Crime partnerships are too often reinventing the wheel, according to a report Reducing Crime: the Home Office working with Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships.
In brief
The National Audit Office has conducted an investigation into the relationship between the Home Office and Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs). If found that many of the projects runs by CDRPs and supported by the Home Office were diverse in nature, innovative and successful in reducing crime – but that the Home Office could do more to reduce the administrative burden on CDRPs, freeing up their time to concentrate on reducing crime.
In one successful project in Blackpool, for example, the partnership estimated the initiative had prevented 262 crimes and led to a saving of over £200,000 plus improvements in people’s quality of life.
However, the report adds, partnerships have too often ‘reinvented the wheel’ by not using lessons learned elsewhere. The Home Office should encourage greater sharing of good practices and lessons learned between partnerships, the report recommends. Home Office Regional Directors in co-ordination with the Crime Reduction Centre should draw such information to the attention of partnerships.This could involve compiling a checklist of good practices and lessons learned for each main approach to crime reduction (such as working with potential victims or collecting information on crime patterns) so that key information is readily available for partnerships, police and regional Home Office staff to use. Home Office Regional Directors could encourage better project management by police and partnerships by compiling local lists of suitably skilled and experienced project managers for partnerships to use, closer monitoring of progress against milestones and by taking account of past performance in subsequent funding allocations.
Tied up in admin
CDRP resources have too often been tied up dealing with administration of different grant conditions imposed by the Home Office and other Government departments. Smaller partnerships spent a higher proportion of their grant monies on staff costs.
