Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Tackling Robbery: Practical Lessons From The Street Crime Initiative

In March 2002 the Government launched the Street Crime Initiative (SCI). This aimed to reduce robbery and other street crimes which were rapidly rising at that time. The Initiative brought together a wide range of agencies and government departments at a national and local level to work in partnership to tackle street crime. It was very effective. By the end of the SCI in March 2005, robbery had dropped by 32%, which meant 32,527 fewer street crime offences in its last year. Although the Initiative has now finished, the practical lessons and advice from it are still relevant today. This short guide summarises the key lessons for local partnerships.

Title: Tackling Robbery: Practical Lessons From The Street Crime Initiative
Author: The Home Office
Number of pages: 16
Date published: July 2006
Availability: View full report PDF 2.63Mb

Robbery is a complex problem with numerous causes. For this reason, it needs a partnership approach so that preventive measures that have more permanent effects can be put in place. The SCI has clearly demonstrated that it is possible to do this and make a real difference to the lives of those who live and work in your area.

The success of the SCI arises from the problem-solving method that was applied. This is a well documented and proven approach to crime reduction. It involves working systematically through four steps, summarised below. Doing this will help you understand the causes of the problem in your area, and work out what to do about it. It can help you come up with new ideas as well as decide which tried and tested measures would be relevant for you.

Step 1 Understanding the problem

Some analysis of local data is needed to understand the scale and nature of the robbery problem. What are the street crime patterns in your area over the last 12 months? Do you know:

• what was stolen?

• the age and sex of the victims?

• the age and sex of the offenders?

• who the most prolific offenders are?

• the rates of repeat victimisation?

• where and how the offences were committed?

• how many offences were committed?

Step 2 Developing a response

The analysis should help you identify different kinds of more specific problems. What kinds of problem do you have in your area, for example robberies around cashpoints, snatch thefts at transport hubs, knife-point robberies at pub closing time? A list of possible problems is described later in this guide. Once this has been done, you can move to the next stage. For each sub-set of problem, you need to do the following:

• Work out whether a response is best targeted on victims, offenders or locations to have the most impact. If the problem is highly concentrated in a small number of areas (hot spots), for example, this suggests that there is something about these locations that facilitates the crime. Working out what this is, and changing it, will impact on the problem. Some problems may be focused on particular kinds of victim – for example schoolchildren – suggesting a response aimed at reducing the risk to this group. Where it is possible to identify a small number of prolific offenders, offender-based measures may be the best focus of resources to achieve maximum impact.

• Identify practical and achievable preventive measures. Ideally these should be both short- and long-term. Policing responses can have quick effects but need to be backed up with more permanent solutions.

• Assess the potential effectiveness of proposed measures. Are they plausible, given what you know about the problem? Have they worked elsewhere? If they have worked elsewhere, would they also work here?

Step 3 Putting it into action

Once you have worked out what might work, you then need to consider how you are going to put the plan into action. This is often a neglected stage, with good crime prevention ideas failing because they were poorly implemented. Important points to consider at this stage include the following:

• Have you thought about who would implement the measures you propose? Which organisations are best placed to have an impact on the problem?

• Do they need to be persuaded to carry out the proposed measures? How will you do this? Are there any other potential sticking points?

• Are mechanisms in place to track whether your measures are being implemented as planned, and having the intended effect?

• Do you need to make any adjustments to improve effectiveness?

Step 4 Learning the lessons

All interventions need to be monitored, as described above. Some, however, may deserve more detailed evaluation. These might be measures that have not been tried before, and from which others might learn. Questions to ask yourself here include the following:

• Is it worth investing in a more thorough evaluation of this initiative? If so, does it need independent evaluation, and who would fund this?

• Have you assessed whether there have been any side effects, for example have you simply shifted the problem elsewhere?

• Have you shared your successes, failures and results with others to ensure wider learning?

This problem-solving process is described in much more detail in Become a Problem-Solving Crime Analyst – in 55 small steps. This manual is available for download at www.jdi.ucl.ac.uk/publications/other_publications/55steps.php.

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Last update: Thursday, November 30, 2006