Identifying Problems: Checklist

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ISSUE

QUESTIONS

1. What types of crime against businesses are occurring?
  • What are the number of crimes involving businesses?:
  • criminal damage
  • commercial burglary
  • robbery
  • shop theft
  • violence against staff
  • fraud and forgery
  • racially aggravated offences
  • How does this relate to the number of businesses?
  • What are the number and rates of incidents involving businesses?
  • juvenile nuisance
  • vandalism/graffiti
  • verbal abuse
  • harassment / intimidation
  • racially motivated incident
  • disorder on licensed premises
  • How does this relate to the number of businesses?
  • How do crime and incident rates compare with other areas?
  • What patterns and trends can be detected?

2. Where is crime occurring?

  • Are there particular hotspots (neighbourhoods, shopping centres or industrial estates)?
  • Are there particular types of location? (Eg outdoor shopping parade; industrial estates near housing?)
  • Do locations share common physical features? E.g. ease of access/egress

3. When?

  • Do crimes and incidents cluster at particular times of the day, week, month or year?
  • Can links be detected with shift or other working patterns?
4. Who or what is the target? 
  • What types of business (sector, size, situation) are most vulnerable?
  • Is there evidence of racial motivation?
  • What security features did the business possess?
  • What was stolen / what damage was caused?
5. Are repeats occurring? 
  • If so, within what period?
  • Is there evidence of crime ‘migrating’ to similar properties nearby?
6. What is the impact?
  • What concerns businesses the most?
  • What is the value of items stolen, damage caused or business lost?
  • Is crime / fear of crime affecting business confidence/decisions?
  • Are customers deterred from coming to the location?
7. What is known about offenders? 

What is known about offenders'

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity
  • Where they live
  • Persistent offending behaviour
  • Motivation
  • Risk factors associated with offending e.g. drug misuse

8. How are they doing it?

  • What is known about offenders’ mode of operation? (This may give clues about the sophistication of offenders involved and inform the responses put in place.)
  • How are goods disposed of?
9. Contextual Information and information on risk factors
  • Social, environmental and economic factors associated with business and retail crime.

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