Review of Achievements 2004-05

Since the last Community Safety Plan, produced in December 2003, the County Council has achieved the following:

Delivery Structures

Amalgamated the Youth Offending Service, the Drug and Alcohol Action Team and Community Safety Team into one unit called Youth Justice and Safer Communities within the Chief Executive’s Department.
Supported the development of the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Community Safety Programme Board. Examples of improved co-ordination of partnership working as a result include:
Helping Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) formulate and deliver compatible crime reduction targets.
Establishing an Anti Social Behaviour Delivery group to deliver reductions in ASB through improved recording, more consistent agency response both in terms of prevention and enforcement
Helping partners identify best practice and co-ordination opportunities under three headings:-

* Domestic Violence

* Town Centre Violence

* Youth Violence.

Delivering joint operations to respond to expected community safety challenges eg. Bonfire Night, Summer Time Disorder, Christmas Crackdown and the start of the new licensing laws.
Contributed to implementing the Prolific & Priority Offender (PPO) Strategy co-ordinated through the Community Safety Programme Board. There are currently 137 PPOs registered on the list for the County, 26 of which are young people. During the first 9 months of the scheme 16 County PPOs have been deregistered. This means that they have been offence free for 6 months; had no significant police intelligence reports for six months and they are either drug free or their addiction is being controlled.

Resources

Strengthened the Community Safety Team by one officer to enhance support to departments with their mainstreaming, and to assist partnerships with partnership development and delivery plans.
Increased the community safety budget for Youth Crime Prevention and other crime reduction initiatives.
Increased the County Council’s capacity to directly manage and deliver community safety projects.
Reviewed procedure and criteria for partnerships applying for funding to ensure equality of opportunity.

Section 17

Convened a Corporate Community Safety Group of senior managers.
Provided training and awareness sessions for council staff on community safety and Section 17.

Audit and Consultation

Conducted a countywide Citizens Panels survey on crime and disorder.
Worked with the Research and Information Team to support partnerships with the audit to strategy development process

Youth Crime Prevention

Developed and implemented the Youth Crime Prevention Strategy
Through additional County Council funding, developed and implemented a comprehensive programme of diversionary activities and youth crime reduction services
Contributed through the Youth Offending Service to the ‘prevent and deter’ strand of the Prolific and Priority Offender Strategy and expanded the provision of the Youth Inclusion and Support Panels (YISP) to cover the whole county with one YISP in each district (plus dedicated preventive worker) in order to identify and work with young people to reduce the risk of their involvement in offending.
Prevented offending by the most at risk young people not fully in the youth justice system. Since the YISP service was established in January 2003, a total of 399 young people most at risk of offending have been worked with through to completion either on a group work (290) or individually on a 1 to1 basis (109). Of young people worked with on a 1 to 1 basis, 77% of parents reported a positive change in their child’s behaviour and 75% of young people have not gone on to offend (after 12 months) whilst 87% of the young people themselves said that YISP intervention had helped them.
Increased the provision of parenting programmes, including the launch of a multi-agency Parenting Strategy. In 2004, 6 parenting programmes were provided whilst in 2005 this was increased to 29 groups. In 2004, 53 parents attended these groups whilst in 2005 the numbers rose to 270. The majority of parents who attended reported an improvement in their children’s behaviour with a 50% – 60% reduction in unwanted behaviours by the end of the programmes compared with at the beginning.
Increased work with victims of crime by the Youth Offending Service.In 2004, 98 victims were contacted to offer them a service; 54 of these participated in work in relation to the perpetrator. All were sent a survey asking how satisfied they were with the service they received but only 3 responded, although all three were satisfied with the service received. In 2005, following significant changes to the way this service is provided numbers contacted increased to 454, of whom 124 participated in work in relation to the perpetrator. All responded to a satisfaction survey that they were satisfied with the service they had received.
Kept re-offending below the national average. The Youth Offending Service tracked two separate cohorts of young people over a two year period between 2002 and 2004 to analyse the level of re-offending. It shows that although there has been a small increase in overall rates from 45.5% to 47.9%, they are substantially lower than the national average rate of re-offending (for young people aged 10-17) of 54%. Pre- court re-offending rates (the largest of the four re-offending populations analysed annually, and accounting for 56% of the latest cohort) have fallen from 34.1% to 33.3%. Furthermore, the seriousness and frequency of offending has been substantially reduced within both the pre-court and community penalty re-offending populations. For example, the seriousness of offending on community penalties has reduced from 62.2% to 48.7%.

Common Monitoring Projects

With partner agencies, developed a Racist Incident Common Monitoring Project, provided training to CDRPs, partner agencies and County Council departments and supported the development of policy and procedures in relation to reporting of racist incidents.
Through joint work with the police the reporting of hate crime incidents has been expanded to include new distinct categories. Incidents are now recorded under the following headings which have all shown increased reporting:-
Racist Incidents15%
Homophobic Incidents40%
Religious Incidents. 7%
Developed a Domestic Violence Common Monitoring Project and co-ordinated work across the County to deliver the local PSA target for Domestic Violence including the delivery of training to partner agencies and County Council Services and the development of an Education Domestic Violence protocol.

Local PSA Targets 2003-2006

Contributed to achievements of the four crime-related Local PSA targets as follows:

Basic Skills

Increase the proportion of young offenders with a basic skills deficit completing basic skills programmes to 50%.
Increase the proportion of young offenders with basic skills needs achieving 75% of targets on their Individual Learning Plan from 17% to 30%.
Increase the proportion of young offenders with basic skills needs gaining an accredited qualification from 7% to 20%.
Increase the proportion of young offenders with basic skills needs going into full-time education, training or employment, or having a re-integration plan in place designed to help them achieve this at the end of their community penalty from 52% to 85%.
This target is on track to be fully achieved.

Drug Treatment

Increase the number of drug users in treatment programmes in Leicestershire from 972 to 1150.
Increase the number of specialist agency planned closures of drug users per year in Charnwood and North West Leicestershire from 39 to 78.
Increase the numbers of GPs involved in planned closures of drug users in Charnwood and North West Leicestershire from 0 to 6
This target is likely to be partially achieved.

Domestic Violence

Increase the number of Domestic Violence incidents reported to the police from 4,294 to 5,539.
Reduce the number of repeat victims of Domestic Violence reported to the police from 2,056 to 1,682
Reduce the number of statement retractions by Domestic Violence victims recorded by the CPS from 32 to 25.
Increase the number of Domestic Violence perpetrators successfully completing the core perpetrator programme from 10 to 40.
The reporting of domestic violence incidents has risen by 19% reducing the known under reporting. The number of repeat victims of domestic violence has continued to rise but the coordinated work has provided an improved service to victims and the rise has been contained below the LPSA target. This target is likely to be partially achieved.

Vehicle Crime

Reduce Vehicle Crime from 8,379 to 6,961, led by Leicestershire Constabulary.
This is on track to be fully achieved with a 31% reduction in theft from vehicles and a 14% reduction in theft of vehicles.