Active Active Communities
Getting Involved: Investing in your Community
There is a lot you can do outside your home and family to prevent crime. You can take action by getting together with other people and working in partnership with the police to reduce crime in your area. You can help in simply being alert and observant when out and about in your neighbourhood – or you could apply to join the Special Constabulary. Anyone can play some part, however great or small.
Neighbourhood Watch
Neighbourhood Watch schemes are a way for people in an area to get together to help prevent crime and make their neighbourhood a safer place. Neighbourhood Watch is known as Home Watch in some areas, but both work along similar lines and are built on the same idea – of looking after one another and the neighbourhood.
How does it work?
Groups can vary in size, depending on the area and what people want. They target local concerns – like burglary, vandalism or graffiti and devise ways of dealing with them. Individual members decide how active they want to be in the scheme. You could become a committee member or co-ordinator of a group – or your part could be just keeping an eye on your neighbours’ houses while they’re away.
Schemes develop close links with the police, who can provide advice and information about local problems. Well-run schemes can have a big impact on local crime.
Contact the Crime Prevention Officer at your local police station for details of groups running in your neighbourhood, or visit the Neighbourhood Watch Website.
Street Watch
You could also consider joining or setting up a Street Watch scheme – a new idea to use your eyes and ears to help the community. Neighbourhood Watch crime prevention activities are usually centred around people’s homes and the immediate surrounding area. Street Watch is a separate scheme to take this a step further. In agreement with local police and local people, members work out specific routes and regularly walk their chosen area.
How does it work?
Street Watch members are ordinary citizens with no police powers. If they spot anything suspicious, all they are asked to do is report it to the police. They can also give active support to vulnerable people by offering transport or escort on foot. Groups are managed by a co-ordinator who keeps a list of volunteers and provides advice, guidance and support – in consultation with the local police. Street Watch can help reduce crime because members actively use their local knowledge when out and about in their neighbourhood.
Street Watch Guidelines
A set of guidelines for Street Watch activity has been agreed with the police – you can get a copy from your local police station. The guidelines include a basic set of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’, which warn against intervening in an incident. ‘Look, listen and report’ – but don’t ‘have a go’ and always stay within the law.
Other ‘Watch’ schemes
Watches need not be confined to residential neighbourhoods. For instance, Business Watches can be very effective in the high streets and industrial estates. Farm Watches can encourage farmers to keep an eye on one another’s livestock and machinery. Boat Watches can greatly improve the security of marinas and harbours.
Neighbourhood Constables
Neighbourhood Constables are a variation of the existing Special Constables, who are police-trained, uniformed volunteers, with the same powers as a regular officer. Their duties are varied and they can be asked to work anywhere in their police force area.
In contrast, Neighbourhood Constables only work in a specific area – their own neighbourhood, so they become a regular figure on the local scene. In rural areas they may be called Parish Constables, but the idea is the same – to provide more police on the beat, with all the advantages a police presence brings.
Their main duties are foot patrols of a neighbourhood area. Neighbourhood Constables also keep in regular contact with community groups. Neighbourhood Watch and Street Watch schemes, schoolchildren and local traders – promoting initiatives, helping groups and offering advice.
If you want to join
Contact your local police or call 0345 272 272 for a Specials information pack – and note ‘Neighbourhood Constable’ on your application.
Crime Prevention Panels
Crime Prevention Panels are locally organised groups who work in partnership with the police to identify local crime problems, and initiate local crime prevention measures to deal with them. Panel members are usually local Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators, teachers, local business people or local media representatives. All bring their own particular area of expertise to the work of the panel.
Panel activities are generally related to particular crime problems in the area. Panels will draw up a programme of work, and implement appropriate measures, eg fundraising to pay for security devices for elderly people’s homes or organising a car window-etching campaign. Panels can be started by the local police, local business people or community groups.
Youth Action Groups
These are the young person’s version of a crime prevention panel. They are usually attached to a senior panel, or a local school, and deal with areas of crime which are most likely to affect young people such as drug abuse and shoplifting.
Contact the Crime Prevention Officer at your local police station for details of groups in your area.
Volunteering
Many voluntary organisations and community groups support and develop crime prevention initiatives in local communities. They are always on the look-out for fresh volunteers and extra help. Even an hour or two each week can make a real difference.
Your local Council for Voluntary Service (CVS) will be able to give you information about volunteering opportunities in your neighbourhood. Details in your local library, Citizen's Advice Bureau or contact:
The National Association of Councils for Voluntary Service (NACVS),
3rd Floor,
Arundel Court,
177 Arundel Street,
Sheffield.
S1 2NU
Tel: 0114 278 6636
Website: http://www.nacvs.org.uk/
Last update: Wednesday, August 13, 2008