Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 64
64
Accepted
Paragraph: 167
Clarity needed on policing's crime prevention role and its boundaries with other services.
Conclusion
Policing has a key role in crime prevention, but greater clarity is needed about what that role is and where police responsibilities end and those of others begin. The Government has to allow policing to prioritise its purposes and functions in the sound knowledge of its key roles.
Government Response Summary
The government states that police have a role in crime prevention and details existing initiatives such as Violence Reduction Units, hotspot policing, and the Prevention Programme, alongside the Beating Crime Plan, as current efforts to prevent crime.
Paragraph Reference:
167
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The evidence tells us that the police do have a role in crime prevention. For example, hotspot policing, when deployed effectively, helps prevent crime. The Government also recognises that policing alone cannot prevent all crimes from taking place, other agencies also have a role to play. Since 2019, the Home Office has provided over £160m to fund our local network of Violence Reduction Units (VRUs), which tackle the drivers of violent crime, and provided over £165m to boost visible police patrols in serious violence hotspots; with a further £55m invested in VRUs and £30m in hotspot policing in 23/24 alone. Evaluation of VRUs impact reflects both VRU and GRIP preventative work. The latest published findings show that since funding began, from April 2019 to December 2021, an estimated 136,000 violence without injury offences had been prevented. Based on these offences avoided, a return on investment of £4.10 for every £1 of SV funding was estimated. As part of our response to exploitation, we have invested £3.9m since 2019 in the Prevention Programme. The programme is delivered by the Children’s Society working with a range of partners, across sectors to tackle and prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation, child criminal and financial exploitation and modern slavery and human trafficking on a regional and national basis. Since the programme began it has reached over 56,000 people. In 2021 the Government published the Beating Crime Plan, focusing on how we cut crime, reduce the number of victims and make our country safe. The Plan combines deterrence and enforcement with prevention. It is encouraging to see that, as set out in paragraph 4, overall crime levels have fallen by 10% in the year to June 2023.