Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

In 2000, the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRHT) and North Yorkshire Police entered a formal agreement to purchase additional police cover levels for the low-crime village of New Earswick. The following report details this three-year experimental initiative.

Title: Evaluation of a contracted community policing expert
Author: Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Series: Findings 023
Date Published: October 2003
Number of pages: 5

The study found that:

• 18 months after the start of the project, JRHT halted the initiative due to not living up to expectations.

• Crime and the fear of crime increased during the project's implementation, and residents' satisfaction with the local police declined.

• The principal obstacles to success were:

  • lack of clarity toward time usage, and different partners roles and responsibilities

  • insufficient consideration given to how community policing would achieve project's aims

  • ineffective management of residents' expectations of project delivery

  • designated officer within village was drawn away to cover for other duties, since operational control remained within the police

  • considerable turnover of police staff - three different community officers in the 18 month period.

The New Earswick project

With demand for visible police presence rising, and national surveys suggesting lost public confidence in police capacity, public satisfaction is a concern particularly regarding police foot patrol levels. The scheme objective consisted of JRHT purchasing 24 hours of additional community-policing per week at a cost of £25,000 per year, for an initial three-year period. 

Impact on the community

During the project's first year:

• recorded crime figures fell on the previous year by 5% 

• the second year overall number of recorded crimes rose by 99% on the first year.

Given the low level of village crime, variations appeared relatively dramatic. The policing initiative may have had limited beneficial impacts on recorded crime in the first six months of implementation, but this wore off quite rapidly.

Two extensive surveys of local residents, conducted near the beginning and end of the initiative, revealed:

• by the time of the second survey, between a third and a half of respondents felt that the initiative had been unsuccessful in meeting relevant aims.

• only two-fifths of respondents had seen the contracted community police officer in the previous year, and just over one-fifth had spoken to the officer.

• over three-fifths reported having had no direct contact with the community police officer over the lifetime of the project;

• 6 per cent found the police officer to be easier to contact during the initiative, but 17 per cent felt that he was less easy to contact;

• 16 per cent felt more likely to contact the police, but 10 per cent felt less likely to do so;

• respondents' level of satisfaction with local policing declined over the two surveys, from 31 to 22 per cent. Correspondingly, the percentage who felt dissatisfied increased from 30 to 40 per cent;

• during the life of the project, the percentage of residents who felt unsafe while out alone after dark in New Earswick increased, albeit slightly, from 37 to 43 per cent;

• in the second survey, 87 per cent of respondents agreed that there were not enough police on the streets of New Earswick;

• four-fifths agreed that the initiative had increased their desire for a greater level of visible patrolling in the village;

• over a third of respondents indicated that the initiative had increased their concerns over security and safety. This was reflected in the increased use or possession of a variety of security measures and devices.

Managing expectations

Operational control of the contracted officer remained with the police. As a result, purchaser JRHT and the New Earswick residents found with no control and little ownership.
The project downfall may have suffered due to the:

• clarity surrounding project purpose to police officers

• amount of time purchased was seen as sufficient enough to make a significant impact.

• multiple aims spreading resources too thinly, and fuelling unrealistic expectations.

Conclusions

Conclusions of the study found:

• an appropriate balance needing to be struck between reactive duties of officers in responding to incidents, and more proactive roles of reassurance and crime prevention. 

• police forces needing time to consider how they can sell a public resource (police time) without having an adverse impact on wider policing service or purchasers' ownership  expectations. 

• the provision of additional policing raises questions about the equitable distribution of security responding to public demands of additional policing.

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