GIS for SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - PART 3C

Part III-C Learning from Practice: GIS as a Tool in Planning Sustainable Development Society and Environment © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 22 A Geographical Approach to Community Safety: A U.K. Perspective Jonathan Corcoran and Bernadette Bowen Thomson CONTENTS 22.1 Introduction..................................................................................................385 22.2 The Importance of Geography.....................................................................387 22.2.1 What is Community Safety?............................................................387 22.2.2 Current Approaches to Community Safety .....................................388 22.3 The HASCADE Approach to Community Safety.......................................388 22.3.1 Data Requirements and Issues.........................................................389 22.3.1.1 Technical Issues................................................................389 22.3.1.2 Security Issues..................................................................389 22.3.1.3 Data issues........................................................................390 22.4 The HASCADE Model................................................................................390 22.4.1 Spatial Methods................................................................................391 22.4.2 Statistical Analysis...........................................................................392 22.4.3 Results from HASCADE.................................................................393 22.5 Discussion ....................................................................................................395 22.6 Future Developments...................................................................................399 22.6.1 An Integrated Deployable Solution.................................................399 22.6.2 Increased Data Sets..........................................................................399 References..............................................................................................................400 22.1 INTRODUCTION Crime and disorder are inevitable realities of society, affecting all of the populace either directly or indirectly. Their formal control has traditionally been the respon-sibility of the police. Increasingly, recent years have seen the control of crime and disorder, in England and Wales, charged to a range of both nationally and locally governed agencies. The requirement to minimize community problems through tackling crime and disorder issues was formalized in the Crime and Disorder Act [1]. The Act formally introduces the creation of multiagency Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) within each local authority area. A legal obligation 385 © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 386 GIS for Sustainable Development was placed on these CDRPs, particularly the local authority and police, to work in tandem to develop, publish, and implement three-year strategies to tackle crime and disorder. The production of an informed crime and disorder strategy relies heavily upon an in-depth local community safety audit, which provides a snapshot of crime and disorder-related issues, a further stipulation of the Act. Each audit, consisting of multiagency data and community consultation, attempts to encapsulate the com-munity dynamics within a given area. In addition, the Act stipulates the necessity to work with other key agencies, including the health authority (Sections 5–7, Crime and Disorder Act 1998 [1]), while Guidance recommends the expansion of the partnership to business and voluntary sectors. Section 17 of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act extends the scope of responsibility for controlling crime and disorder. It places a statutory obligation on local authorities and the police to consider crime and disorder implications in all its functions [1]. Part of this legislation (Section 115) enables partners to share previously internalized data for crime and disorder reduction purposes. If these agencies are to embrace the principles within the Act, then the production of a holistic strategy is essential. Such a strategy would enable a variety of agencies to use their expertise for crime and disorder reduction and prevention purposes and for the benefit of the community, thus realizing increased community safety. Key to achieving their missions is the ability to assimilate an under-standing of criminal dynamics, which are inherently complex. Geographical tools have the potential to provide invaluable insight into these dynamics. It has been shown that crime and disorder recorded by the police constitute only a partial descriptor of community issues [2]. Therefore, to understand the dynamics and requirements of a region, there is the need to consult additional data, sourced from a range of organizations at the local level [3]. On this basis, local partnerships have been promoted to guide and facilitate the data collation, aggregation, and analysis process. Hough and Tilley [4] outline six guiding principles that support the requirement for local partnerships: · The police alone cannot control crime and disorder · No single agency can control crime and disorder · Agencies with a contribution to reducing crime and disorder need to work in partnership · Evidence-based problem solving approaches promise the most effective approach to reducing crime and disorder · Problems of crime and disorder are complex, and there are therefore no panaceas · Crime and disorder problems need to be understood in their local contexts and strategies need thus to be locally tailored Hough and Tilley [4, p.1]. With permission. In the remainder of this chapter, the importance of geography for crime and disorder analysis and nature of community safety is discussed. This is followed by a discus-sion of the design, development, and implementation of Holistic approach to strategic crime and disorder evaluation (HASCADE), a geographical approach to strategic crime and disorder analysis. © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC A Geographical Approach to Community Safety: A U.K. Perspective 387 22.2 THE IMPORTANCE OF GEOGRAPHY The mapping of crime has a long history as a tool for understanding crime’s spatial distributions. It can be traced back as far as the nineteenth century in France [5,6], where mapping was first utilized to visualize and analyze crime information. Crime data and the computational tools that are used for their collection and analysis have, over recent years, grown in importance. Academics and practitioners have seen value in their potential to analyze crime and disorder issues. A central theme in the geo-analysis of crime and disorder data is the quest to better understand their dynamics, which in turn can be applied to formulate targeted responses. The U.K. Home Office advocates a geographically orientated approach to crime analysis. This is reflected by the marked growth of computerized mapping by U.K. police forces [7], the trend set to continue. However, a report of the auditing process [8] revealed that less than half (42%) made use of a GIS. 22.2.1 WHAT IS COMMUNITY SAFETY? Community safety is a recent concept, the definition of which has amassed much debate. Since the Morgan Report [9], the term community safety has witnessed increasing popularity in Britain. The Morgan Report (para. 3.7), considers commu-nity safety “as being concerned with people, communities and organizations includ-ing families, victims and at risk groups, as well as attempting to reduce particular types of crime and the fear of crime. Community safety should be seen as the legitimate concern of all in the local community” (cited [10, p.6]). Community safety is recognized as comprising situational and social characteristics. The situational characteristics of community safety include crime prevention. Crime prevention, in its simplest form, indicates a situation whereby crimes would have occurred if they had not been prevented [11]. In general, crime prevention techniques can be applied to a variety of approaches that aim to reduce the likelihood of an individual or group encountering crime events. Social characteristics refer to the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of people’s lives; thus individuals and groups should be able “to pursue, and obtain fullest benefits from, their social and economic lives without fear or hindrance from crime and disorder” [12]. Partnership working is fundamental to community safety because it recognizes that community safety is not the sole responsibility of the police. The change in policy focus toward partnership working at the community level in the United Kingdom implies that an advantage will be achieved if broader multiagency and multifaceted approaches are applied. Walklate identifies that “a genuine desire for policy to work for change needs above all to be cognizant of the importance of the local context in which that policy is set. This desire needs to work with rather than against the historical and socioeconomic circumstances which structure that local context” [13, p.62]. As such, diligence in ensuring that inclusive approaches are implemented and that these approaches are appropriate to the community should have primacy. HASCADE attempts to inform short, medium, and long-term strategy through the examination of data at the community level. This information endeavors to provide insight into the crime, disorder, and potential vulnerabilities that include © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 388 GIS for Sustainable Development socioeconomic factors present within such geographical areas. It seems, then, that the term community safety renders itself more easily toward applying holistic approaches, thus potentially increasing engagement from partners, community, and agency. In relation to this chapter, the term community safety will be used, recog-nizing that such a term includes crime prevention and that its definition can extend beyond the realms of crime and disorder. 22.2.2 CURRENT APPROACHES TO COMMUNITY SAFETY Current approaches to achieving community safety in England and Wales often reflect traditional crime prevention concepts, commonly involving applied situational crime prevention (SCP) techniques [14]. The application of such techniques has positively impacted upon crime and disorder reduction in communities, often achiev-ing a rapid effect. Felson and Clarke [15] note numerous examples where the application of targeted “opportunity-reducing measures” has produced effective out-comes. Such measures include reductions in check frauds occurring in Sweden, through the introduction of new identification measures, and the establishment of CCTV cameras in Surrey University car parks that resulted in reductions in crime. The HASCADE model is receptive to the important contribution of crime pre-vention, but it also endeavors to inform strategy development centered upon con-sideration of wider, holistic, community safety issues, particularly those based around social exclusion. Crime and disorder strategies informed solely by analyzing the spatial distribution of crime and disorder events, provide only a partial view of community issues. Typically this can involve the analysis of police crime and disorder data, to identify hotspots (areas exhibiting disproportionately high levels of crime and disorder). The results from this exercise are then used to design strategy to combat crime and disorder within the identified locales. However, such use of crime and disorder data is likely to increase the risk of only responding to community safety through the application of primarily situational methods (for example, the use of locks to deter burglaries within identified burglary hotspots). In addition, these are likely to result in imbalanced strategy that may not identify key facets of a community’s needs. Such imbalanced approaches increase the risk of exclusion, while potentially reducing trust within communities (for a more detailed discussion of trust and exclusion see [16,17]). HASCADE introduces a joined-up strategic framework. Its holistic nature encourages multifaceted methods for improving community safety, as opposed to applying a singular methodology. The use of geographically referenced multiagency data is key to informing this holistic approach. 22.3 THE HASCADE APPROACH TO COMMUNITY SAFETY The relevance of incorporating multiagency data within the crime and disorder audits reinforces the underlying principles of partnership working that is promoted throughout the Crime and Disorder Act. In addition, all guidance relating to the crime and disorder audits has advocated the use of multiagency data sets [4], but little information exists yet on how these multiple data sets should be incorporated and analyzed. © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ... - tailieumienphi.vn