Community consultation

An important component in crime and disorder reduction is informing and liasing with the public over proposed partnership initiatives. The partnership should consider the following approaches for invoking community input into the targeting of crime and disorder reduction resources to focus areas.

• Public consultation and presentations that help identify the problems which need tackling and offer a forum for community contribution

• Web based information dissemination of crime and disorder reduction initiatives

• Local media presence, taking advantage of opportunities to publicise ‘good news’ stories

• Local crime and disorder newsletter, describing crime and disorder trends and current and new initiatives for reducing community safety problems.

Partnerships should be aware of the thin dividing line between being insensitive in the information that is published and providing the level of detail that prompts proactive support that helps to enable public involvement. Partnerships are encouraged to release crime and disorder maps and tables to the public but should consider the following.

• Only show crime or disorder trends over a period of months rather than days in order to divert attention from any single offences

• Categories of crime should be aggregated together in order to divert attention from any particular type of offence.

Local communities are often aware that certain areas have a crime or disorder problem. Local authority resident attitude surveys reveal that the fear of crime is a major concern to local people and that service spending to tackle community safety problems is often placed higher than education, traffic congestion, housing and care for the elderly as the top service to which more resources should be directed. If the partnership can identify in detail those areas where people suffer most from being the victims of crime, this alone can demonstrate the way in which the partnership agencies are working together to reduce crime and disorder problems.

Click here for an example of Informing the community in the London Borough of Brent.