A summary of the University of Northampton Participatory Action Research project, Locally Identified Solutions and Practices in intensive engagement in Policing, with Northamptonshire Police

1. Locally Identified Solutions &
Practices in Policing
Project Summary
As at Jul 2014
Tim Curtis
1

2. First engagement Nov 2012
• Discussing community profiling and rich picturing
as a community engagement technique
• NP seeking better ‘data’ from LIPS – hard data,
closed question set.
• How to ‘use’ the JDI Vulnerable Localities Index
• What is ‘intensive community engagement’ and
how does it differ from:
– Super cocooning: Inform – Reassure – Advise
– SARA/NDM
– Social media and community events
2

3. Methodology
Participatory Action
Research
• Rapid Appraisal
• Insights & themes
• Initial response
• Effectuate
• Review and Amend
PAR is collaborative, critical, participatory, and developmental.
3

4. Participatory Action Research
• acknowledge that the problem originates in the community itself
and is defined, analyzed, and solved by the community.
• ultimate goal of PAR research is the radical transformation of social
reality and improvement in the lives of the individuals involved;
thus, community members are the primary beneficiaries of the
research.
• PAR involves the full and active participation of the community at
all levels of the entire research process.
• PAR encompasses a range of powerless groups of individuals: the
exploited, the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized.
• the ability to create a greater awareness in individuals’ own
resources that can mobilize them for self-reliant development
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5. Rapid Appraisal
• Interviews in St James/Dallington team
• Vertical sample through from Inspector
through PC to PCSO and to residents
• Use of RP as exploratory tool
• Engagements recorded film/audio
• Seeking insights and themes
• Verify insights through extending sample
• Theoretical saturation
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6. Insights and Themes
• Significant change in discourse about
communities between Police Officer and PCSO
• PCSO actively solving problems
• PSCO acting as a “boundary spanner”
(Tushman 1977)
• Intuitive rather than deliberate community
engagement and problem solving
• Frustrated by limited power and locus of
control (being ‘abstracted’ to other tasks)
Tushman, Michael L (1977). "Special Boundary Roles in the Innovation Process". Administrative
Science Quarterly 22 (4): 587–605.
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7. Initial response
• PCSOs operating in complex (messy) social
environments
– Soft Systems Methodology specifically designed for this
• Police being measured on performance where
solutions owned by non-Police actors
– Community organising to get other working to deliver
Police outcomes
• Long tradition of expecting Police to solve everything
– Weekly ‘you said, we did’ closed loop cycle
– Required developing ‘self-efficacy’ in neighbourhoods
7

8. Unfreeze and Reframe
• Socially Entrepreneurial PCSO think piece Jan 2013
• PCSO needs to have autonomy and locus of control to act
effectively
• PCSOs will go about a consistent and repeatable set of information
gathering and problem analysis/solving tasks
• encouraging and training new ‘engaged citizen informants’ to
become smart customers of the Police equipped to ask the right
questions
• PCSO’s remit should follow natural community ‘neighbourhoods’
rather than parish boundaries
• Retain and motivate this talent for localities through long-term
engagement
• neighbourhood based Police & Community Foundations would
operates companies, led by the Police but securing funds and
incomes from a variety of contracts
Prompted by Policing 2020: What kind of police service do we want in 2020?” 8

9. First cohort
• Generic but open framework of
– Community profiling
– Rich picture dialoguing
– Issue prioritising
– Intrinsic Motivation theory
• Too much detail/academic
• Too open and generic
• Needed case studies
• Methods well tested but never done in Police before
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10. Three ‘test-sites’
• Dallington/St James –wider issues around
Operation Isotope, gold burglaries amongst
Bangladeshi community, first cohort PCSOs
• Sheep St- complex neighbourhood with street
drinking/homelessness and sex trade.
• Rockingham Rd- street drinking and ASB,
Polish community
• Training sites for subsequent cohorts
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11. LISP Proforma
• Various re-ordering of toolkit- attempt to connect to
National Decision Model
• Better fit with SARA framework- familiar to PCSOs, but
with more indepth investigation
• Refocus on ethos of engagement and community
organising
• Back burner for data, profiling, and issues ranking
• Lower priority for rich picturing- requires community
engagement first
• LISP coined as a counterpoint to LIPS
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12. Second Cohort June/July 2013
• More focussed on LISP proforma
• Less academic
• Aide-memoire plus light touch how-to
• PCSOs still charged with reading all the background materials
• Supported by regular PCSO usergroup
• Challenges
• Handling through A01 process
• ECINS as collaboration tool
• Exclusion (of residents) arising from ‘technological responses’
• Sgts and Inspectors –’reinterpreting’ PCSO expectations, tasking
LISP as additional duties rather than 40% core business
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13. PSCO responses
• Consistent language and process across county
• Open framework allows different responses
according to local conditions
• Written copy of work completed
• Evidence of crimes prevented
• Option to escalate to overcome blocks
• Hold partners to account
• ‘allows you to chip away at the [persistent]
problem’
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14. Risks going forward
• Short term targets lead to frustration with apparent
lack of progress
• PSCOs given ‘activity’ rather than ‘outcome’ targets
• Confusion between SARA/NDM/AO1 and new imports
like super-cocooning
• PCSOs timid about addressing difficult challenges
‘being faced with an unresolvable issue’
• LISP proforma completion measured according to
‘numbers done’ rather than quality of outcomes
• LISPs remain a predominantly Police-led activity- Police
remain addicted to ‘being in charge’
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15. Third cohort
• Remaining PCSOs trained in Nov/Dec 2013
• Version #6 of training slides and #12 of LISP
handbook
• Concentration on St Seps area as training location
• Improvement in ‘assent’ from PCSOs and grasp of
RP approach
• Some PCs and Sgt involvement
• Briefing of all Sgts ‘Managing a LISP’.
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16. Widening range of LISP projects
• PCSOs undertaking ‘practice’ LISPs
• Sgts clearer about selection criteria for LISPS
• Better justification for LISP areas, RD working with stats
team to create better crime rates data in standard set
• Evidence of more intensive engagement in some LISPs
• Reluctance to engage with RP as a planning technique
• Still tendency to ‘own’ the process and create
unsustainable ‘projects’
• Discussion about measuring cohesion.
• Success measures are still Police-led.
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17. Widening scope
• Supt RJ shifted to new command Dec 2013
• Supt Dave Hill in Corporate Services picking up
and widening LISP and IE to new Target Operating
Model
• Consider involving Special Constables and
volunteers in LISPing
• LISP project to be incorporated into Police and
Community institute at University
• E-learning module to be created in Jan 2014
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18. Going forward
Need to
• Reinforce training with PCSO fora
• Thorough case study on St Seps project as
demonstrator
• Laura Brodrick for better RP
• Briefing of Inspectors and PCC.
• Complete review of LISPs under progress- full
analysis of patterns and issues
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19. 2014
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20. Shift from experiment to pilot
• 10th Jan Presentation to Chief Constable Mr Lee
• 6th of Feb Visit by Justice Minister Damian Green MP
• 14th Feb, further PCSO training commences
• 14th May, Intensive Engagement Part II commences
• 23rd May, first phase of PCSOs present on LISP
progress: Changemakers
• 30th May CommunityHubs emerges in ASPIRE: involve
• 16th June CommunityHubs Chief Supt Paul Fell and
Insp. Dennis Murray
• 12th July Police Cadets in Kettering collecting LISP data
with Victoria Boulton
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21. Scope of Work Jul 14
• First 12 months, primary engagement with the field
• Secondary analysis of existing crime patterns and intelligence pertaining to the two pilot areas prior
to LISP activity to identify hotspot patterns of actual crimes in Kettering and ‘fear of crime data’ in
rural east northants (will require bespoke collation of data, driven by Vulnerable Localities Index
patterns of vulnerability or bespoke fear of crime telephone survey separately commissioned), to
identify ‘epicentres’ for initial LISP street work
• Direct engagement with two pilot locations with Police cadets, PCSOs, Special Constables and
officers to collect street level specific data to verify and supplement existing secondary data:
– Physical assets (FieldTrip GB app) geolocated inventory of existing community assets, mapped. Systematic
mapping of every street in vicinity of identified epicentres
– Assist Identification and recruitment of community stakeholders identified from data trawl, working with
PCSOs and specials to contact all identified stakeholders and collect contact details. Anonymised mapping of
geolocation of stakeholder density in LISP areas.
– Assist convening of working groups from stakeholder list and attending/observing meetings to develop rich
pictures of local solutions and practices
– Assisting in developing LISP proforma documentation to capture the LISP intensive engagement processes
– Assisting to develop LISP/CommunityHub success factors from different stakeholders
• After 12 months, evaluation stage
• Evaluation of the LISP intensive engagement process and the development of solutions and
practices, using a modified PAR evaluation tool called Attribution/Contribution, at the two pilot
sites
• Repeating the same evaluation at two/three other LISP intensive engagement activities that didn’t
receive direct support
• Map individual LISP project success factors against Police crime/performance data to identify
impact on force demand.
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22. Paper to ASPIRE May 14
• Community Hub
• A body of people or services, that are accessible to all groups in the community
that they serve. It will provide a range of high quality services, appropriate to
that local community, that are flexible, in order to meet changing needs and
demand.
• PLUS
• A community hub can or could:
• Allow community access to assets
• AND
• Provide a self service functionality to local people
• A community hub could be PERMANENT, PERIODIC or TEMPORARY.
• In essence a Community hub relates to services, service provision and service
access rather than simply buildings
Chief Superintendent Paul Fell
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23. Co-Location
• Where two or more agencies or groups, come
together in an operating scenario to deliver
services in a sustainable/cost effective manner
to a community.
• Co-Location is always likely to be permanent.
• In essence a co-location is more likely to relate
to bases and buildings than necessarily service.
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24. • The concept of community hubs is likely to be such that where one exists
we ought to aspire to ensure that it:
• ENGAGES - communities, partners, groups, individuals, volunteers.
• INSPIRES – new approaches, different thinking, involvement.
• MOTIVATES - constant improvement, involvement of local people to get
involved, staff to deliver the best that they can.
• EQUIPS – communities to help themselves, staff to support communities,
local people and groups to actively participate.
• SUPPORTS – growth and sustainability of communities and service
provision, delivery of a range of agencies core principles and objectives,
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25. Intensive Engagement PtII: Pilots
• Two locations, based on VLI screening, Kettering Priority
Area 6, and one in rural East Northants
• Screening steps:
• JDI Vulnerable Localities Index
• Long term crime data from Priority Area analysis
• Perception of crime data (rurality)
• Locations of specials and volunteers, cadets
• (criminal damage and road data from blue light partners)
• Field work with cadets and PCSOs to collect assets
inventory
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26. Priority Area 6 data
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27. Priority Area 6: Mapping Example – Kettering
Sector
•Also possible to filter hotspots down further by subgroup within the overall
definitions
E.g. Kettering -> Hard Crime -> Violence -> 15:00 to 17:00
•Hotspots spread out across the sector, with ‘hotter’ areas located near schools and
leisure facilities
•Decision to be made on whether to focus on overall definition (Hard or Soft) or
specific crime times within these when developing patrols
5 Years 2013/14
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uiexnitb6ypyfrh/County%20Hotspot%20Presentation%20%282%29%20%282%29.pptx
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28. A selection of LIPS data for Kettering, top priorities
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29. People being drunk or rowdy
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30. Geomapped Community Connects in Kettering
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31. Field Trip GB
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32. First round of Community Asset data
Collected July 2014
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