safety partnership
Action Groups
As part of their strategy they have set up action groups which focus on different forms of crime that effect them and the community.
Anti social behaviour
The partnerships aim to cut down on anti-social behaviour is to use 3 strategies; educate, enforce and prevention. As anti social behaviour isn't a criminal offence they want to work on a strategy for balancing out the problem that will reduce behaviour like; verbal and physical violence and high levels of noise.
Property Crime
This looks at crime against a number of personal property such as, vehicle crime, domestic and burglary. Within domestic burglary they include any crimes that cause bodily harm and also any attempted crimes, vehicle crime also includes anything stolen from the vehicle.
Safer Nightlife
This part of the strategy is part of a wider scheme that the Shropshire County Drug action team are heading as part of a nationwide scheme to encourage people ad clubs to be aware and get rid the use of illegal substances, both by people who are doing it themselves, but also people who are being spiked.
One way they implemented this strategy is by putting up CCTV cameras in taxi vehicles, for security and to reduce illegal behaviour. They have also joined the Together campaign that seeks to stop anti social behaviour which includes drunk and disorderly behaviours, in this campaign they gather information on anti social behaviour, when it has occurred, where and the responses and reactions to the behaviour. By doing this they want to be able to base future action plans on the information to tackle the most troublesome areas.
Educating people about crime
As mentioned previously one of the main aims is to educate people about crime, this includes educating people about different types of crime, the true picture of crime within the Shrewsbury community, getting rid of myths about crime and fears of crime and to build on their community so that people feel part of close community which hopefully will mean everyone will both watch out for one another but also to make people who might have been acting in a criminal way before to feel shame in this behaviour therefore stopping them from doing it again.
They have done this in a number of ways; they have given people questionnaires in order to identify people's fears and misconceptions about crime and interviews with people. These were done in order to look at why people have particular fears about certain crimes, and also to find a way of preventing people feeling like that.
They also found that a lot of the community felt their crime rate was rising, and that they had little faith in the people who had the authority to prevent this, as well as having perceptions that most crime is committed by young people. As part of the partnership they are now working on showing the community that young people aren't always the criminal and that they have just as much chance of being a victim of crime as the elderly do. They are also building on making facilities for the youth members of the community, so they have something to do like youth clubs, but also so that they have someone to talk to, they are doing this by introducing Community and Connexions teams. By doing this they want to include young people in the decisions about the community so that they feel part of it, and also to build the strong relationships of the community with people of all ages.