Burglary
Assessing the Impact of the Reducing Burglary Initiative in southern England and Wales
This report summarises findings about the impact of Reducing Burglary Initiative projects covered by the Southern Consortium. It considers what worked in reducing domestic burglary and aims to explain the factors underlying this success. The issues of whether interventions were theoretically robust, and how intensively they needed to be implemented in practice to achieve any impact are examined.
Title: Assessing the Impact of the Reducing Burglary Initiative in southern England and Wales
Author: Andrew Millie, Mike Hough
Series: Home Office On-line Report 42/04
Number of pages: 27
To qualify for a government grant of £60,000 projects were expected to be situated in areas covering between 3,000 and 5,000 households and have a burglary rate of at least twice the national average. Of the 20 projects evaluated by the Southern Consortium, 11 matched the household requirements and a further 3 were within 750 of the target. 6 had a burglary rate below the standard of twice the national average.
Crime prevention interventions…
There was no set number of interventions for each project. In fact, the number of individual interventions in proposals ranged from 1 to 12.
The types of intervention can be divided into 6 main crime prevention categories:
Location-specific situational crime prevention: enhancing the physical security of households through improved locks, doors and windows; installing alarms and visible cameras.
Area-wide situational crime prevention: reducing access to areas through the gating of alleyways; environmental improvements to deter burglary; street-lighting improvements.
Stakeholding: watch schemes; publicity; educational campaigns; tenant or landlord registration; resident involvement schemes.
Enforcement: high visibility policing; improved gathering and use of intelligence; disrupting offender behaviour; use of restriction orders, such as Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and eviction orders; witness protection schemes.
Offender-based schemes: youth diversion projects; drug rehabilitation; supervision and treatment of offenders.
Property marking: property marking and registration; property storage; property marking with associated window stickers.
Other: victim support programmes; improvements to management; improved inter-agency working.
Results
19 out of 20 Strategic Development Projects (SDPs) were implemented to varying degrees within a 12-month period. Some of these encountered problems in providing the evaluators with accurate and timely data. However, a pre- and post-implementation comparison was possible for 16 of the projects.
14 recorded a fall in burglary - a total reduction of 55 offences.
2 recorded an increase in burglary.
The average change in local burglary rates was a fall of 21 per cent.
Only 13 per cent of all interventions could plausibly have impacted the local burglary rate within the evaluation period, and these were within 10 of the projects.
6 of these focused on Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) methods.
5 of these had an impact on the wider area and the other 5 just on the targeted streets.
None of the offender-based or stakeholding schemes were thought to have had an impact, but the nature of these interventions meant that impact was possible in the longer-term after the evaluation period.
Impact on geographical displacement:
Geographical displacement and diffusion of benefit into the wider area were both found in the 14 successful areas, however diffusion was the most common.
Impact on crime switch:
For the successful 14 projects there was a significant fall in domestic burglary of 42 offences, while at the same time the only significant increase occurred in theft and handling offences.
What worked well?
A property marking intervention was implemented very effectively in one area, carried out by the police who visited the full target of households to check if they were vulnerable. This also provided high
visibility policing. Although there was very little change in the level of domestic burglary across the whole project area, there was evidence to suggest that burglary fell in the specific streets and blocks targeted for property marking. This intervention may have deterred burglars due to its publicity and by window stickers used that
labeled a house as 'postcode protected'.
Burglary teams that had the task of targeting known offenders and had use of a vehicle that was solely used for burglary work, were successful in reducing crime in the targeted streets but did little for the wider community.
An intervention will only work well, if it is appropriate to the local area. For instance the alley-gating scheme is very good in areas with
Victorian terraced housing, which typically have alleyways running to the rear of the property. Most break ins are via the rear of the property so gates with locks successfully prevent burglars gaining access to the rear of the house.
This type of offense fell by 29 in the first 12 months.
It is important to note that schemes like this are not successful in all areas. Homes with multiple occupation, such as student houses, and any other rented
accommodation tend to lose keys and leave gates open or unlocked.
Some situational measures worked successfully together to combat situational crime . One intervention, based on the alley-gating of areas of suitable property, led to 44 lockable gates being installed. Two further target-hardening interventions were run, providing electronic door entry systems to four blocks of houses of multiple occupation and new locks and other security measures to 156 properties belonging to elderly residents. These all helped reduce burglary in the area.
Further effects that complemented each other were; high visibility policing and targeting of known offenders – through arrests, bail enforcement, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and evictions, consolidated by community-based interventions including property marking, a youth diversion programme, environmental improvements based on situational crime prevention principles and measures to encourage the community to take an interest.
Projects worked better if the managers were experienced in this kind of work, including good local knowledge of the area. These managers were more likely to get things done.
What didn't work?
The postcode property campaign which included marking valuable items with the postcode of the house was unsuccessful in student areas and areas with rented
accommodation. This maybe because students tend to only live in the area for 2 or 3 years and did not want the postcode to remain on the property after leaving the area.
An example of theory failure was a publicity campaign. The project contained interventions that were in conflict with one another. The main focus was the highly publicised use of internal (covert) and external cameras and alarms. The theory was based on the idea that associated publicity would create uncertainty amongst offenders as to which properties were protected. This failed on 2 counts. The initial problem was in the wording of the publicity. Signs were erected on lampposts throughout the target area with the tagline 'Are you sure?' These were targeted at offenders but misread by some residents as 'Are you sure you are safe?', thus increasing anxiety in the community. Assuming offenders read them the same way, the campaign would be unlikely to deter them. The second problem was that if offenders were to be deterred from offending then increased detections, normally hoped for with covert surveillance, are less likely. The implications of the publicity campaign on the surveillance had not been fully anticipated.
Interventions could also be undermined by another. One project initially planned to use high visibility policing as a means of deterring offending. However, this was undermined by the project's decision to base its choice of intervention on the results of public consultation. Community relations with the police were generally poor in this estate leading to residents seeing High Visibility Policing (HVP) as an unwanted intrusion. As a result this intervention was dropped.
Drug
re-habilitation programmes only worked in areas where the offender that committed burglary to fund a drug
habit, actually lived in the target area.
Summary…
Projects tended to be more successful if the underlying theory of interventions was clearly thought through so that they complemented rather than contradicted each other. If this was the case, so-called 'packages' of interventions were most effective when designed to be relevant to the local area in terms of the local community, local offending and to management experience.
The 'dosage' of an intervention needed to be considered so to maximise
the effect, taking into account financial and personnel restrictions. Combinations of short- and long-term interventions were found to have a more sustainable impact on offending.
Other factors that may have contributed to a reduction in burglary or hinder the project must be taken into consideration when determining the impact of the RBI. Also, many projects over ran and impacted local burglary figures in the second and third years, which is acknowledged but not assessed in this evaluation.
Despite the wide range of problems that projects had with implementation, the Southern Consortium SDPs proved that successful projects were possible.
Last update: 11 August 2004