2 Keeping the trend of violent crime
falling
6. The Department had not fully implemented the
commitments it had made in response to the recommendations made
by our predecessors in 2005 about its support to Crime and Disorder
Reduction Partnerships (Partnerships) (Figure 2). The Department
acknowledged its slow progress, and has started to tackle the
key issues affecting Partnerships of funding, data-sharing, and
spreading good practice. However, it agreed that it still had
significant progress to make in each of these areas.[7]
Figure 2: Home Office Progress on Implementing Treasury Minute Commitments
to the Committee of Public Accounts in 2005
| HOME OFFICE COMMITMENTS TO THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS IN 2005 IN THE TREASURY MINUTE
| C&AG'S REPORT'S EVALUATION OF PROGRESS IN 2008
|
| Good practice is being shared through the Home Office's website, regular newsletters, workshops and seminars.
|
The Home Office's performance at spreading good practice had been mixed.
|
| The Home Office is committed to bringing about substantial improvements in the capture, evaluation and promulgation to Partnerships of information about what does and does not work in community safety.
| |
| The Home Office continues to provide support and advice to Partnerships on the implementation of crime reduction projects. This includes the work of Research Development and Statistics regional staff in providing increased analytical and research capacity.
| Partnerships did not have the capability or capacity to analyse the root causes of violent crime and potential solutions fully.
|
| The Home Office is making funding announcements as early as possible and has reduced the limitations on Partnerships about how money is spent. In providing greater freedoms and flexibilities to Partnerships to use their budgets to support local crime reduction initiatives, the Home Office is seeking to further reduce the burden on them.
|
Home Office funding to Partnerships continued to be on an annual basis and often arrived part way through the financial year. The effectiveness of violence reduction activities at a local level was significantly diminished by the Home Office's poor administration if funding streams.
|
| The Home Office seeks to make funding announcements as early as possible, and to reduce the limitations on Partnerships about how they use this money.
| |
7. Given Partnerships' dependency on departmental funding,
it was disappointing that funding to Partnerships continued to
be late and short-term. Partnerships were often notified late
into the financial year as to how much they were going to receive.
When funding arrived, it often had conditions attached to it about
how and when it could be spent. From April 2008, the Department
placed its £9 billion annual funding for police forces on
a 3-year basis. Violence reduction funding to Partnerships, however,
continued to be distributed annually because the Department intended
to use it as a vehicle to either illustrate good practice or to
act as a catalyst for other sources of funding for reducing violent
crime to which Partnerships may have access.[8]
8. Short-term distribution of funding to Partnerships
undermined the effectiveness of national initiatives to tackle
violence. Funding had been spent more on managing the consequences
of violence, than planning to tackle its root causes. Some 20%
of Partnerships reported that they spent additional Home Office
violent crime funding on police overtime, 15% on victim support,
and 14% on CCTV. Funding uncertainty also endangered effective
procurement of services from the voluntary sector to tackle especially
sensitive violent crimes, such as domestic violence.[9]
The Home Office undertook to provide most funding for tackling
violence distributed to Partnerships on a longer-term basis.
9. The Department had built upon good practice
nationally in tackling domestic violence, and has spread information
about successful domestic violence interventions, such as the
women's safety unit in Cardiff. 27% of Partnerships considered
domestic violence measures initiated and promoted by the Department
to be one of the changes in the last five years which had most
improved their ability to tackle violence. However, the Department
had not been as successful in spreading good practice in reducing
other types of violent crime. Only half of Partnerships considered
the Home Office to be effective in spreading good practice about
tackling violence more generally.[10]
10. Departmental initiatives had targeted gangs
but the Department failed to demonstrate a clear understanding
of the reasons why youths joined gangs. In 2007, the Department
responded to gang activity with the Tackling Gang Action Programme,
which focussed £1.4 million on intense anti-gang activity
in certain areas in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester.
This Action Plan resulted in a series of recommendations about
tackling gang violence, including the protection of witnesses.
At our hearing, the Department speculated about why young people
join gangs, but it could not produce evidence of the effectiveness
of different interventions to prevent them doing so in the first
place.[11]
11. The Department had not taken even the most
basic steps to promulgate Safer School Partnerships. The Safer
Schools initiative enabled the police to intervene at an early
stage with children at risk of becoming victims of crime or offenders.
In launching Safer Schools, the Department, together with the
former Department for Education and Skills (the predecessor to
the Department for Children, Schools, and Families), purposely
left development of the initiative to local practice. As a result,
central government was not able to support individual schools
in overcoming the opposition that schools faced to locating police
officers on their premises. The Department accepted that it had
made a mistake in not promoting Safer Schools more effectively
from their launch in 2002. It did not have accurate figures for
the number of Safer Schools, the different models being employed,
or their impact upon crime in their communities. Estimates suggest
that fewer than 10% of secondary schools in England and Wales
are Safer Schools. Acknowledging their value, the Department committed
to collect data on Safer Schools in partnership with the Department
for Children, Schools and Families.[12]
12. The 2003 Licensing Act gave local authorities
powers to reduce the risk of violent crime, but not all areas
used these effectively. The Act allowed local licensing authorities
to place conditions on the licenses of drinking establishments
in order to reduce crime and disorder. In Cardiff, one bar had
a range of conditions placed upon its license, such as the number
of door staff, CCTV cameras, and the type of drinking vessels
used. Following the introduction of these conditions, the bar
experienced an 88% fall in recorded crime. Extending licensing
hours had not led to an increase in alcohol-related violence,
but fewer than half of Partnerships considered the Act to be effective
in tackling the violence that did occur. Some areas were taking
a more systematic approach to using data about violent crime in
and around licensed premises to inform the conditions they imposed
upon alcohol licences.[13]
7 Qq 10, 29 Back
8
Qq 30, 32, 65, 147 Back
9
C&AG's Report, paras 2.30-2.31 Back
10
Q 8 Back
11
Qq 96, 98, 108-110, 151-154 Back
12
Qq 4, 35-36, 65-71, 140, 143-145 Back
13
Qq 21-22, 81 Back
|
