Burglary
Impact of Reducing Burglary Initiative
This report summarises the findings from the Northern Consortium on the Impact of the Reducing Burglary Initiative (RBI). The Northern Consortium was responsible for evaluating 21 Strategic Development Projects (SDP's) under the RBI in the north of England. It was led by the University of Liverpool and comprised of the Universities of Huddesfield, Hull and the research and consultancy organisation Matrix MHA.
Title: Impact of Reducing Burglary Initiative
Author: Dr. Alex Hirschfield
Series: Home Office Online Report 40/04
Date Published: July 2004
Number of pages: 27
What the project is about…
The Strategic Development Projects (SDP's) varied greatly in their organisational structures and partnership arrangements, some consisting of small teams with simple structures, others with large teams spread across a number of groups and subgroups. Just under half of the SDP's were jointly local authority and police-led; nine were led solely by the police, and two exclusively by the local authority.
The characteristics of these high crime communities consisted of:
Poor areas with strong cohesive communities
Areas with relatively affluent populations
Poor areas that are less socially cohesive (e.g. problem families, concentration of high offenders)
Areas with high student populations and housing problems including ones that are easily accessible to offenders (e.g. good communication and transport links)
During the preparation stages the projects identified entry to the property was most frequently gained via the rear of the house, often facilitated by the alleyways. Opportunistic burglaries and repeat victimization was also believed to be common across the 21 SDP's.
There were 179 interventions made across the SDP's, the most common being:
Publicity
Target-hardening of individual properties
Gathering and use of intelligence and offender disruption strategies
Property storage
Witness protection
Drug rehabilitation
Impact of Strategic Development Projects…
To determine the impact SDP's had upon burglary many influences had to be taken into consideration, including:
Specific burglary reduction interventions?
Management style?
Contextual factors such as the type of area?
The nature and timing of publicity?
The community's involvement?
The number of partnership agencies?
The extent of pre-scheme planning?
The existence of relevant non-SDP projects operating within target areas?
Effectiveness of Interventions…
To effectively analyse the results of the RBI iniative, the authors needed to estimate the expected number of burglaries that would have taken place in the Police Force Areas (PFA's).
In order to determine the success of the SDP's in reducing domestic burglary site visits, observation, face-to-face interviews with project managers and partnership agencies and their beneficiaries, must be carried out. These identified good and satisfactory practice in project management and the effectiveness of the implementation process. Particular attention was given to:
The extent to which SDPs stuck to their original objectives and timetables
Problems encountered, courses of action considered/taken and whether the best course of action appears to have been selected
The SDPs' own views of progress
Monitoring change, including changes to the structure, style and quality of management.
Results
The overall reduction in burglary achieved by the 21 northern SDPs was 24 per cent in the two years after April 1999, compared to a reduction of 14 per cent in England and Wales as a whole. This meant after taking into consideration changes in the police force areas over the same period, a net overall saving of 12 per cent in burglaries was made.
The results from this analysis of change net of PFA trends are shown below. Statistical analysis confirmed that this reduction was significant, indicating that there was an ‘SDP effect’ on the burglary rate.
Of the 21 northern projects:
15 SDP's (71%) had statistically significant reductions in burglary once the PFA trend had been removed
3 SDP's within this group of fifteen each had net reductions in burglary of over 30 per cent
4 SDP's failed to achieve any savings after the PFA trend had been removed
2 SDP's recorded statistically significant net increases in burglary at the 95 per cent confidence level (i.e. they returned a significantly poorer performance than that of their respective PFAs)
Although positive impacts were identified for individual SDPs, it is possible these impacts were helped by some degree of geographical crime displacement, crime switch or by positive spin-offs such as a diffusion of benefit.
1. Geographical Displacement
Evidence of possible geographical displacement of burglary was found in only five of the 21 SDPs while 7 SDPs showed evidence of potential diffusion of benefit to surrounding areas.
2. Crime-Switch
This type of displacement was not widespread but did occur in some SDPs. Different SDPs were more at risk to some types of crime-switch than others. For instance, some showed significant increases in theft of vehicle, robbery and theft from person, while others appeared to have a particular problem with increases in criminal damage, or suffered from significant increases in theft from vehicle.
3. Diffusion of Benefit
There were only noticeable reductions in other crime types (including robbery, burglary and theft from person). This suggests a diffusion of benefit that led to a reduction in crime types other than burglary in the intervention area.
Successful Interventions, Delivery factors and Contextual variables…
Below are the interventions, policy delivery factors and contextual variables most associated with significant reductions in burglary across the northern SDP's:
Interventions
location-specific situational crime prevention (e.g. target hardening)
stakeholding interventions with stand-alone publicity campaigns
100% of planned interventions implemented (none considered implausible)
Delivery
high expenditure per household, high intensity of output
high degree of partnership working, more partner agencies (when agencies are active)
above average expenditure on equipment
below average expenditure on personnel
strong management structures dedicated manager, ring-fenced time
stable management (i.e. few or no changes during the project)
established partnership in place
strong planning, effective community engagement
Context
higher levels of owner occupation (affluence)
low rates of migration/ population turnover
fewer flats within housing stock;
fewer males aged between 16 and 24 within the population
The most successful SDPs tended to be those that implemented location specific situational crime prevention measures, such as target-hardening of individual properties, included stakeholding interventions (e.g. residents' associations, accredited tenants' schemes) that often involved some form of stand alone publicity campaign; and, those that publicized the interventions via newspaper articles and/or radio interviews.
It was also apparent that the more successful schemes tended to be those that involved a higher degree of partnership involvement and had more partner agencies, as periods when a greater number of agencies were involved in SDPs and when publicity was used coincided with the timing of burglary reductions.
Schemes were also more successful where expenditure was higher on equipment than personnel, thus reflecting the importance of implementation intensity in reducing burglary. Strong planning, robust management structures, dedicated managers and effective community engagements are also essential.
Schemes tended to be more successful in more affluent areas. Indeed SDPs with the greatest net reductions in burglary were distinguished from the other areas by having:
a smaller share of flats within their housing stock
higher levels of owner occupation
a smaller proportion of lone parent households
fewer males aged between 16 and 24 within the population
lower levels of migration/ population turnover.
It is important to note that the four least successful SDPs were in the most deprived areas suggesting successful outcomes may have been harder to achieve.
Lessons to be learnt…
1. For Partnerships
Good planning, clear goals (i.e. the desired effect of an activity) and sufficient use of publicity followed up by swift and intensive implementation is needed to reduce crime successfully. Partnerships must also seek the support of relative partner agencies and the community to help reduce crime successfully.
2. For Home Office/ Government
It is important to asses project proposals on how realistic and achievable the desired effect is, not just how innovative.
3. For Project Managers
Project management staff need to be aware of their obligations to deliver what is promised to the evaluators. Where necessary procedures should be put in place to ensure their obligations are fulfilled.
4. Evaluation Teams
It is important to agree data sharing protocols, data requirements and to assess thoroughly data quality before evaluations begin.
Last update: 27 July 2004