Crime Comparator

Common Statement of Performance

Introduction

The Home Secretary, Theresa May MP, has been clear that her overarching priority for the police is to cut crime. In practice, this involves: the prevention and detection of crime; understanding offender behaviour; dealing with the activities that can lead to criminality; building relationships with the public; understanding the experience of victims; maintaining public order; policing public spaces; keeping communities safe; and many other issues. In addition, as an emergency service the police have a number of other responsibilities and commitments, including preparing for and responding to major incidents and even natural disasters.

Here in Lancashire we place quality at the heart of everything we do, whether that is in the service we deliver to victims or the way in which we handle calls from members of the public. We also ensure that quality doesn’t come at a high price ensuring value for money in all the services we deliver.

This statement is an attempt to represent all the demands, responsibilities and commitments on the police and put the statistics made available to the public in context.

The role of the police is to respond to calls for assistance from the public and other agencies, and to initiate other activity to ensure the safety of the community. Ultimately, everything the police do is in order to cut crime and keep people safe.

In common with the rest of the public sector, police forces are finding new and less expensive ways of working that meet the needs of the public and sustain quality of service.

Of particular note are our new initiatives of restorative justice and police resolution, which have a key role in returning discretion to officers, reducing reoffending and better meeting the needs of both victims and the community. Forces now use new ways of dealing with some crimes, meaning that some ‘official’ statistics (such as detection rates) under-represent the success in solving crimes. Forces are also placing emphasis on understanding criminals, particularly those who represent a serious threat and operate in organised crime groups. Offenders don’t recognise force boundaries and so police forces work together to prevent serious crimes including terrorism. These crimes are relatively rare but take a great deal of effort and resource.

For more information about crime levels in Lancashire and what we are doing about these, please follow below:

About Lancashire and it’s Constabulary

A summary of our performance

Violence against the person

Acquisitive crime

Anti-Social Behaviour

Vulnerable people

Sex Offenders and Violent Offenders

About Lancashire…..

The county of Lancashire covers an area of 2,903 square kilometres with 201 kilometres of coastline and 412 kilometres of motorway. There is a mixture of rural and urban economies, including four major conurbations: Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Burnley and Preston. There are two university cities, Lancaster and Preston; with the latter being the seventh largest in the UK. There are 15 local authorities, two of which are unitary authorities (Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen) with the remainder being districts of Lancashire County Council. The county has a significant transportation network, with five major motorway links, busy seaports at Heysham and Fleetwood, the main West Coast railway line and increasing air traffic using Blackpool Airport.

Lancashire’s population is about 1.5 million with 6.6% from a minority ethnic background. An estimated 40,000 people travel into Lancashire each day to work and the county also attracts over 50 million visitors per year.

…..and it’s Constabulary

The Constabulary’s budget for 2010/2011 was £278 million.

Lancashire Constabulary is a member of the Safer Lancashire Partnership and is committed to working in partnership with local authority colleagues and the 14 Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) as well as other partner agencies such as the Crown Prosecution Service, the Probation Service, Her Majesty’s Court Services as well as many others.

Policing is a complex business.  The safety, security and quality of life of the communities we serve are heavily dependent on our ability to simultaneously meet the challenges presented by serious and organised crime, persistent offenders and alcohol-related disorder, whilst working with people at neighbourhood level to tackle anti-social behaviour and local problems that undermine community confidence and feelings of safety.

The Constabulary works hard to ensure that high quality services are delivered to everyone.  Dealing with 2,150 incidents per day, the Constabulary employs around 3,400 police officers and 2,400 police staff, including 400 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and many others in front line roles such as Crime Scene Investigators, Public Enquiry Assistants and Custody Detention Officers.  Invaluable support to regular staff is provided by 400 Special Constables and 300 Community Volunteers, all of whom play a crucial part in making Lancashire a safer place.

Designing and delivering our services based on the needs of our communities is a key feature of how we do business. What it means is that, irrespective of the financial constraints placed upon us, we will always endeavour to take into account the views, needs and priorities of our diverse communities when we are deciding how the Constabulary should be configured in the future.  We will always base these decisions on a clear assessment of the risks, threats and harm that face our communities.

Lancashire Constabulary is only one of two police forces in the country to be awarded the Government’s Customer Service Excellence Award officially recognising that we are firmly focused on customer satisfaction, and go the extra mile to deliver the best service possible.

Working with the consent and support of our communities will ensure that we continue to provide high quality, responsive local policing services to the people of Lancashire, whom we are proud to serve.   

A summary of our performance

Lancashire continues to be one of the safest places in the country to live and crime continues to fall.

The Constabulary performed well during 2010 – 2011, with overall levels of crime continuing to fall and most categories of crime showing reductions. We are pleased to say that some crimes, such as domestic burglary and vehicle crime, are now at lower levels than they were in the mid 1970’s. We also reduced the number of violent crimes and criminal damage, whilst detecting more offences in these areas.

What does ‘Violence against the person’ mean?

It is a very wide ranging ‘label’ that covers crimes from murder, through to assaults causing injury, to stalking and harassment (that doesn’t cause physical injury).  It accounts for approximately 20% of all crime in England & Wales.

The rate of Violence Against the Person per 1,000 population in Lancashire is similar to that of England & Wales as a whole at just over 15 crimes per 1,000 population. Lancashire has continued to reduce the number of these offences over a number of years which has resulted in over 30% fewer offences being recorded in 2010/2011 than in 2004/2005. This means there are almost 10,000 fewer victims.  Furthermore, Lancashire currently detects 58% of these crimes, which is significantly higher than the overall rate for England & Wales, which is 44%.

What are we doing to tackle violent crime?

Whilst violent crime continues to fall in Lancashire, we know that we cannot be complacent and this area remains a key priority for us. We want to reduce the chance of anyone becoming a victim of violent crime by making sure we understand the problem and the root causes, by working with partners to tackle the broader issues which often contribute to these types of offence, and also by working with known offenders to address the impact of alcohol and drugs on their offending behaviour.

Domestic abuse

Protecting the most vulnerable members of society is of paramount importance to us which is why we place a particular focus on domestic abuse.

The Constabulary’s drive to continually improve its performance in relation to domestic abuse is having positive effects and over the past 12 months the level of reporting has increased and the conviction rate has improved.

The county has specialist Domestic Violence Court Areas, each of which is supported by Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs). These conferences deal with the victims who are perceived to be at the highest level of risk and allow statutory and voluntary agencies to agree the necessary actions to protect them from further harm and target the offender where appropriate.

We will continue to work with other agencies, such as Health and Education, to identify early those people who may be at risk as well as making sure we learn the lessons of any past cases.

If you want more information about domestic abuse click here

http://www.lancashire.police.uk/help-and-advice/advice/domestic-abuse

Acquisitive crime

What is ‘Acquisitive crime’?

These crimes are based on a motivation to steal money or property and include burglary, robbery, vehicle crime, and theft and handling stolen goods. It accounts for approximately 50% of all crime in England and Wales.

We know that these types of crime continue to be of concern to the public and over recent years, we have reduced the number of burglaries in the county to unprecedented levels. In fact domestic burglary figures are now at lower levels than they were in the mid 1970’s.

Despite the levels being very low we reduced domestic burglaries by 1.6% in 2010/2011 compared to the previous year and because this type of offence can have a devastating affect on victims it will continue to be a high priority on our crime reduction agenda.

We have also reduced vehicle crime by 7.6% in 2010/11 compared to the previous year, and many local initiatives, such as improved car park security, have contributed to this.

The number of robberies in Lancashire is relatively low and the Constabulary aims to ensure that this continues however there was a small increase in the number of robberies in 2010/2011 compared to the previous year of 2.5% or, 17 offences. 

Metal theft continues to rise in Lancashire and has increased from 508 offences in 2006 to 2,228 offences in 2010. All metals are targeted however copper and lead are the most commonly stolen in Lancashire.  Metal prices have quadrupled from the earlier part of the last decade to £5,500 a tonne for the best quality copper, and similarly good quality lead is trading at £1,500 a tonne.

As well as force-wide crackdowns, local operations have been undertaken to target specific localised problems such as particular scrap metal dealers and locally identified thieves.

For crime prevention advice please click here

http://www.lancashire.police.uk/help-and-advice/crime-precention

Regular updates about operations to reduce crime can be found on our news pages, on our Twitter feed @lancspolice and on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/lancspolice

Anti-Social Behaviour

Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) is categorised as either nuisance, environmental or personal ASB. It includes rowdy and inconsiderate behaviour, street drinking and malicious/nuisance communications. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish this from some crimes, such as criminal damage and other criminal acts. However, it can have devastating effects on quality of life and the safety of individuals and communities, particularly if it is a repeated event.

In Lancashire, we take a robust approach to recording incidents of Anti-Social Behaviour, ensuring that the figures reflect reality as closely as possible which is why they may appear high in numbers when compared to other forces. ASB has been reducing across the county over the last three years and last year reduced by over 10% when compared to the 2009-2010 levels.

We are very aware that alcohol-related anti-social behaviour is a specific concern for many people and can affect residential areas and town centres alike and to this end the Constabulary has implemented an Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy.

We also work closely with our partners and have launched a county-wide ASB campaign to spread the message that ‘ASB will not be tolerated at any age’.

Visit www.saferlancashire.co.uk for more information

 

Vulnerable people

Individuals or groups are often vulnerable because of their circumstances or characteristics such as religion, age, ethnicity or previous victimisation. The police have a responsibility to protect vulnerable members of the public, whether victims of crime or not. Specially trained officers provide support to vulnerable people.

Sex Offenders and Violent Offenders

The risks posed by sex offenders and violent offenders are managed within our Public Protection Units (PPUs), where Constabulary officers and staff work alongside partners in the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA).

These partnerships include non-statutory organisations which allow us to identify vulnerable people and those that pose a risk of violent offending at an earlier stage. We hold conferences to enable the sharing of domestic violence information and improve the co-ordination of victim protection and support.

A key priority for agencies across Lancashire is to protect those younger people who may be at risk of being sexually exploited. We have six specialist teams working in local areas that target offenders and work with vulnerable young people to help them recognise the signs of sexual exploitation.

We know that by sharing information between agencies we can all be better sighted on the risks and threats posed by this type of offender which means we can offer more support to those at risk of becoming victims.

To find out more about how partners work together under MAPPA please click here

http://www.saferlancashire.co.uk/2011/reduce/index.asp?siteid=5550&pageid=30399&e=e

Road safety

We know that communities remain concerned about road casualties and the Constabulary, alongside our partners in Lancashire County Council, Safer Lancashire Board and the Road Safety Partnership will continue to play an active role in making Lancashire’s roads safer.

To achieve this we will deliver our Roads Policing Strategy by focusing upon reducing road casualties and denying criminals the use of our roads.

We will seek to reduce casualties by using a ‘problem solving’ approach with our partners through engagement, education, enforcement, engineering and evaluation.

To find out more about roads policing in Lancashire please click here http://www.lancashire.police.uk/about-us/departments/roads-policing-unit

To find out more information about road safety in Lancashire please visit http://www.safe2travel.co.uk/