Crime issues - street crime

Report: 7
Date: 12 June 2001
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report provides information and commentary on Street crime trends and MPS performance, including prevention initiatives. It also provides comparative analysis with the 2000 British Crime Survey, evaluation on any variance between youths and adults and the number of offences involving theft of mobile phones and other property.

A. Recommendation

That Members note the report.

B. Supporting information

1. The MPS definition of Street Crime integrates the Home Office major categories of 'robbery of personal property' and 'snatch theft'.

2. The targets set for 2001/02 are to reduce street crime by 2 per cent and achieve a judicial disposal rate of 10 per cent. This presents the MPS with a challenge, since street crime has been continuing to increase since 1999. The previous year's targets were to hold the level the same as in 1999/00 (ie: zero growth) and to achieve a judicial disposal rate of 9 per cent. Last year there was a total of 50607 offences of street crime, which was an increase of 18 per cent. However, the 1999/00 figure displayed a significant 36.2 per cent increase, which suggests that the rate of inflation is slowing down. The judicial disposal rate for 2000/01 was 8.2 per cent just under the target and an increase from the 7.7 per cent recorded the year before.

3. Chart 1 (see Supporting material) displays the monthly trends between April 1999 and April 2001. March 2001 recorded the highest number of offences that financial year, with a daily rate of 165 offences. The start of the new financial year has since recorded a 7 per cent decrease from the previous month with a lower daily rate of 159 offences. In comparison however to April 2000 it is an increase of 16.8 per cent. The judicial disposal rate for April 2001 is however higher by 1 per cent than recorded in 2000.

The British crime survey

4. Information from the 2000 British Crime Survey suggests that the trends identified for street crime in the MPS are consistent with those experienced throughout England and Wales.

5. The survey's count of crime is estimated by grossing survey offence rates for that year. The offence rate is the number of incidents per 10,000 adults, which was in 1999 41,995,700. It must be taken into account when comparing MPS figures with survey data that the survey only counts adults aged 16 years or over and only 41 per cent of comparable crimes are reported to the police, largely due to incidents being seen as too trivial to warrant police attention. More serious crimes are also not reported.

6. The British Crime Survey identified that violent crime accounted for 22 per cent of the total crime recorded throughout England and Wales, 3 per cent of which is 'mugging', which includes robbery and snatches. In comparison the total number of street crime offences for 2000/01 accounted for 24.7 per cent of the total violent crime reported by the MPS.

7. Between 1997 and 1999 only two crime categories failed to reduce in number, throughout England and Wales, robbery and theft from the person. Robbery increased during this period by 14 per cent and was attributed to the marked increase in the rise of incidents against 16yrs olds. The directions of the MPS trends are in line with the national trend, although numbers are higher. These differences between BCS and MPS figures may be: coverage of the BSC estimates, trends in reporting to the police, trends in police recording practices and particularly for the MPS the disproportionate number of crimes committed by or against individuals aged between 10-17yrs who will not be picked up by the BCS.

8. Between April 2000 and March 2001 there was a total of 5335 people accused of street crime in the MPS. Chart 2 (see Supporting material) highlights that a disproportionate number (64 per cent) of crimes were committed by youths aged between 10-17 years. (This trend continues into the new financial year with the division now being 72 per cent under 17 years).

9. Further work is currently being undertaken by MPS Territorial Policing researchers, into the true extent of robberies committed amongst young people. It is believed that a significant number of young victims do not report crime to the police because they think the matter is too trivial or through fear of reprisal. The BCS confirms that throughout England and Wales a large percentage of crimes recorded through the survey have not come to police notice. The research aims to provide a realistic picture of the levels of under-reporting of street crime and consequently the extent of youth offending.

10. There is also variance in the case disposal of street crime offences between adults and youths under 17 years:

• 92 per cent of adults over 17 years are charged with street crime, compared to 82.4 per cent of those under the age of 17 years. Also it is interesting to note that of youths charged for all total notifiable offences only 53 per cent are charged, inferring that in cases of robbery youths are more likely to face police charges;
• between 5-6 per cent of offences are 'not proceeded with' for both adult and youth categories;
• youths are reprimanded for their first offence in just over 6 per cent of the cases and receive a warning in 4 per cent. These types of disposals are very low for adults varying from 0 per cent to 1 per cent, although adult cautions are used in 1.2 per cent of the cases for street crime. The chart in Appendix A details all the disposal options and the percentage used for both youths and adults between April 2000 and March 2001.

Boroughs performance

11. At the end of 2000/01 four Borough's displayed a reduction in street crime: Ealing 1.3 per cent, Greenwich 4.9 per cent, Islington 8.7 per cent and Harrow 3.4 per cent. In April 2001 six Boroughs have already shown reductions at this early stage (compared with April 2000), five of which have exceeded the 2 per cent reduction target (Newham –31.5 per cent, Hackney –8.7 per cent, Haringey –7.5 per cent, Islington –4.9 per cent and Richmond.-4.5 per cent). Even more significantly nine Boroughs in April 2001 have exceeded the Judicial Disposal target of 10 per cent.

12. The charts in Appendix 2 entitled 'the Boston Box' displays the street crime levels and judicial disposal rates in each of the MPS's 32 Borough's throughout 2000/01 compared with the previous year. For example Greenwich is amongst three of the Borough's displaying performance levels above average which continues to improve, whilst Lambeth is amongst eleven below average and performance is declining.

Mobile phone thefts

13. During a significant number of robberies and snatches (40 per cent in 2000/01) mobile phones have been amongst the property stolen. To identify offences of street crime where mobile phones have been the targeted item, reports involving handbag thefts and other property must be removed. Because of the time involved doing this type of research a dip sample already completed from April 1999 to March 2000 is detailed below. [1]

14. Chart 3 (see Supporting material) displays the number of street crime offences, where a mobile phone has been stolen compared with offences involving other types of property. The data below does not include offences where property has not been taken.

15. The data indicates a steady rise in mobile phone thefts throughout 1999. However this increase begins to accelerate rapidly in 2000, increasing by almost 75 per cent in January. The largest increases occur in the month of January for both 1999 and 2000, with a second peak in April. This trend maybe related to Christmas and Easter where new mobile phone models are flooding the streets. In 1999/00 the number of offences where a mobile phone was amongst the property stolen accounted for 34 per cent of the total number of street crime offences. Last year 2000/01 however experienced an increase, with mobile phone thefts accounting for 40 per cent of the total street crime. It is interesting to see that mobile phones targeted as a lone item begin to increase above the category 'with other property', which could imply an increase in offences where mobile phones are specifically targeted or where they are falsely reported stolen for insurance purposes.

16. Analysis investigating this type of crime in detail highlighted a number of relevant points:

• the victims of street crime where a mobile phone was the only item stolen, were male (67 per cent) aged between 13-17 years. This is similar to the majority of street crime victims, but it is more concentrated.
• the suspects for this type of crime are significantly male (90.8) and range from 13 years to 22 years, although there is a distinct peak between 15-17 years.
• street crime offences peak at roughly 3 pm to 6 pm each day, with the highest peak on Fridays and the lowest on Sundays. This pattern is more extreme for phone street crime, where over 5 per cent of the week's crime occurs between this time on a Friday.

Best practice

17. Careful planning and the use of accurate intelligence is an essential part of formulating tactics, for example in identifying the best tactics to be used for specific borough hot spots. In addition to traditional proactive operations, crime prevention measures are an important tool. Another major concern of all robbery initiatives is to put in place contingency plans against displacement where crime shifts from the target area in the borough to other locations.

MPS response

18. The Safer Streets Campaign was launched and was designed to gather intelligence and understanding of the street crime phenomenon. This led to a focus on three key areas where there appeared to be links with street crime. These were:

• Drugs markets
• Transport routes and nodes.
• Schools

Drugs

19. To test the learning in respect of drugs, Operation Crackdown was initiated, this was designed to test whether co-ordinated action against drug dealers would impact on street crime.

20. Research by Southbank University (with a small sample size) indicated that there was no significant impact or criminality in the areas targeted by Operation Crackdown.

21. More work is required to draw proper conclusions and therefore co-ordinated interventions under Operation Crackdown will need to be revisited. This will help us to examine when we might achieve 'critical mass' i.e. when the number of drug disruptions begins to influence the levels of street crime.

Transport routes and nodes

22. Successful operations at London Underground stations (Operation Anapurna) and a piloted operation at Lewisham against bus routes (Operation Seneca) indicated the need to target hotspot routes and nodes to achieve an impact on street crime.

23. The learning from these operations was that there is a significant link between transport routes and times of day, particularly in relation to schools and their associated youth communities.

Schools

24. Meetings were held with Headteachers, Exclusion Unit Workers and Youth Workers connected with the ten most challenged boroughs for street crime. These examined the potential link between street crime, and young persons as victims and offenders.

25. Southwark Borough pursued this theme and identified a regime of criminality against young persons organised by other young persons. This would appear to be the best intervention point to disrupt street crime but will not do so in the short term. We have identified that there is significant under reporting of such offences amongst the young and the fear of crime is significantly greater in young people when compared with adults.

Short term

26. The Safer Streets campaign will therefore focus, in the short term, on holding the line by the use of tactics in hotspot areas based on intelligence. Examples of these examples being, Operation Seneca (buses) Operation Anapurna (underground stations) Video Sentries (Haringey), Q Cars, speedy ID parades and minimum standards of investigation.

27. To this end, a TP action plan has been developed outlining best practice. This was received by all boroughs and, based on their intelligence and local circumstances, they will implement all or some of these actions. This process has been collated and monitored by the Crime Policy Unit (OPSU) on behalf Territorial Policing Crime Forum (TPCF).

28. The action plan is based on the MPS Policing Model such that all aspects of police activity are covered within it. Each MPS priority has been examined in the context of that model using the six core function headings of:

• Investigation
• Forensics
• Intelligence
• Targeting
• Problem Solving
• Diversion

29. Additional work is being done to identify the acquisitive property sought by these offenders. Needless to say, mobile phones are already featuring highly. We have been negotiating with the service providers of the mobile phone industry at meetings chaired by the Home Secretary. This is to raise the awareness of mobile phone users as to preventative action that can be taken against mobile phone theft.

30. We are currently pursuing a Dutch initiative where stolen mobile phones are bombarded with text messages to render them useless. The Dutch police claim significant success, but at a price, as the cost of the text messages can be significant. We will be using the Home Secretary's Forum to pursue funding and sponsorship from the service providers.

Medium to long term

31. The key area from learning from the last 12 months is the need to develop far more focused youth policing intervention programmes. This is a sensitive area with police officers being deployed into schools to work with head teachers and other agencies to identify those at risk of becoming victims or offenders. This risk will be managed by active/collaborative policing, rather than the previous schools programme of 'lecturing'. This is currently being piloted in Southwark. It should be noted by the authority that the two boroughs that have made positive steps (Southwark & Waltham Forest) have seen significant increased in reported crime. This will create short term political and media interest although the media have already been briefed as to the likely outcome. In the long term it will add to our understanding, increase our partnership working and enable us to disrupt and divert young people from carrying out such criminal enterprise.

32. Below are some examples of successful street crime operations and specific initiatives developed to combat youth street crime. In addition to these operations there are a number of MPS wide and local initiatives being carried out to tackle street crime and youth offending. These have been supported in the past year by additional funding from the Home Office and in order to continue such activity, further funding will need to be identified. Best practise from these operations is being extracted and placed on the Operation Solutions database in order to disseminate it to BOCU's.

Street crime initiatives

A. Bus Routes

33. Lewisham and Kingston in keeping with the 'Safer streets' campaign, are running operation SENECA, which aims to make public transport a safer means of travel for the residents both living in and commuting through the Boroughs. Both boroughs were suffering a sharp rise in the number of street robberies involving teenage suspects at the beginning of 2000. Analysis of street robbery reports and gang related activity found that the majority of this activity centred on a 150-250 metre corridor of major bus routes (75 per cent in Lewisham). They both adopted a multi-agency approach, which included various London bus companies and centred on areas highlighted as robbery or gang related "Hotspots". Operation Seneca is a follow up to the previous operation Justinian, which resulted in a small decrease in street robberies and a reduction (30 per cent) of incidents of disorder on the CAD, which helped to ease the burden on core staff. This operation is also due to commence on Barnet at the beginning of June 2001.

34. Lewisham takes a very proactive approach to catching criminals. The reactive shift teams have been kept tight, and Lewisham has invested heavily in pro-activity. The DIs and DCI take an intrusive approach to maintaining high standards of crime investigation (by uniform and CID officers) and they are strong on processes for identification – both through street identifications and at ID suites. Lewisham has recorded a judicial disposal rate of 25 per cent in April 2001, which is the highest of all 32 Boroughs.

B. Forensics

35. Searching for and handling property from street robberies generally is of a poor quality in the Met. [2]

36. In the North East an approach to redress this problem and improve detection of offenders is being made by Operation Boyle (launched in Sept. 2000). This aimed to chemically treat property from street robberies, at the Scientific Support Command Unit (SSCU), on the same day as the offences and transmit developed fingermark images to the Fingerprint Branch. Fast fingerprint searching on the national automatic fingerprint Identification system (NAFIS) should produce identifications within 24 hrs in some cases. Once suspects are identified forensically, police can arrange to arrest suspects in a safe controlled environment.

C. Video sentries

37. Video sentries are 24 hour CCTV cameras providing clear recording of activity in specific hotspot locations. Haringey is one of two Boroughs that in April 2001 successfully achieved both reduction (-7.5 per cent) and judicial disposal (13.9 per cent) targets for street crime. The possible reasons for this success are that the borough is the fourth site to implement Strong box and the Borough has recently been chosen to pilot Video Sentries, with the key objective to increase judicial disposals. Over 90 per cent of street crime reports provide no immediate basis for investigation or conviction. With these cameras, staff could be responding to evidential leads provided by incontrovertible video images.

38. There are currently eighteen Video Sentry cameras deployed within Haringey Borough and deployed to robbery hot spots. There are three members of staff employed on the pilot who provide between them 120 working hours per week, which is spent attending each of the twenty-five observation points in order to change videotapes, researching CRIS, creating CRIS entries, communicating with investigating officers, circulating suspects, processing tape and stills exhibits, documentation and the circulation of suspects. Within twelve working days, Video Sentries staff have processed thirty-five crimes. Fifteen have to date yielded video stills of suspects, of which nine relate to robbery suspects including three offences are being investigated by the Flying Squad.

Ealing

39. The following crime reduction methods undertaken by Ealing Borough during the last 6 months have impacted significantly on Street Crime. In December 2000 the borough experienced a 26 per cent reduction and maintained a downward trend until the end of March 2001.

• In November 2000 Ealing established a number of dedicated focus desks, one of which is for Street Crime. The analysts provide daily information on crime patterns and they are involved in developing longer term strategic analysis on their given crime area.
• In conjunction with this Operation Pottery was implemented, which combines uniform and plain clothes officers who patrol current and historic hotspots on Southall Division, backed up by surveillance operations on 'known' suspects. The crucial part of the tactics were to disrupt the criminal activity of these suspects, for although many of them were drugs related targets, intelligence showed they had contributed significantly to volume crimes. Operation Pottery generated 285 arrests for a variety of offences. This no doubt had a substantial impact on the reduction figures shown above; the tactics have now been mirrored on the Ealing and Acton sides of the Borough.

40. In addition to specific operations a number of MPS wide initiatives are running in the majority of boroughs. These include:

• Q-cars which are a team of dedicated mobile officers that can respond immediately to robberies to assist uniform officers and free them by taking on the on scene reporting;
• witness boxes, which are vehicles with blacked out windows that transport victims around the borough anonymously to see whether they can identify their attacker;
• some boroughs have adopted an active approach to mobile phone thefts/robberies, by pursuing the victim's statement at the scene of the crime and checking for CCTV coverage. This may identify suspects, but indirectly reduces the numbers of false reporting for insurance purposes;
• StrongBox continues to move around the boroughs targeting the intelligence units and proactive teams, with a focus on street crime levels and judicial disposals.

Youth street crime and diversion tactics

41. A significant number of street crime offences in the MPS are committed by youths between the ages 10-17yrs. A number of local and MPS strategies have been employed over recent months to intervene at an earlier stage of a youths career, in hope that they can be diverted away from criminal behaviour. The Commissioner's Youth Crime initiative is the subject of a separate paper to PSPM. A number of specific local examples have been summarised below:

Borough – Southwark

42. Southwark has been experiencing serious problems with gangs of youths, like the 'Peckham Young Boys' in the local area. This has received recent media coverage in the Evening Standard, due to the rising disorder/street crime levels. The Borough Commander is tackling youth crime by implementing a twin-track operation. In partnership with the local authority, they will improve youth behaviour by engaging them in programmes that reward good school attendance, good behaviour and citizenship. They will use web-based techniques issuing smart cards linked to branding of sports and arts. Each young person will be provided with a personal smart card, which will credit pupils attending school to enable them to receive benefits. Another initiative is to allocate police officers to individual secondary schools to support pupils and encourage them to report crime3. Simultaneously they will be running operations to deter and punish those who commit criminal offences. Southwark was close to achieving the 10 per cent JD target in April 2001 recording a rate of 9.9 per cent, which is an increase of 1.9 per cent from 2000/01. [3]

Borough - Hammersmith & Fulham

43. The Borough is tackling youths identified by youth offending teams (YOT) which have been involved in street crime and place them into the Youth at Risk organisation. The project will run in partnership with Hammersmith and Fulham Partners against crime (HAFPAC) a registered charity with members from commercial organisations such as COCA-COLA and BBC. The youths selected are taken through personal development, performance coaching, personal goals and through an intensive residential course. This course will allow them to develop social skills such as: self esteem, managing feelings, identifying others and values development.

Borough – Hackney

44. Hackney borough aim is to build on multi-agency partnerships focusing on street robbery. By implementing the following:

• reparation / victim compensation scheme;
• recruitment of YOT volunteers;
• community sentence provision - young people visiting Coldingley prison meeting and talking to prisoners about experiences;
• Police Focus Group -brings police and young people together to identify concerns, focusing on different topics;
• Dalston Youth Project - cited by Home Office as best practice - aims to target fifteen street robbers;
• Hackney was one of the six boroughs in April 2001 to exceed the 2 per cent reduction target, with levels falling by 8.7 per cent.

Borough - Waltham Forest

45. The Borough intends to formulate practical initiatives to examine the extent of the fear of crime compared with the reality. A Conference to assist schools under the "SafetyNet" theme to create practical initiatives such as small theatre projects, or local diversion schemes are also in the pipeline. Levels of street crime continue to increase in Waltham forest, but their judicial disposal rate has exceeded the target at a rate of 14.6 per cent.

46. Remaining boroughs have in place diversion tactics through sport activities, workshops, school partnerships and truancy patrols. The MPS has also begun to adopt the idea of a 'school policeman' in some primary schools, working closely with head teachers. In Ealing for example uniformed officers provide daily high visibility patrols outside schools at home time, to ensure community safety, and in particular to deter school children robberies. Also on the MPS Intranet Operational Solutions database there is a list of all the London Schools and a picture of each school uniform. This system will assist investigating officers identify the area from which a suspect wearing a uniform attends school.

Points to note

47. The MPS approach to street crime reduction embraces a range of different operations and initiatives. The strategy will, in future, be co-ordinated through the TP Crime Support OCU.

48. Youth crime is a significant element in the pattern of street crime in London. In order to better understand and represent the extent of youth offending and victimisation the MPS is considering a more refined monitoring of street crime, breaking it down in more detail by type of offence.

49. The MPS is working to achieve greater public confidence and a better understanding of the whole street crime problem. Some of the initiatives described above may result in increased reporting of crime, through increased confidence among victims and willingness to involve police.

C. Financial implications

None.

D. Background papers

None.

E. Contact details

The author of this report is Karen Turner, MPS Corporate Performance Analysis Unit.

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 2

Appendix 2: Street crime offences is available from the MPA

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