outcomes programme evidence model 27/08/2013 fear of crime project objectives
TRANSCRIPT
Outcomes
Programme
SG Outcomes
Strategic Police Priorities
High levels of confidence in the Justice
system
Experience low levels of fear, alarm
and distress
Fear of Crime: Literature
review
Confidence: Literature
review
Framework: Research and
Evidence
Measurement Questionnaire
Confidence: Regression
Analysis
Contact and Procedural
Justice
Neighbourhood Effect
SCDC: Action Research
SIPR: Police routine
encounters and training
Fear of Crime: Regression
Analysis
Leith Agency: Fear of Crime
Insights
Semiotics: Culture and
Crime
Focus Groups
Communication and
Engagement Guidelines
YoungScot: Insights
Courts: experience and
contact
Equality Impacts
Imagined victimisation
and the psychology of
risk
Media, society and connected
anxieties
Neighbourhood Perceptions
PHASE 1 PROJECTS PHASE 2 PROJECTS
Evidence Model
27/08/2013
Fear of Crime Project Objectives
Most ‘topics’ exist in three ways
(to varying degrees)
Media coverage suggests crime & safety has seen an upsurge in anxiety, followed by 2-phases of response
OpportunitiesRe-frame the language around crime and safety
– From ‘battling’ to ‘outsmarting’; adopting a position of balanced realism
Manage media negativity– Proactively own the potential the ‘negative’; acknowledge work still to be done; simple
visualisation of key positives
Adopt a 2-level communications approach playing separately to ‘high’ and ‘low’ crime
A more strategic approach to public communications– Avoid inadvertently fuelling anxieties; confident, graphic style
Invite and own debate on complex or contentious issues– Social media and more traditional forms of communication
Re-framing the language around crime and safety
What’s the observation?
•The public is not in-step with emergent police and justice techniques and not yet in a position of being reassured.
•People mostly think in terms of a ‘blunt response’.
•A language still exists that describes communities as combat zones and uses the language of conflict:
– The war on crime– Wining or losing the battle against x
•This is likely to contribute to a sense of anxiety.
What’s the opportunity?
•Communication about crime and safety needs to reflect the emergent nature of crime and policing more effectively.
•Opportunity to present a more ‘balanced reality’– Accurately reflecting the state of things as they really
are, without accelerating anxiety through combative dialogue
Re-framing the language around crime and safety
Re-framing the language around crime and safety
“The war on crime”
Smarter Solutions
Outsmarting
Disrupting criminal activity
Intelligence
Mapping
Evolving
Re-framing the language around crime and safety
“If you see crime, report it”
“We see crime, We’re on it. You can help”
Partnership
Working together
Help each other
Better management of alarmist and escalatory news reporting
What’s the observation?
•Language used by newspapers is deliberately alarmist and inflammatory.
•Statistics are mired in complex arguments around policy and politics. Representations of progress are met with scepticism by the media
•For every statistical marker of progress there is a counter-statistic of ‘failure’.
•Crime reporting can feed doubts around law enforcement and promote fear of crime.
•Media use combative, binary language (winning/losing) – reinforcing anxiety.
Better management of alarmist and escalatory news reporting
What’s the opportunity?
•Alarmist and escalatory language of news reporting could be managed better by pre-empting and owning the potential negative counter-points that positive reports may allow.
•A sense of realism about the progress made and inevitable challenges still to be faced.
•Acknowledge there will always be disorder and criminality, but that the law will always be in step with changes and keeping a lid on it – as opposed to eliminating it.
Better management of alarmist and escalatory news reporting
What’s the opportunity?
•Make press releases work harder.
•Highlight the achievement.
•But take ownership of the potential negative statistic as “work to be done”.
•By taking ownership of the negative statistics that newspapers focus on you can frame it is a positive, proactive light, acknowledging you are ‘on it’.
•Simple visualisations of progress made.
Dual strategy to addressing anxiety
What’s the observation?
•Media analysis suggests public anxiety falls into two main groupings:
Low level crime and disorder
•Elicits anger and frustration
•Anxiety stems from proximity and perceived likelihood
•Sends ripples through communities (“signal crime”)
•Can be depicted as ‘feral youth’ – fuelling fear in older people
•Depicted as random, chaotic and unpredictable, and opportunistic
Highly motivated ‘high crime’
•Trafficking
•Drugs cartel
•ID / credit card fraud
•Represents slide of society into lawlessness
•A terrifying world of deeply violent, internationally connected criminals lacking moral codes
•Creates feeling of hopelessness
Dual strategy to addressing anxiety
What’s the opportunity?
•A single line of approach is likely to either:
– Increase local community anxieties by suggesting a dominant law enforcement system, out of touch with ‘day-to-day’ crime.
– Provide insufficient confidence that high criminality is being dealt-with, by too much emphasis on community policing.
•Opportunity to adopt a dual strategy.
A more strategic approach to campaigns about crime and safety
What’s the observation?
•Some campaign materials can contribute to the landscape of anxiety
– Identification with ‘victim status’
– Reproducing anxiety-inducing imagery
– Inadvertently condoning undesirable behaviour
A more strategic approach to campaigns about crime and safety
What’s the opportunity?
•Ownership of a simple and universal style of communication would allow for ‘balanced reality’ to be conveyed without contributing to anxiety.
• Non-combative language
• Economical, abstract images which don’t reproduce depictions of crime
• Visualised statistics to help people grasp real and relative risk and progress.
Invite and own debate on complex or contentious issues
What’s the observation?
•Progressive policy can be starved of the oxygen of debate.
•Suffers from immediate blunt classification e.g. hard/soft.
Invite and own debate on complex or contentious issues
What’s the opportunity?
•Invite and own debate.
•Leverage social media.
•Extend the notion of dialogue and debate into more traditional forms of communications.
Invite and own debate on complex or contentious issues
• Campaigns which invite debate or challenge the status quo can be effective for changing attitudes and behaviour on more complex or contentious issues.
Opportunities
Re-frame the language around crime and safety– From ‘battling’ to ‘outsmarting’
Manage media negativity– Proactively own the potential the ‘negative’; acknowledge work still to be done; simple
visualisation of key positives
Adopt a 2-level communications approach playing separately to ‘high’ and ‘low’ crime
A more strategic approach to public communications– Avoid inadvertently fuelling anxieties; confident, graphic style
Invite and own debate on complex or contentious issues– Social media and more traditional forms of communication
QUESTIONS?
GROUPS
Think of an issue:
•Dominant and emergent themes
•What language to use and avoid
•How to own the negatives
•Visuals to use and avoid
•How to invite debate