Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

This report describes the results of an examination of problem-solving in crime reduction conducted by the Home Office Policing and Reducing Crime Unit (PRCU). Information for the study was collected as part of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) thematic study of Crime Reduction, ‘Calling Time on Crime’. It involved responses to questionnaires and visits to police forces. For each of the 43 forces in England and Wales, HMIC collected together a range of documents relating to their policies and provisions for crime reduction.

Title: Not Rocket Science? Problem-solving and Crime Reduction
Author: Time Read & Nick Tilley
Series: Home Office Crime Reduction Research Series Paper 6
Number of pages: 62

Background

Forces completed a questionnaire asking about their overall approach to crime reduction and questionnaires describing four successful and four unsuccessful problem-solving initiatives. The initiatives questionnaire asked for information about the focus of, participants in, methods used in, management of, and results achieved from individual problem-solving initiatives.

The HMIC inspection team undertook weeklong visits to twelve forces, conducting interviews and focus groups at headquarters and three Basic Command Units (BCUs) in each of them. Researchers from PRCU went to the headquarters of eight of the twelve forces visited for inspection, and to two BCUs in each of them. The PRCU team discussed problem-solving with headquarters and local area staff. The aim of this part of the inspection was first, to identify the level and nature of support for and participation in problem-solving and second, to find out more about significant enablers and inhibitors of rigorous problem-solving. In each force visited PRCU also interviewed those involved in two of the initiatives that had been deemed successful, and one that had been deemed unsuccessful, examining the work undertaken in some detail.

Research findings

Analysis of the returned initiative questionnaires found that while the initiatives covered a range of problem types, the commonest targets for problem-solving were burglary, vehicle crime, drugs, and youth. While there appear to have been improvements in the thoroughness of problem-solving since HMIC’s ‘Beating Crime’ inspection (published in 1998), there was still a great deal of room for improvement. In particular, there was little evidence of quantitative analysis in the questionnaire returns, and evaluation continues to be a major weakness.

The report identifies a number of initiatives as problem-solving successes. Three are described in detail; methadone dealing and drug related deaths, youth disorder on a housing estate, and unruly children in a park.

On the basis of what was found visiting initiatives that were deemed successful, the following general lessons for problem-solving emerge:

1. Detailed analysis is needed to help define problems in ways that open them to creative responses. Traditional police definitions of problems are not always the most helpful.

2. Detailed analysis needs to be directed at ‘pinch points’, i.e. at the weakest necessary conditions for the problems to persist.

3. Site specific analysis of problems is needed to select responses that are relevant to local circumstances.

4. In selecting responses it is crucial to work out in detail how they are expected to produce their intended effects.

5. Community consultation and involvement is important to identify interventions that will elicit the co-operation and involvement of residents that is often needed if measures are to be effective.

6. The establishment of multi-disciplinary/multi-agency teams facilitates problem-solving, especially for large-scale issues.

7. It is not always in the interests of those best placed to make changes that reduce problems to do so. It may be necessary in those circumstances to find and apply incentives or levers.

More generally, the following are needed to encourage and enable problem-solving: 

• A committed, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and involved leadership

• Practical help and advice in planning and doing problem-solving

• Data, analytic software for analysis and competent analysts

• Information, training and experience to inform problem-solving

• Methods to disseminate good practice

• Structures to encourage problem-solving

• Units or task-forces dedicated to specific areas of problem-solving

• Staff allocated on the basis of their aptitudes

• Rewards to incentivise problem-solving.

The report also identifies a number of unsuccessful problem-solving initiatives. Amongst the factors associated with problem-solving failure were weaknesses in identifying the problem, in the analyses of the problem, in working out what to do, in work with partners, in implementation, and in drawing lessons from previous experience.

The following factors were deemed to obstruct problem-solving:

• Weaknesses in analysis and shortage of analysts

• Limitations in data sharing and data quality

• Inadequate use of crime reduction specialists

• Inadequate time set aside for problem-solving

• Exclusive focus on local, low level problems

• Crudely operated performance management arrangements

• Inattention to, and weakness in, evaluations of problem-solving efforts

• Inadequate involvement of partnerships in problem-solving

Conclusion

Overall the report concludes that, despite the almost universal espousal of problem-solving by the police service, high quality problem-solving is still exceptional. Promising examples of small area crime and disorder problem-solving could be found in most forces, yet even here high quality, dependable outcome evaluations were rare. There was little broad-based problem-solving.

Most took place at the ‘sharp end’ of operational policing, and tended to focus on the offender. Similarly there was only a little anticipatory problem-solving. The report concludes with a ‘problem-solving checklist’ to enable forces to assess their current performance.

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