Rural Crime
Practical Initiatives to Fight Rural Crime
Amongst practical measures already put in place on a partnership basis to help prevent and reduce rural crime, “Watch” schemes (including Farm, Horse, Country and Poacher Watch) are of particular value. These may be supplemented by such measures as property marking, the erection of warning signs and insurance discounts for security measures.
There are over 500 Farm Watch schemes covering offences from theft of equipment to rustling. While these have not been formally evaluated, results have been encouraging. The annual Neighbourhood Watch Awards include a rural award (which went most recently to a Farm Watch scheme in Durham).
CCTV schemes devised by local partnerships may be thought of as essentially an urban or inner-city initiative. The bidding guidelines (Link to CCTV initiative guidance) been changed to give more emphasis to rural areas and projects addressing crime and the fear of crime in rural areas are encouraged in Round 2 of the initiative.
Of first round bids against the £153 million made available by the Government for CCTV systems, 3 out of the first 35 approved were identified by the local partnerships as covering rural areas. These initiatives included such features as mobile cameras and control centres to cover rural areas and the extension to villages of town CCTV systems already in operation.
Other possibilities that partnerships might wish to consider include:
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schemes for the provision of centrally-linked alarms to pensioners and vulnerable persons living in isolated areas;
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fixed or mobile one stop shops (possibly based on existing travelling library schemes) to give access to a range of services;
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regular, periodic “surgeries”, making use of facilities such as church and village halls;
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provision for young people to help prevent them from drifting into anti- social and criminal behaviour through boredom or need - eg, a cheap dial-a-ride service to increase accessibility of facilities, including those in neighbouring towns;
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keeping rural schools open into the evenings and at week-ends to provide facilities for clubs, etc;
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young people’s projects (eg motor projects) on unused or disused sites such as old airfields.
Click here to view this initiative from the 'Ideas Exchange'.
Last update: 10/09/03