Nacro - Services - Community Safety


		Community safety

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Nacro in Action

Helping to develop Waltham Forest's crime and disorder reduction strategy

For Waltham Forest's community safety audit, we carried out primary research and used data from a range of local agencies to a tight timescale.

Our strategy and partnership development work included:

A report on the priority issues identified by the audit

Advice on the available responses and 'what works'

A summary good practice guide on the priority issues

A day looking at partnership development issues such as co-ordinating responses and funding

Crime and disorder is a central concern of the public, a central theme of the Government's social policy programme, and the major cross-cutting challenge for local and regional agencies.

Nacro works with local people, practitioners and inter-agency partnerships to reduce crime levels, lessen the fear of crime and regenerate communities. Our emphasis is on tackling anti-social behaviour and racially motivated crime. We also aim to ensure that the solutions we identify with our partners will make a lasting difference to communities. In order to last they have to be mainstreamed: actively taken on by all the agencies concerned with providing continuing services - such as health, education, or the police - and not just part of a temporary crime reduction programme.

A national perspective on what works

Our research, work with government and experience of delivering services at a national level give us a clear understanding of what works in community safety and how to adapt and apply this at a local level.

Working with local communities

Over the last 25 years, we have supported several hundred crime prevention and community safety partnerships in disadvantaged, high-crime communities. We are continuing to build on this tradition by running innovative neighbourhood projects and researching the best ways to involve communities in developing effective responses to crime and disorder.

Tackling social exclusion

Our record on tackling social exclusion includes: research on youth crime prevention and involving young people in developing and implementing solutions; working with communities; helping local agencies to implement Section 17; and mainstreaming 'social' crime prevention.

Current work includes:

Delivering a Home Office-funded programme of technical support for the Reducing Burglary Initiative (with Crime Concern)
Delivering a Home Office-funded programme of support to crime and disorder partnerships (with Crime Concern)
Carrying out neighbourhood and borough-wide community safety audits
Publishing a guide to community involvement - 'Putting the community into community safety'
Surveying crime and disorder reduction strategies in rural areas and researching street crime in Hammersmith and Fulham
Managing community safety projects, including the Merseyside Racial Harassment Intervention Unit

Nacro's Crime and Social Policy Section can:

Develop and implement Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategies
Involve local communities. Nacro is continually seeking new ways to ensure that the communities and individuals most effected by crime - who are often those least likely to participate in conventional consultation exercises - participate fully
Monitor and evaluate all types of public and voluntary sector community safety projects
Carry out research
Train practitioners in all aspects of community safety - including consultation techniques, race, and strategy development
Develop and manage projects
Support crime and disorder partnerships though our free national mailing

For more information contact: community.safety@nacro.org.uk

Other Nacro Services:

	Resettling ex-offenders and prisoners		Mental health
	Education and employment		Youth crime
	Housing		Community safety
	Race and the criminal justice system

Community safety