Introduction
Criminology refers to the study of the criminal justice system, law enforcement, and crime prevention. It is a branch of sociology that has been studied in different ways over a thousand years (Ball et al., 2015 p. 230). It was recently recognized as a scientific discipline in its own right. Throughout history, people committed crimes against each other, during these times, the common response to crime was revenge. The victim was allowed to exact what they felt was deserving of the offender. However, these responses were not justified or measured. Thus, the original criminal was turned into a victim due to actions that did not match the crime taken against them. Blood feuds often developed and lasted for generations.
The rulers of those times claimed that their totalitarian authority came from God, and said that they had been placed in power by the will of God and thus acted within His power. During this time, crimes against people and property were viewed as crimes against God. As monarchs claimed to be acting in the interest of God, punishment for crimes became more severe, often with little regard for the criminal. However, as the church and the states began separating, ideas about crime and punishment took an entirely different form (Charnei, 2013 p237). Modern-day criminology seeks to find the cause of crime and ways to prevent it from happening again. Early criminologists advocated for a rational approach while dealing with criminals, fighting against government authority's abuse of their power. In his book, on crime and punishment, Cesare Beccaria advocated for a particular scale of the offense and corresponding punishment based on how severe the crime is. He had the idea that a more severe crime deserved a more severe punishment.
Beccaria (2013), believed that judges should only be allowed to determine whether an individual is guilty and should use the law to advocate for punishment. He also emphasized that crime prevention was more than punishment. Thus, the punishment should be used to scare others from committing the same crime. As criminology developed further, sociologists tried to link crime with the environment in an attempt to look for the causes of crime. According to a publication in the national crime statistics in 1827, France, Adolphe Quetelet tried to compare demographics and crime rates. He compared areas with high crime rates as well as the gender and age of the offenders (Ball et al., 2015 p245).
In his research, he discovered that the greatest number of crimes were committed by poor, uneducated young males. He also found out that the highest rate of crimes took place in wealthier places near poorer regions, showing that poor people would commit their crimes in affluent areas (Sherman et al., 2010 p30). The primary objective of this study is to present ideas that would be used in crime management through the employment of several community-based initiatives under the role of a community safety partnership.
Community safety partnership
This is an alliance between different welfare organizations that generate policies and strategies and implement actions concerning crime and disorder within their area. They are vested with the responsibility of reducing crime, substance abuse, disorder, and re-offending in every local authority area or community. Some community partnerships are combined to form two local authority areas, while some have their drug action teams to work in close cooperation with the police in drug abuse prevention (AudiCommissionon, 2017). Every community partnership contains at least six authorities comprising: the police; police authority; local authority; fire and rescue team and probation trust.
Most governments are keen on minimizing control over the partnerships but also have managed to retain some statutory status to make sure that the community safety partnerships are widespread, have a consistent approach across the country, and remain active. After more than 14 years of development, most community safety partnerships have gained experience in operating at a high level and contributed greatly to crime reduction, solving several community problems and offering value for money during economic diversity (Council, 2012).
Types of CSPs
Since local authorities come in different sizes with different levels of resources and leadership; CSPs aren’t any different. The smallest can handle about 200 people at a time while the largest covers about one million people. In some countries, for instance, Cleveland, it is made up of four unitary authorities which include, Thames Valley is made up of 18 officials; some unitary authorities, and some district councils (Crawford, 2011). Thus, it is important to have a clear understanding of the landscape for a community safety partnership to be successful in its operations. A CSP can also decide to work with candidates before an election for the sake of understanding a given landscape.
District CSPs exist in areas covered by the county council. While districts are always small and not resourced enough, they offer an excellent environment for engaging with communities and understanding the problems they face. Recently, some districts have sought to unite CSPs to continue operating in diminished resources; for instance in places such as Norfolk in England where they have merged several CSPs to form a single CSPs.
County councils do not contain CSPs but have the responsibility of countstrategizingnf the group. This involves district representatives of CSPs together with relevant individuals from the county council and the countywide agencies. They are vested with the mandate of delivering countywide initiatives taking advantage of economies of scale, such as domestic abuse strategies and managing offenders.
Unitary CSP exists in cities and towns large enough to sustain themselves without help from the county council, for example, they run services such as domestic or offender management and community safety services. Some unitary councils such as Bristol and Portsmouth in England came into existence between 1996 and 1998. Since 2007, some former county councils have become unitary such as Shropshire, Cornwall,l, and Northumbria. These areas no longer have district councils but rather contain county strategy groups merging to form one large community safety partnership.
Statutory obligations
Community safety partnerships have few statutory obligations among other community responsibilities. Currently, they include:
· Forming strategic groups for directing the work of the partnership
· Engaging and consulting with the community regularly about their priorities and progress and how to achieve them.
· Setting up systems for information sharing
· Analysing huge data, including recorded levels of crime to identify priorities in an annual strategic assessment
Each year, community safety partnerships carry out strategic assessments. This refers to an audit of all crime and disorder, abuse of drugs, gs, and reoffending that has taken place across the CSP area in the previous year and also seeks to predict the most important issues and identify priorities by highlighting risks. It contains a document that underpins the activity of the CSP for one year. The strategic assessment is usually aligned with police evidence and crime plan (Council, 2012).
Before, strategic assessments were produced from the analysis of partnerships; however, in many places, the role no longer exists. Thus assessments are written by policy analysts, safety managers, or the county council to create a joint document for all districts within the area. S strategic assessment helps create an evidence-based partnership plan for the priorities established. The partnership plan is a short, public document that contains the outline of the priorities that the partnership will cover for the next three years (Audit Commission, 2017). The plan undergoes an annual refreshment to capture any new issues apparently through the year’s strategic assessment. A community safety partnership has several priorities; these may include particular types of crime such as domestic abuse and offender management.
Anti-social behaviour
The community safety partnerships mainly tackle issues around crime and disorder since many communities identify anti-social behavior as an important issue Thus, CSPs have become experts in dealing with anti-social behaviors through several community-based initiatives meant to manage anti-social crimes. The CSP has a community safety team that is mandated with the responsibility of delivering the community’s strategic plan and procuring outsourced services (Jones et al., 2015). Most county and city councils place their antisocial behavior team within this unit (although in recent years this is often shared with housing or even a registered social landlord).
The team deals with the management of ongoing anti-social behavior cases, solving problems in strategic locations, and management of persistent offenders through the use of an escalation process. The escalation process begins with a warning letter given to the first-time offender warning them of their conduct and explaining certain consequences should they repeat it. The second is an acceptable behavior contract that involves a voluntary agreement between a persistent offender and the anti-social behavior team. This contract outlines a set of behavioral standards that the offender is allowed to follow and also warns them of more serious legal consequences should the offender not adhere to the standards. The third warning contains an anti-social behavior order. This is a civil injunction given to a chronic offender, it demarcates their behavior and also donates a set of conditions to which they must adhere. Failure which results in six months imprisonment (Farrington, 2012).
The community safety partnership teams that deal with anti-social behavior set up multi-agency panels to discuss problematic offenders and agree on actions to be taken and prevent future crime. Also, the teams establish parallel processes that aim at supporting victims of anti-social behavior assess the level of risk associated, and seek to provide support to those at most risk from serious harm (Audit Commission, 2017). Also, community safety partnerships set up community justice panels that mainly deal with low-level crime and anti-social behaviors such as minor thefts, assaults, criminal damage, and neighbor disputes. Community volunteers run These. Their role is to bring offenders and victims together to resolve any conflict and harm caused. The panel also encourages offenders to acknowledge what they have done and its impact and reconcile with the victim and also the wider community by engaging in reparative activities and apologizing.
The teams also establish ‘dispersal zones’. These are geographical areas meant to hold people who are considered a threat to the community (Elliot, 2014 p15). They also established ‘controlled drinking zones’ which have banned alcohol consumption in public places and a community trigger. Also, CSPs have joint tasking groups, sometimes known as neighborhoods’ action groups. These are highly tactical groups that bring agencies together to solve chronic issues on a locational basis. For instance, in a case study where research was conducted by the police department in Four Rivers Estate in Shoeburyness, there was an increase in anti-social behavior incidents, alcohol abuse, and youth nuisance. Over the year, four major roads in the area registered 270 incidents, of which 190 were anti-social behavior incidents. Further analysis indicated that criminal acts and minor assaults resulted from young adults’ abuse of alcohol mainly between 8 and 2 am Fridays and Saturdays during July and August. To tackle this issue, the police engaged the Southend-on-Sea community partnership team allowing designated police and approved persons to request persons within the estate to hand over alcohol if they were acting offensively.
Such an order can only be granted with an accredited multi-agency coordination of some community safety partnerships working together. The designated public police order was promoted through neighborhood action teams, mass media, word of mouth, and community circles. Once it was fully understood by the community and also implemented, its effects were almost immediate. As a result, there was a 65% crime anti-social behavior reduction in three months, and local house providers reported a 92% reduction in offenders. They also managed to save 19,000 euros over six months (Council, 2012). The best CSPs are those that make use of proven data to properly understand an issue and then apply their problem-solving strategies. They undergo a process of understanding, planning, doing, review which improves the situation at hand. Generally, through meetings with the community and local police, they can tackle priority issues affecting the community through thorough consultation. Thus the meetings can make huge changes to the communities. Through working together, community safety partnerships and local police departments can tackle key issues affecting the communities and their offenders.
Domestic abuse
As a community safety partnership, it is important to prioritize domestic abuse, given its prevalence and harmful effects on both the victims and the witnesses. CSPs commission domestic abuse services, working in collaboration with voluntary sector organizations such as women’s aid or victim support to provide refuge spaces. They dedicate a domestic abuse coordinator often based within the local community to coordinate multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs). These bring together agencies that share information and assess risk appertaining persons surfing domestic abuse. Following domestic abuse, community safety partnerships must commission local violence homicide review, which unites information from all relevant agencies to identify locations that need improvement and try to ensure that the likelihood of future cases is minimized (Beccaria et al., 2015).
Multi-agency risk assessment share discusses risk management and information for domestic cases and attends health, adult, police, and children’s services. For instance, Two MARACs dealt with 1063 cases of domestic violence in Liverpool in December 2012. Thus, 80% of the cases were not subject to repeat; these efforts also resulted in the saving of up to 56,000 euros in annual investment (AudiCommissionon, 2017). These teams contain the police, drug workers, and prison officers who work together in the prevention of crime. They identify offenders who are committing most of the robberies, thefts, and burglaries in the locality, thus reducing the risk of further offending by supporting them to address the issues that cause them to commit such crimes. They also give the offenders options that help them become productive members of society.
The clients are arranged according to priority by misuse of substances and domestic abuse commissioned by the local authorities so that they are fast-tracked and treated. The agencies also offer accommodation and floating support through the housing support register for clients undergoing drug abuse problems. Additionally, several dedicated teams are dealing with different issues of support, house register, and provision of access to assisted housing and accommodation for the victims.
Conclusion
Community safety partnerships play a major role in managing crime and helping victims of crime in the community. They work in collaboration with the local authorities and research the levels of crime in a particular location and the main causes; also the main victims. After fully understanding the situation, they lay down a strategic plan that aims at reducing the crime rates and managing offenders to prevent a repeat of the same crimes. The plans are executed by voluntary local community members and also some local police who conduct the activities based on instructions from the agencies. In many countries around the world, for instance,e in England, community safety partnerships have been on the frontline of reducing antisocial behaviors, domestic violence, and drug and substance abuse, through collaboration with other voluntary organizations like the women’s aid, local police, and the local community, and hence reduced the level of crime.
References
Audit Commission, 2017. Community safety partnerships. Audit Commission.
Ball, R.A. and Curry, G.D., 2015. The logic of definition in Criminology: Purposes and methods of defining “gangs”. Criminology, 33(2), pp.225-245.
Beccaria, T.A.M. and Evans, K., 2016. Crime prevention and community safety
Crawford, A., 2011. Community safety partnerships.
Council, C.C., 2012. Community Safety Partnership.
Cherney, A., 2013. Crime prevention/community safety partnerships in action: Victorian experience. Current Issues Crim. Just., 15, p.237.
Elliott, D.S., 2014. Serious violent offenders: Onset, developmental course, and termination—The American Society of Criminology 1993 presidential address. Criminology, 32(1), pp.1-21.
Farrington, D.P., 2012. Explaining and preventing crime: The globalization of knowledge—The American Society of Criminology 1999 presidential address. Criminology, 38(1), pp.1-24.
Jones, H., Jones, W.H. and Gunaratnam, Y., 2015. Community safety partnership.
Sherman, L.W., Gartin, P.R. and Buerger, M.E., 2010. Hot spots of predatory crime: Routine activities and the criminology of place. Criminology, 27(1), pp.27-56.
