Hampshire Police Authority Item

Tuesday 30 April 2002

East Hampshire District Council - Community Safety Crime Conference - 22 February, 2002

Report of Mrs C Barratt

This is a conference held annually by East Hampshire District Council and involves various housing associations, domestic violence managers, neighbourhood watch, parish, district and county councillors etc.

The first presentation on Rural Safer Initiatives was given by Sgt Ian Small of West Mercia police. His work involves developing force crime prevention policy, conducting high security surveys and developing and evaluating crime prevention and community safety initiatives. I have suggested to our Best Value - Dealing with Incidents and Non Criminal Investigations Group, that they should contact Sgt Small with regard to doing something similar in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

The second presentation was on Fear of Crime by Professor Rob Mawby of Plymouth University. This was a typical academic approach and stated most of what we already know on this subject, but was short on ideas for alleviating such fear.

There were four workshops on Domestic Violence, fear of crime, youth offending and possible initiatives and Community Safety. I chose the youth offending one, but much of the time was spent in going over what was done in the past with very little positive thinking about the future.

On the whole this was a well run, worthwhile conference and was well attended by representatives of most of those involved in dealing with crime and disorder in the area.

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