New approach needed for crime prevention, says report

Placing a legal duty on private firms to do more to prevent crime would help deter potential offenders and relieve pressure on police forces, it says.

The report from the Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales, chaired by Sir Michael Barber, and published by The Police Foundation, suggests that, by adopting a systematic approach with strong leadership and coordination from the government, the UK would become a world leader in crime and harm prevention.

Evidence cited in the report makes it clear that by far the best way to reduce crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place. For example, it is now clear that it was improved home and vehicle security measures, more than tougher prison sentences or changes to policing tactics, that led to a 74 per cent fall in burglary and a 79 per cent fall in vehicle theft since 1995.

The report argues that new ‘volume crimes’, such as online child sexual abuse, could be tackled in similar ways. With more than 17 million reports of online child sexual abuse imagery reported globally in 2019, the growing number of offences could be significantly reduced through improved use of technology. For example, website warnings and pop ups could be used more systematically to deter potential viewers of abusive imagery and greater use of identity verification could create safer spaces for children online.

With many new crimes growing faster than the criminal justice system can deal with them, The Police Foundation has developed four recommendations that would enable the UK to become more strategic in its approach to crime and harm prevention. The Government should:

• Create a lead national agency which would take responsibility for crime and harm prevention. This could work to systematically prevent crime in the same way that the Health and Safety Executive has worked successfully to prevent accidents at work and the Civil Aviation Authority has worked to prevent accidents in the air;
• Establish a new cross-departmental government strategy on crime and harm prevention, under the direct leadership of the Prime Minister;
• Impose a “duty to prevent crime” across the private sector so that companies are asked to invest upfront in making sure their products and services are secure; and
• Repurpose the cluttered landscape of crime prevention agencies at the local level, for example, by widening the remit of Violence Reduction Units to include all local crime and by giving Community Safety Partnerships a new role and additional resources.

Rick Muir, director of The Police Foundation and author of the report, said “Politicians of all parties agree on the importance of preventing crime and yet we lack a proper strategy to achieve this. While the police own the problem of crime detection, no one owns the problem of crime prevention.

“We need a single national body to take responsibility for preventing crime and to coordinate a truly cross government approach. Given our unrivalled research base in crime science the UK could be a world leader in crime prevention. We should aim to take the same kind of systemic approach to preventing crime that we take to preventing accidents at work or in the air.”