Equality Impact Assessment

The Community Safety Plan covers a wide range of activity mainly focussed on County Council mainstream services and partnership working, all of which could have an impact on the positive duties to:

Inequality is inherent in a number of community safety issues, for example Hate Crime, which is based on differences and discrimination. There is also significant national evidence that young black males are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system overall and are particularly over represented in custody, although this is not the case within the youth offending population of Leicestershire.

The Youth Offending Service provides comprehensive monitoring returns to the Youth Justice Board which include monitoring of race and gender. The 2005/06 Youth Justice Plan includes a Race Action plan which addresses key issues identified in the Plan’s Equality Impact Assessment. This assessment will be revisited in producing the 2006/07 Youth Justice Plan. Other County Council services assisting in the delivery of the Plan through their duties under Section 17 of the CDA 98 will also be developing their own Equalities Impact Assessments as appropriate.

Two key service areas within this Plan which aim to reduce inequalities through working with those who are most vulnerable or more likely to be victims or perpetrators of specific crimes i.e. domestic violence and racist Incidents are highlighted.

The Domestic Violence Common Monitoring Project monitors ethnicity, religion, disability, gender and sexuality.  Information collated is periodically reviewed to assess impact on particular groups. Key Domestic Violence services funded by the County Council also monitor ethnicity, gender, disability and age.

This monitoring demonstrates that 93% of victims recorded by the Common Monitoring Project are female whilst 89% of perpetrators recorded by the project are male.  This is generally in line with the national picture. Because of the nature of domestic violence, some services are targeted solely at either men or women as perpetrators or victims of domestic violence. However because so few victims are male, services for male victims are very under developed and need attention. This not to say though that services for women victims are satisfactory.

The monitoring also indicated some degree of over representation amongst victims from BME backgrounds.  Where the ethnicity of victims was recorded 12% were from BME backgrounds compared with 7.2% in the overall Leicestershire population (2001 census). However, it should be noted that the ethnicity of 33% of victims recorded by the project was not known and points to the need to improve recording practices.

The monitoring project records 9% of victims as having a disability, which suggests slight under-representation compared to 15.5% of the population with ‘limiting long-term illness’, however only 20% were recorded as not having a disability.  This highlights further the need to improve recording practices in this area.

Information is also limited in relation to the age of those involved in domestic violence, although it is generally recognised that the needs of children and young people have not always been given sufficient attention.

The Children’s Services Department maintains a programme of Equality Impact Assessments for services including child protection and domestic violence responsibilities and covering parent support in the Preventative Strategy and work in partnership with other agencies under the Leicestershire Interagency Parenting Strategy.

A county wide Domestic Violence Strategy is currently under development which will consider equalities impact in more detail and given the above will pay particular attention to the needs of women from BME background. However, there is also a need for a focus on improved services for male victims and also for children and young people who are caught up in DV situations.

The Racist Incident Common Monitoring Project also monitors ethnicity, religion, disability and age.  In order to promote equality of access to this service it is available in multiple languages and utilises community access points in addition to telephone and on-line reporting.  Information collated is periodically reviewed to assess impact on particular groups.

Racist Incidents proportionally affect those from black & minority ethnic groups more, with at least 61.6% of police recorded incidents in 2004 affecting individuals from these groups, which make up 7.2% of the population of Leicestershire. Again however, there are problems with the level of recording of ethnic background as in 21.4% of police recorded incidents the ethnicity of the victim is not known. It is not possible to know therefore whether the 21.4% are mainly from BME backgrounds or whether they are from other groups affected by racist incidents.

As part of new statutory responsibilities and also implementation of the LAA, the work of the County Council and its partners is being extended in relation to Hate Crime to include crimes and anti-social behaviour against people with disabilities.

Fear of crime appears to increase with age, and more markedly in men than women, although women’s fear of crime is generally higher in the first place.  However much of the surveying of fear of crime does not consult with those under 18. Again work to implement the LAA outcomes to reduce fear of crime will need to focus on those who are most fearful.

This is an initial Equality Impact Assessment with the data available.  A more detailed Assessment will be carried out during the first year of the Plan. In addition, all LAA outcome delivery plans will include an Equalities Impact Assessment.