Working Together to Cut Crime
| Author | Ann Blaber |
| Date | 01 April 1980 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8005300208 |
| Published date | 01 April 1980 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ANN BLABER
National Association
for
the Care
and
Resettlement
of
Of
lenders.
WORKING
TOGETHER TO
CUT
CRIME
A study of the Devon and Cornwall
scheme
of
Community Policing
Exeter's Community Policing Consultative Group constitutes an
imaginative new approach to crime prevention, involving co-
operation by a wide range of agencies. Convened two years ago by
the 'Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, the Group includes
representatives of the police, probation service, social services,
housing and planning departments, youth service, education,
commerce, transport, leisure facilities and voluntary organisations.
The establishment of the Group is a result of the Devon and
Cornwall Police's approach to the "primary prevention" of crime,
based on the assumption
that
the agencies that have been given
responsibility for reducing crime are not equipped to do so. Crime
levels do not depend on the Home Office, the criminal justicesystem
or the police; they depend more on the agencies that are responsible
for shaping
our
social and physical environment, such as housing,
education and planning authorities, and providers of employment
and recreation.
It
is the decisions taken by these agencies, that have
most influence on people's lives and therefore, it can be argued, on
levels of crime.
It
is only through these agencies co-ordinating their
decisions and relating them to crime that there is a hope of crime
being reduced.
The impetus to set up the Group came from the Crime Prevention
Support
Unit, the special unit set up by the Chief Constable,
John
Alderson, in 1976 to explore new approaches to the prevention of
crime. Faced with a cutback in resources, the Chief Constable had
decided to concentrate on finding ways of getting the help of the
public in cutting down csime, arguing: "the problems lie in
neighbourhoods and the answers lie in neighbours. The problemsare
lying next to the solutions, but the solutions are not even being seen
and certainly not being applied to the problems."
The CPSU set
about
analysing in detail the crime in the city and
the factors that appeared to be encouraging it. It became increasingly
clear to them that most of these factors were dependent on other
agencies,
and
that crime, although it can be clearly defined as a
problem, is inextricably linked with a mass of other problems,
and
151 Police Journal
April
1980
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