Crime - support and assistance
Feel safe
Making the borough a place where everyone is safe and feels
safe.
The Council, together with its partners in the Rochdale Safer
Communities Partnership (RSCP), is committed to reducing the
incidence of crime, disorder, drug and alcohol misuse by:
- Building and promoting safer communities
- Reducing crime
- Reducing the harm caused by drugs and alcohol
- Building respect in communities
- Preventing offending by children and young people
- Reducing adult re-offending
Achievements
Since we launched our last Safer Communities Strategy in 2005 we
have made good progress on a number of fronts:
- Collectively, the group of crimes measured in the British Crime
Survey have been reduced by almost 26%
- Burglaries have fallen by almost 50%
- Woundings have fallen by over 30%
- Vehicle crimes have fallen by over 30%
- Numbers of young people entering the criminal justice system
for the first time have reduced year-on-year
- More people are actively engaged with treatment services for
drug and alcohol misuse, and
- The most prevalent forms of anti-social behaviour have fallen
by over 10% in the past year whilst at the same time we have put in
place measures to encourage greater reporting.
What we’ve been doing?
Building and promoting safer communities:
- Implementing a Partnership Communications Strategy,
including publishing a wide range of leaflets posters and booklets,
regular features on local radio stations, and launching the
Partnership’s website www.safer-rochdale.org.uk
- Attending Township, Area Forums, and Partners and
Communities Together (PACT) meetings.
- Supporting implementation of the Government’s
Neighbourhood Policing strategy, where resources are re-organised
so that policing functions are managed and delivered as far as
possible at the neighbourhood level.
- Carrying out ‘Weeks of Action’ in target neighbourhoods
across the Borough, where colleagues from a range of partner
agencies work together with local people to tackle crime,
anti-social behaviour and environmental issues, and increase public
confidence.
Reducing crime:
- Running a number of Partnership promotional initiatives
to raise awareness of different types of crime and provide advice
on how to guard against them.
- Opening the Community Safety Shop, where people can call
in for advice and preventative products such as personal alarms,
property marking equipment and shed alarms.
- Implementing a Boroughwide Alleygating Programme, with
184 schemes being completed, benefiting over 2500
homes.
- Investing in an audit and upgrade of CCTV provisions
across the Borough.
Reducing the harm caused by drugs and
alcohol:
- Increasing the number and range of drug treatment
services available, including setting up three news satellite
services in Heywood, Middleton and Kirkholt.
- Establishing a multi-agency Prostitution Forum to develop
and implement strategies to prevent and reduce both on-street and
off-street prostitution in the Borough.
- Working with Trading Standards colleagues to carry out
enforcement activity relating to under-age sales of
alcohol.
- Running a number of publicity and awareness-raising
campaigns on safe and sensible drinking at key times of the
year.
Building respect in communities:
- Encouraged reporting of anti-social behaviour by
producing and distributing information leaflets and holding
community surgeries.
- Established a multi-agency Case Intervention Group and
the Rochdale Borough Families Project.
- Carrying out a range of local environmental projects in
local neighbourhoods, including community clean-ups, litter-picks
and environmental clearances.
- Using enforcement tools such as ASBOs (Anti-social
Behaviour Orders), ABCs (Acceptable Behaviour Contracts), Parental
Control Agreements, Injunctions and Dispersal Orders to address the
behaviour of individuals and groups for whom preventative measures
have not been successful.
Preventing offending by children and young
people:
- Extending the Youth Inclusion Project from Middleton to
Heywood and Kirkholt, to provide the most high-risk young people in
these areas with alternative education, mentoring, diversionary
activities and family support.
- Engaging over 400 young people per year in PAYP (Positive
Activities for Young People) programmes across the
Borough.
- Further developing the INCLUDE service, which provides
support and guidance for young people at risk of offending and for
their families.
- Extending the range and availability of youth services
provided throughout the Borough, including outreach work in
‘hot-spot’ areas in joint initiatives with Community Safety and
Police colleagues.
Reducing adult re-offending:
- Establishing processes to target the most prolific
offenders for attention, to reduce the impact of their offending on
the community.
- Putting procedures in place to ensure that there is full
and effective enforcement of non-compliance with Probation
Orders.
- Working to ensure that as many offenders as possible
engage with and benefit from programmes such as Skills for
Life.
- Implementing schemes such as Community Payback, where
offenders undertake work that provides benefit to the community and
individual victims of crime.
RSCP Safer Communities Strategy 2008 - 2011
Every three years the
RSCP
is required to
conduct an audit, and then develop and implement a strategy to
reduce crime, disorder, and drug misuse. Information is gained from
a wide range of sources to give a picture of the levels and
patterns of these issues across the borough. The strategy will
direct the partnership in tackling the identified issues and areas
of concern relating to crime and disorder and to improve the
quality of life in the borough by addressing associated drug and
alcohol misuse.