Audits & Audits & Strategies Toolkit
Audits Findings section
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Here are some suggestions for information that you could include under the heading 'Findings' in your audit.
You should use a problem solving approach to produce your audit and strategy and use the Findings section to present the results of your audit including:
You should also consider:
Problem solving approach
You must apply a problem solving approach to the audit and strategy process.
Tell me more about problem solving approaches
Find more information about problem solving approaches in Part 2 of the Passport to Crime Reduction
These problem solving tools have been used effectively in crime and disorder fields. For the most part, they are generic and may be applied in the development of misuse of drug audits. However, the Communities against Drugs Toolkit and Tackling Drugs Against Neighbourhood Renewal provide information on ways to analyse misuse of drugs problems and their impact on the community. You will also find a number of other useful documents at the Communities section of the Tackling Drugs Website.
Initial 'broad and shallow' analysis
You should include an initial 'broad and shallow' audit of the partnership area to form a picture of the nature and scale of crime and misuse of drugs problems to:
provide the overall context for the audit
act as a guide to determine the themes and areas that require more detailed analysis
Tell me more about the areas that can be covered by 'broad and shallow analysis
Summary of main findings in an appropriate format
You should summarise your findings in an appropriate format and consider:
Presentation of data
You should include a direct description of the data and an analysis of the relationships that exist between the data. You can summarise data in the form of statements, tables, figures, graphs, maps and/or other types of presentation.
Tell me more about how to present statistical data
Key statistical measures used to collect crime and disorder data include:
Volume (number of crimes)
Incidence ( number of crimes per head of population)
Prevalence ( proportion of the population victimised)
Concentration (average number of victims in a given area)
Percentage change between 2 time periods
Good data presentation is essential. Graphs, tables and charts must be labelled correctly with:
a title
labels on the axes
data sources
the timescale covered
a suitable scale
a legend, where required
the number of cases on which it is based
Don't fall into the trap of presenting rather than analysing data. Simply listing tables of crime incidents is not be useful. The purpose of including data is ultimately to contribute to appropriately targeted strategies and action plans
Time periods covered
Your data should be as up to date and complete as possible and you must be explicit about which year's data you are using.
The publication date of 1 April 2005 for the next strategy round means that you may not be able to include complete data for the year 1 April 2004 - 31 March 2005 so you may want to concentrate on collecting data for the years:
2001-2
2002-3
2003-4.
You may have access to data after April 2004 and even if the data is not complete, you can still make comparisons with the same period in the previous year. Be cautious when you are using incomplete data and be clear about which time period the data you are using covers. You should try to use data from various agencies that covers the same time period.
Spatial analysis
Mapped information can help you to convey a great deal of information on crime levels and misuse of drugs, trends and hot spots efficiently.
You can conduct spatial analysis at a number of levels:
Hot spot
Enumeration district
Police beat
Estate or neighbourhood
Ward
Local Authority area
County
Here is an example of the type of map you could include:
Combining separate data sets in a mapped form can help you to investigate the characteristics of a locality and highlight high need areas. However, producing pages of mapped crime data will not necessarily help - the key is to analyse the data and link your analysis to your strategy.
Find out more from the Jill Dando Institute's Become a Problem-Solving Crime Analyst
Benchmarking
When you analyse crime and disorder problems, it is good practice to compare or benchmark your data. You can do this by:
Setting any data used into context against:
national data
regional data
county/area data
police force area data
Home Office family group data
This can be done in a table or graphical format.
The Performance Management Framework (PMF) for the National Drug Strategy (NDS) will do this although you may also choose to benchmark against local non key performance indicator data.
Here is an example of a benchmarking table
Example of a benchmarking graph:
Comparing current data with data from the previous audit and considering any changes
Using data relating to distinct areas within the partnership to give some insight into whether any displacement or diffusion of benefits has occurred as a result of a specific intervention
Key problem issues/areas identified
You should use your 'broad and shallow' analysis to point towards key problem issues or areas that require further investigation.
Consider these simple questions to help you focus any further analysis:
Can you group any information into themes? Using themes in this way is more meaningful and helps to avoid 'silo' thinking
How can you explain the emerging themes?
Do you understand how or why the problem has occurred and what is driving it?
Conduct a 'narrow and deep' in depth analysis
When you have identified your broad priority themes and areas, you should use the results of your 'broad and shallow' analysis to inform a more in-depth analysis. You may also carry out a more detailed spatial analysis of a small area at this stage. Do not make your analysis too complicated - focus on the key issues identified.
Tell me more about areas that can be covered by 'narrow and deep analysis
You should include:
Temporal analysis by:
time of day
day of the week
month of the year
When you do this sort of analysis, you must make it clear how it has informed the development of the subsequent strategy eg an increased police presence at peak times of offending
Here are some examples of temporal analysis.
Example 1:
Domestic burglary in Anytown 2002-3 by month
The graph below depicts monthly domestic burglaries in Anytown during 2002-3. It shows that the peek month for burglaries was November closely followed by December, with the lowest month being October.
Example 2:
Domestic burglary in Anytown 2002-3 by time of day
The graph below shows the time of day at which burglaries were reported to have occurred over the course of the year 2002-3. It indicates that burglary peeks between 4pm and 8pm, with the lowest level of offences occurring between 4am and 8am.
Crime data varies from period to period. This can make it difficult to spot underlying patterns or trends in the data. You can use a number of statistical techniques to help you smooth out these variations. The simplest method is the 'moving averages technique', which smoothes out random fluctuations in data but at the same time enables the moving average to identify the underlying trend. When you use this technique, the method for calculating the averages must be clearly stated.
Tell me more about 'moving averages'
Victims and offenders analysis
Mapping the patterns of, and the relationships between, incidents, victims and offenders may make it easier to understand how patterns of crime are produced and where interventions are most likely to produce significant benefits.
Use the Problem Analysis Triangle (PAT) to help conceptualise this. PAT draws on Routine Activity Theory (RAT) and suggests that problems should be looked at from the perspective of:
Features of the victim:
gender
age
ethnicity
crime type
repeat victimisation
vulnerable groups
virtual communities eg students as victims
visiting/working/tourist populations
Features of the offender such as:
gender
age
ethnicity
types of crime committed
modus operandii (MOs)
alcohol and drug use
travel to crime patterns
persistent offending
Features of the location
There are a number of data systems that will help you to identify principle risk factors when you are profiling offenders including:
OASys (Probation Service)
ASSET (Youth Justice Board)
J Track (CPS and Police)
Here is an example of victims and offenders profile graph:
Costs
You may want to consider the economic and social costs in your audit.
Find more information on the cost of crime and disorder in:
The Economic and Social Costs of ASB - a report by the London School of Economics, which identifies the costs of responses to anti-social behaviour
You can use a discussion on costs to inform decision making and strategic thinking. More information on how to conduct a cost estimate will be available in late Spring 2004.
Looking beyond the data
You should make sure that:
you avoid presenting everything that is known about a specific problem. Effective interpretation of the data is key and your readers should be able to follow the interpretation in a logical sequence.
you use the identification of problem crimes or areas as only the first stage. You must go further and consider possible causes of crime and disorder and misuse of drugs.
where appropriate, you make predictions around future crime and misuse of drugs trends. Although there may be difficulties, routinely and systematically identifying potential future problems can help you to determine strategic options. Consider:
local crime trend analysis
economics and demographics
social and lifestyle trends
new technology
hot products
Find out more about these issues in:
"Anticipating Future Crime Trends in Crime and Disorder Audits"
The Jill Dando Institute's Become a Problem-Solving Crime Analyst
National Crime Recording Standard
You should consider:
The effect of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS). The NCRS was fully implemented in April 2002 and introduced a victim-focused approach to recording crime.
The police have been encouraged to record more reported incidents as crimes, which has inflated the recorded crime figures for 2002/03.
Find more information on the impact of the NCRS on recorded crime the following Home Office reports:
Last update: Thursday, September 07, 2006