Some years ago, before the 1997 election, I spent the early hours after midnight in a panda car in the Moss Side area of Manchester. I was not, I hasten to add, being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure – I was there to understand the pressures brought upon the police by escalating levels of crime. I watched young men on BMX bikes delivering drugs more swiftly than pizzas. My escort would then put his ‘blueys’ on and give chase, only to watch them dissolve into the night. As we attended a car crash, with a stoned young man staring glassily out of his window at us, and as I heard the police radio chattering away, the penny dropped that there were only eight such cars across the whole of the city – the thinnest of thin blue lines.
A lot has changed since then, for the better. We have more resources, more police officers and some useful new laws. The social tide has also turned in the police’s favour: lower unemployment helps to cut crime, as does better security on cars. CCTV now covers, for example, the whole of London in one completely seamless web. But the thin blue line is still desperately narrow and the falls in previous years in crime figures have now stalled. Levels of personal fear of crime remain strikingly high. In some areas, fear is turning to terror, through the growth of gun and gang violence.
As with so many areas of government policies right now, some of the approaches that served the government well in its first term are now failing to deliver further improvements. Top-down target setting is now being slashed back. Central control of budgets is being eased, and more reform is on the way. One essential component will be the formation of a British version of the FBI to fight terror and organized crime.
A further logical step would be the gradual integration of police authorities into regional crime-fighting units, able to pool resources and share the best managers and practice. But the biggest scope of all lies in a new partnership with communities everywhere – going far beyond the traditional model of neighbourhood watch.
These days Dixon of Dock Green carries a laptop on which she shows local people a map of where different types of crime are clustered.
Why, she asks them, are these particular types of crime happening, and how can we prevent them occurring in the first place? In answer to the problem of poor street environments that encourage an escalation from anti-social behaviour, they suggest mending windows, putting curtains and lights in unoccupied property, clearing rubbish, planting bulbs and so forth.
And what about young people – both major victims and perpetrators of crime – with nothing to do? The answer is to mobilise local groups, almost all of whom may have some interest in young people if asked properly, and don’t just divert their energies, offer respect and recognition, and routes to information and personal development.
All the evidence shows that such simple and very cheap actions can work progressively to address the causes of crime. A ‘youth bus’ supported by the Scarman Trust in Weston Super Mare recently cut levels of anti-social behaviour by as much as 50 percent in a matter of weeks. Work on many estates has produced cuts in levels of overall crime by ten to fifteen percent – if this was achieved everywhere, the reduced cost to society would be around £10 billion.
The future, then, is about a deal and a plan, a community service agreement, struck between local communities and outside agencies – we’ll do this if you do that. Done right – and this is where the police can learn from the best community development practice – a joint plan can be developed that focuses the widest range of people on practical action, where everyone is accountable, and communities share the credit and the financial incentives when success is achieved.