Police seminar on ASB trials

The purpose of this seminar organised and hosted by West Mercia Police in Worcester on 9^th November was to have an update on the police trials involving eight police forces in England and Wales. Around 150 delegates attended, mainly ranking police officers but also representatives from housing associations and local authorities. Simon Edens Assistant Chief Constable of West Mercia Police is the ACPO national lead on ASB so I believe that the force is influential in the future direction of how the police will deal with complaints and incidents in future.

Chief Inspector Jim Baker of West Mercia Police said that “harm” is now the prime criteria for the police; the intention is to simply the reporting process, identify who is best to deal with ASB and importantly to share information. He said there are too many tools, powers and too much bureaucracy. The ideal aim is have “an end to end case management system from initial call to resolution of the case to the victim’s satisfaction”. Not sure if he means nationally or by police force – I assume the latter.

Jim Baker identified the need for better use of technology to share incident and personal profile information using a data platform, a common set of casework principles and an agreed risk assessment matrix with more use of IT systems. He welcomed the move to the three new definitions of ASB of personal, nuisance and environmental.

Peter Alleyne of the Home Office started by saying that a staggering 3.3 million (9,000 per day) ASB incidents had been recorded by police in 2010/11 and that this is considered to be a low figure. It is now recognised that much ASB is actually crime and can cause serious harm to victims and communities. Government’s priority, not withstanding the economic situation, is that police and their partners must deal with ASB. There will be no “directives” from government and no “targets” The expectation is that Police and Crime Commissioners will reflect elector’s priorities with ASB high on their agendas. The next steps are feedback from the police trials, to build on the experiences and share it with others but the underlying message is localism – what works for communities.

Geraldine Brown also from the Home Office presented an overview of the findings to date from the police trials. She identified partnership working as a key element (no surprise there then!) with co-location (police sharing office space with partners, especially housing associations) as being particularly effective. The allocation of responsibility with the police being the lead agency may not always be the best way to deal with incidents e.g. social housing landlords could be better placed in some instances. On risk and the identification of possible harm it should not be the sole responsibility of the police and the matrix must be a guide and talking to victims and making a professional judgement was essential. Data Protection is a barrier with incompatibility of IT systems being common, however workarounds are now being found.

Barriers to better working were given as an embedded culture, police preferring to deal with crime and tending to ignore ASB or give it a low priority, engaging with mental health, bureaucracy, IT (again and again), call centre performance, number of agencies (partners), police force boundaries and the financial climate and staff resources.

Jim Baker talked about the West Mercia trial based on Telford & Wrekin with ASB being dealt with alongside Wrekin Housing Trust. Of 2691 calls received between April and September 2011, 158 were referred to the police. The team achieved a 23% reduction in ASB reporting in one year. They identified, on average, one high risk case per month, 13 medium risk and 38 for the force area. Hate crime was revealed as most the vulnerable group and most reluctant victims to complain. Friction over sharing of information causes delays.

There were 4 plenary sessions with presentations from various police forces on:-

1. Risk Assessment.
2. Culture Change -Sussex Police spoke about the need to train front line officers in ASB and to take it much more seriously than they do now.
3. Data Sharing and IT – great interest in this with no recommendations or conclusions other than the urgent need to find a way that is cost effective and “works”and that current DP legislation is a major issue.
4. Partnership Working.

Conclusion:

It was a very worthwhile and informative day. A great deal of progress has been made and the police accept their lead role in tackling ASB but with some reluctance from rank and file police officers. Data protection and sharing of information remains a major problem with most sharing being at the local level, informal and by word of mouth. The chances of an early resolution to data sharing is, in my view very low and for me the catch phrase that sums it up is “Dare to Share”.

Mike Blomer

Related articles

• Tackling ASB: the new reality (reactasb.wordpress.com)

Partnership Working

Image via Wikipedia

An excellent example of close partnership working has been piloted and rolled out in Doncaster recently; the objective is to stop low level ASB cases escalating to bigger problems. The Council and the police community support officers have collaborated to patrol areas seven days a week to reduce those incidents becoming problems. A 30-strong team, comprising of council’s enforcement officers and PCSO’s have had an impact and are sure that ASB incidents have reduced.

The Mayor of Doncaster and members of public are 100% supporting the initiative and want to make sure that the people who “have got the idea that they can do what they like, can’t do that in Doncaster any more – we’re not tolerating it”.

This shows how important it is for agencies to work together in tackling ASB; with more and more similar initiatives being rolled out across the UK, we hope to hear results that reflect those in Doncaster.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-14715757

We would love to hear about your work and experiences. Please add a comment to the blog, below.

By Kate Hill

Positive police action- sharing good practice

Image via Wikipedia

As we all know there has been hype about front line police officers taking more responsibility to tackle ASB alongside housing practitioners; the question is, when will this materialise and how will the collaboration work amongst agencies. Although there are a lot of whispers flying around about the set up, I would like to draw on a positive, innovative way a certain sergeant has been tackling ASB.

A sergeant from Cornwall is working on the idea that youths can help themselves stay out of trouble by taking responsibility for their actions and preventing incidents happening in the first place. Sergeant Dave Ainsley’s initiative is all about integration in to communities, bringing a sense of belonging through fun activities. Dave Ainsley says: “When a child says there is nothing to do in their community it is proof that they are not fully involved with their neighbourhood – if they were they wouldn’t say that”.

Dave believes giving children the opportunity to realise their own potential is a far more effective than preempting what they want to do. Initiatives like street dancing have been a huge success in Cornwall; Dave has seen massive changes in the 21 years he’s worked for the police.

Another positive action is the reintroduction of the Cadet’s; some say that people have lost all respect for police, but youths working so closely with the police realise how much they do – Police Cadet Tamsin Aimable says: “It makes you realise that the police aren’t just out there to tell you off. They’re there to help you and work with you.

Dave Ainsley will be speaking all about his work and initiatives at the European Council‘s expert conference in Strasbourg next month – it is important to shout about the excellent work that’s being done and to share thoughts. As we approach working on the ‘Local Deal’, I’m sure there are so many more initiatives like this happening throughout the UK already – it would be great to hear about the work you are doing and whether anyone has good practice to share about working together with the police in tackling ASB together.

For full details on Dave Ainsley work, please visit BBC Local.

By Kate Hill

Government Review of ASB

We now know that the expected review of ASB is to be the subject of a formal consultation process in the New Year. The announcement follows the very recent report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) on ASB across all 43 police forces in England and Wales which has been covered (and criticised) in the media.

The significance of the report and its timing will not be lost on regular readers of the ReACT blog, or on ASB practitioners who follow significant events and their knock-on impact to complaints management.  This report, therefore, has the potential to be hugely influential. As a robust study it has much to offer and, time permitting, interested parties should read the documents in full, particularly the Cardiff University analysis. [printer caution - all four documents ‘add up’ to around 180 pages]

Although it is focussed on the police and the criminal justice system, the report’s analysis includes partnerships and its conclusions about how ASB should be managed in the future, by definition, across all sectors.

To summarise the HMIC publication in a few sentences it could be said that:

HMIC’s view is that we now know enough about ASB to reconsider our strategic choices: change is not optional. It suggests that we have but two choices:

1 Develop and focus police and partnership effort.

2 Implement an early intervention strategy, similar to those in the health and education sectors.

HMIC comes out on the side of the second choice saying “there is a huge potential pay-off from an early intervention strategy to restore peace to our streets……. there is no easy or cheap solution to ASB. But we are now at a point where we can make an informed choice.

Note for SCLNG Members

If you are a member of SLCNG do read Members Bulletin No. 251 entitled “Effective ASB case management principles” which is designed as a reference tool for ASB practitioners across all agencies.

 By Mike Blomer