTV system has been in the reduction in theft of and from cars in the central parking areas. In 1991 the police recorded 207 such incidents; in 1992, after the CCTV had been installed, the figure plummeted to 10 and in the subsequent two years it has remained below this.

Of the types of offences detected, the system has had most success with (in descending order of detections): shoplifting, drug offences, theft and burglary, urinating in public, and criminal damage (vandalism).

This scheme has had undoubted success in reducing certain types of crime in central King's Lynn and is generally approved of by the town's residents. However, there are some concerns about this, and other video surveillance schemes:

As similar schemes blossom elsewhere, the concerns expressed above will need to be addressed by policy makers.

Britain's reputation in developing situational crime prevention tends to be contrasted with the social crime prevention strategy found on the continental mainland. It is true that there is a difference in emphasis, but this should not obscure the fact that there is a wealth of innovative social crime prevention activity taking place, particularly under the aegis of progressive local authorities.

When considering urban delinquency, the onset of a criminal career can often be predicted (see Farrington 1996). Therefore, preventative work can be targeted at the appropriate age groups, within a neighbourhood. These will tend to be either types of family support, school-based programme or extra leisure, youth club or training provision.

A more recent theme has been the identification of repeat victimisation risk as a principle around which to organise crime prevention. The argument is that "victimisation concentrates not just upon particular geographic areas and particular social groups, but on particular individuals". Examples of crimes where this applies include domestic violence, racial harassment and burglary. It is argued that crime prevention activity can be targeted most effectively by concentrating support on the victim after his/her first experience of crime, rather than other strategies which diffuse effort. This argument is advanced by the Home Office and does have advantages including a sound research base. However, a major drawback is the citizen's justified sense of injustice in that s/he must first fall victim to crime before being offered crime prevention support.

Crime Prevention Unit, F10 Division, The Home Office, Queen Anne's Gate, London SW1H 9AT. Tel: (0)171 273 3000.

Home Office Crime Prevention College, The Hawkhills, Easingwold, York YO6 3EG. Tel: 01347 821406.

Community Safety and Crime Prevention Open Learning Programme, Faculty of the Built Environment, Frenchay Campus, Bristol, BS16 1QY. Tel (0)117 9656261 ext 3082 Fax (0)117 9763895 Out-of-hours Tel+Fax (0)117 9246279. Email henry.shaftoe@uwe.ac.uk.

Crime Concern, Signal Point, Station Road, Swindon, SN1 1FE Tel: (0)1793 514596 Fax: (0)1793 514654.

Safe Neighbourhoods Unit, 1st Floor, 16 Winchester Walk London SE1 9AG Tel: (0)171 4036050 Fax (0)171 4038060.

Page last updated: 6 May 2004

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