Community Safety Policy
Community Safety Policy - an introduction
Community Safety Policy falls into several parts which we have detailed below:
- Governance policy - mainly related to the growing compendium of guidance on partnership working in crime, disorder and combating drug misuse and its links to central, regional and local governance
- Practice policy - plenty of it but needs to be handled with caution - as a good idea does not necessarily translate into an effective project
- Performance policy - potentially the 'tungsten tipped point' to prod the good intentioned and worthy project toward specific and defined outcomes and outputs
FURTHER READING
The central government responsibility for crime and disorder reduction continues to sit with the Home Office. In the division of governmental crime and justice responsibilities, which occurred in 2007, the Home Office retained the police service and crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRP's) under their wing but passed the probation service and the prison service to the Ministry of Justice.
Central Government Policy
The relationship between the Home Office and the individual CDRP's is complex. It is intended to be a 'light touch' relationship consisting of Home Office encouragement of CDRP's and Local Strategic Partnerships (LSP's) to delivery at a local level the National Community Safety Plan 2008-11 and the key public service agreements (see below) in exchange for central government funding. But there continues to be a need to ensure that crime and disorder reduction targets are achieved by efficient and effective CDRP's; so that the Home Secretary retains a power to intervene in the working of CDRP's.
How this 'light touch' relationship will work in the future, with the introduction of the minimum standards for CDRP's contained within the Police and Justice Act 2006,
and the emerging importance of the police and community safety targets (APACS), has yet to be seen but from the 2006 experience of Home Office intervention in the 44 CDRP priority areas - it may well prove difficult to maintain a distance.____________________________________________________________________________ 
UK Central Government Policy Links
Building On Progress: Security, Crime and Justice
This review/report outlines UK government policies for protecting the public.
National Community Safety Plan 2008-11 : This is the updated version (December 2007) of the UK plan which describes the delivery of community safety services through partnership work within a statutory framework.
Safer Scotland Scottish Executive
Web pages with policies, contact information for the 32 Scottish community safety partnerships
Cutting Crime - A New Partnership 2008-11
The new (Autumn 2007) UK government crime reduction strategy
Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships Mini-site
Home Office site providing guidance on effective crime reduction partnerships
This is the link to the circulars issued by the Home Office covering all aspects of its area - including crime and disorder reduction legislation and programmes of activity.
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