Memorandum submitted by David Ottiwell,
Greater Manchester Community Safety Partnership Team
KEY INDIVIDUAL
NETWORKS
A Key Individual Network, or KIN, is a community
engagement mechanism advocated by the Association of Chief Police
Officers and now being embedded into CDRP practices across the
country.
The ACPO doctrine states that a key individuals network
is a core group of local people who live, work or regularly pass
through a neighbourhood. By the nature of their place or function
in the local community, KIN members will be particularly in tune
with the latest developments in their neighbourhoods. They are
the people who can bring together the community intelligence we
need to act on local concerns and provide reassurance to communities.
The application of the theory underpinning KINs can
vary from area to area, and certainly this is the case within
Greater Manchester. The fullest available online resource, giving
both an aspirational model for working that is partially implemented,
and a host of practical resources for neighbourhood based staff
is available at the website for the Safer Bolton Strategic Partnership
at Bsafe Online.
This essentially describes some of the key steps
that have been taken in one CDRP to "operationalise"
the concept of KINs, with particular reference to the collation
and analytical interpretation of the valuable community intelligence
these individuals can provide for problem solving and crime reduction.
Some examples are:
(i) the authoring of a succinct questionnaire
to be repeated with KIN members covering perceptions of criminal,
social and environmental "signal" crimes and disorders,
as well as perceptions of local services and of community cohesion.
(ii) the use of handheld mobile technology by
PCSOs to streamline data collection from KINs to drive analytical
reports for decision makers, and findings sheets for the communities
themselves.
(iii) the creation of a KIN member database to
manage the process across 33 neighbourhood areas in terms of ensuring
engagement "gaps" are identified and addressed.
Community priorities are identified through
this methodology. The information from KINs is considered in conjunction
with information from a range of other sources, for example from
less structured engagement processes similar to those under the
banner of PACT ("Partners and Communities Together")
which is an engagement model blending community group engagement
with street surgeries and PCSO visibility pioneered in Lancashire
Constabulary.
MAPPING DATA
ON THE
NEEDS OF
OFFENDERS
Mapping of offender based information provided
by both the Probation Service and local Youth Offending Teams
is commonplace within Greater Manchester. In both cases, the technique
is focused on taking advantage of rich, quantitative data collected
by case management professionals in the course of undertaking
assessments of risk and harm for sentencing purposes and the supervision
of community based sentences. Data is collected at the individual
level in relation to 12 thematic areas, covering current and prior
offending, and a range of "criminogenic risk factors"
ranging from accommodation issues, to education training and employment,
substance misuse, thinking and behaviour and financial management.
The data is highly compatible with current thinking around resettlement
"pathways" identified in the core policy around reducing
reoffending. The innovative use of the information in Greater
Manchester is to retain the geographic information pertaining
to offender home addresses to give the information, at a strategic
level, a meaningful geographic dimension—building a picture
of offender risk factors at neighbourhood level in particular.
A full treatment of the work undertaken is printed
in Crime Mapping Case Studies: Practice and Research Spencer
Chainey (Editor), Lisa Tompson (Co-Editor), Wiley 2008. Apologies,
I do not possess an electronic copy of the full, finalised chapter.
However, an uncorrected proof prior to publication is attached.
(Not printed.)
SALFORD COMMUNITY
COURT
Queries have been made of local practitioners
in Salford to determine in greater detail the means by which the
local magistracy, and particularly the bench at the community
court serving the Eccles neighbourhood management area (initially
and now the whole of Salford) are engaged by CDRP staff and kept
informed of community concerns.
The processes currently in place include:
(i) Whilst sensitive intelligence continues to
be discussed for tasking and coordination functions in delivery
of the National Intelligence Model in closed meetings (as alluded
to during the oral evidence session), magistrates are invited
along with locally elected representatives to a monthly Partnership
Delivery Group which covers salient thematic areas of crime and
disorder, with a focus on prevention, enforcement and intelligence
gathering interventions at the neighbourhood level.
(ii) Training for magistrates is provided by
CDRP agencies locally, to improve awareness of local arrangements.
For example, the Probation Service conduct regular inputs to explain
the nature of multi-faceted community orders, and accompany magistrates
on site visits in relation to unpaid work.
In relation to issues raised regarding the difficulties
in the sharing of information and partnership working with the
Courts and the extent to which Courts have been engaged with the
mapping projects—whilst not being based at Salford, ongoing
dialogue with the Greater Manchester Local Criminal Justice Board
highlights that currently manual and semi-automated processes
are relied upon to facilitate the sharing of court results between
courts and the police. This does not always make it possible to
track a narrative for a particular offender or crime from arrest
to sentence outcome and beyond. Bichard 7 is a solution that will
take court results entered onto court computer systems and automatically
update the Police National Computer in a fashion that will improve
this situation significantly. However, issues could potentially
remain in that the PNC downloads for analytical purposes are far
from straightforward at the local level.
The extent to which Courts have been engaged
in mapping projects in Greater Manchester is questionable currently
in my personal view, and I would attribute this, as stated whilst
giving evidence, to the fact that in Greater Manchester as in
many other areas the profession of crime analysis has the most
secure foundations in Police Forces, not other criminal justice
agencies. Thus, the practical professional skills around the use
of Geographical Information Science (GIS) are well bedded-in in
GMP and local authorities, in criminal justice agencies this is
not necessarily so. Without an in-house expertise and regular
exposure to the merits of mapping techniques, it is all the more
difficult to engage and do business via this medium.
Mention was also made during the giving of oral
evidence to a fantastic opportunity which is beginning to develop
in Greater Manchester, led not by this team but by the Local Criminal
Justice Board. The opportunities relate to the effective use of
information shared across service providers in populating a CJS
"Waterfall diagram", which identifies and quantifies
process inefficiency and "unacceptable" outcomes in
the end-to-end criminal justice process.
An excellent summary presentation is attached,
taken from the OCJR web pages. (Not printed.)
PROBLEM SOLVING
CRIMINAL DAMAGE
IN BOLTON
The Committee is interested to understand the
potential for justice reinvestment in local areas based on the
local analysis of need. The Committee is also interested to see
how the benefits have been proven or weighed up in the context
of mapping local issues. In Greater Manchester, the damage the
Safer Bolton Strategic Partnership have had recent local analysis
of criminal damage recognised nationally, in being short listed
alongside Safer Merton (London) and West Yorkshire Police for
the Tilley problem solving awards. The awards were set up in 1999
by the Home Office to publicise the use of problem-oriented approaches
to crime reduction and what can be achieved by tackling crime
in a different and more strategic way.
A summary of the work undertaken is attached (Not
printed).
A fuller treatment, in the form of the original
submission for the award, is also attached. This gives full disclosure
of information sources used, techniques applied, and crucially
the results achieved—since 2006-07, criminal damage has
reduced by 13.4% across Bolton and by 21.5% in the seven priority
areas identified in the analysis where the majority of activity
has taken place. The assessment has identified specific interventions
that have had a direct impact on levels of criminal damage, and
identified the crucial importance of working in partnership in
an evidence based way to bring about the crime reductions (Not
printed).
MISCELLANEOUS
p 40: Do you have anything further to add to Q292
in terms of the barriers you've encountered in turning the mapping
evidence into changes in policies or priorities?
The issues on moving beyond maps "bearing
witness" to maps "driving activity" primarily revolve
around leadership and buy-in to the concept of using technology
and spatial evidence to make big resourcing decisions. The main
barrier to achieving this would be a lack of confidence amongst
managers that they can engage with analysts and "commission"
their work effectively—which is about training, and something
that the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science caters for in terms
of courses offered—but is otherwise not championed or subject
to much guidance from the government.
p 41: Has local partnership working in GM been
strengthened by the introduction of LAAs, shared targets and strengthening
of CDRPs? How can the mapping and local development work of GMAC
inform wider national policy and practice?
A massive question and one I would struggle
to answer confidently purely based on my own perceptions as an
Information Manager. Certainly what I would say in response is
that the shared targets of the LAA can find tangible expression
spatially through maps, where the overlaying of information at
small area level is an enormously powerful way of demonstrating
that across an LSP, the key challenges are very often concentrated
in the same geographic areas. The Index of Multiple Deprivation
is the best expression of how a composite series of indicators
binds partners together, when dealing with community safety in
tight focus or the much broader remit of sustainable communities.September
2008
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