Interagency Crime Prevention for Rail Station Environs

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Interagency Crime Prevention for Rail Station
Environs

• Trudi Cooper2, Terence Love1, Fred Affleck1, Erin
  Donovan2
• 1 Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia
• 2 Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia

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Funding

• Office of Crime Prevention (OCP)
• Public Transport Authority (PTA)
• City of Armadale (CoA)
• City of Gosnells (CoG)
• City of Joondalup (CoJ)
• City of Swan (CoS)

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Participants

• City of Armadale
• City of Gosnells
• City of Joondalup
• City of Swan
• WA Passenger Transport Authority (Transit Guards)
• WA Passenger Transport Authority (Community
  Education)
• Armadale Youth Resource Centre
• CentreCare, Joondalup
• C of G APLOs
• C of G Safer Cities
• C of G Travelsmart
• C of G Youth Services
• Corridors College, Midland
• DCD, Joondalup
• DCD, Midland

• DCD, Armadale
• DrugArm, Armadale
• ECU Youth Work, Joondalup
• GreatMates, Kelmscott
• Hills Community Support Group
• Joondalup Youth Support Services
• Juvenile Justice, Midland
• Lakeside Joondalup Shopping Centre
• Mission Australia, Gosnells
• Police Citizens Youth Club, Midland
• WA Police Crime Prevention, Gosnells
• YMCA mobile youth service, Joondalup

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Map
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Real life problem

• Public concern about anti-social behaviour by
  some young people in public and pseudo-public
  spaces around station environs
• Develop interagency collaboration between youth
  agencies and PTA to enable sustainable locally
  appropriate solutions

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Factors that shaped the project - Office of
Crime Prevention

• Address real life crime prevention and public
  safety problem
• Practical outcomes
• Sustained commitment by community partners to
  on-going collaboration after project completion
• Transferable model of interagency collaboration
• Process informed by relevant academic literature
• Implies Action research method plus inter-agency
  collaboration

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Factors that shaped the project - Participating
agencies

• Multiple (6) collaborating funding partners with
  diverse perceptions, goals, practices and
  operational priorities
• Participation by large number of community
  agencies
• Shared commitment to community safety
• Implies Interagency collaboration, locality based

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Policy background

• Government policies encourage increased public
  transport usage
• Fear of groups of young people inhibits some
  patrons rail use
• No existing relationship between PTA and local
  youth agencies
• History of conflict between some young people and
  various security services that police
  pseudo-public space

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Research literature interagency collaboration

• Interagency collaboration important because
  actions of agencies positively and negatively
  affect each others work in a locality
• Interagency collaboration extremely difficult to
  establish and maintain
• Variance of operational practices, values, goals
  and roles exacerbates problems
• Partner agencies have diverse organisational
  goals, roles and values

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Interagency collaboration is important

• Enables complex problems to be addressed
  effectively
• Mobilises more resources
• Synergies between operations
• Experience indicates uncoordinated single agency
  responses
• Move problem behaviour from one location to
  another at considerable expense
• Increase youth alienation, which may increase
  anti-social behaviour

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Known problems of interagency collaboration

• Potential misunderstandings about goals,
  priorities and roles of other agencies
• Miscommunication when issues oversimplified and
  viewed only from perspective of each agencys
  central concerns
• Group dynamics and interagency politics
• Individual agencies dominate discussions
• Inaction if problem(s) seem too complex and
  intractable
• People try to shift the problem to another
  agency (related to feelings of helplessness/
  hopelessness above)

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Research literature young people

• Well-documented worldwide history of conflict
  between young people and authorities in public
  space and public concern
• Hanging out easily escalates to public disorder
  offences if not handled carefully
• Young people are the age group most likely to be
  victims of crime (especially young men)
• Community perceptions of anti-social behaviour
  by young people are variable and often include
  both legal and illegal behaviour

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Research literature crime prevention

• Increased policing is expensive and frequently
  moves location of problem rather than prevents it
  
• Better to control problem in situ than displace
  crime
• Satisfactory in situ management requires
  physical, environmental, cultural or relationship
  changes
• Identify local priorities and possibilities

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Research methodology

• Action Research for supporting inter-agency
  collaboration, resolving group conflicts,
  overcoming apathy and hopelessness, and as a
  foundation for sustainable outcomes
• Soft Systems Method for contextual data
  collection, analysis, choosing interventions

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Transferable model principles - 1

• Build understanding of roles and priorities of
  different agencies
• Build respectful personal relationships between
  people in different agencies and organisations
• Identify shared goals

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Transferable model principles - 2

• Explore how the work of each organisation
  positively or negatively affects other agencies
• Acknowledge where roles and priorities differ
• Identify local actions that can support the goals
  of multiple participants

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Transferable model process - 1Understand
agencies perceptions of issues

• Separate initial meetings with agencies whose
  goals, purposes, roles or values conflict
• Create rich pictures for each locality

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Transferable model process - 2Build mutual
understanding respect and identify local issues

• Highly-structured joint meeting to share
  information about roles and priorities
• Explore interrelationships between work of
  different organisations
• Share and discuss rich pictures
• Use discussion to identify priority issues where
  collaboration could bring about positive change

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Transferable model process - 3Plan, implement
and evaluate collaborative action

• Agree roles, processes and timeline for
  interventions
• Hold additional meetings as required to
• Maintain momentum
• Review progress
• Identify obstacles
• Modify plans (action research model)
• Ensure that decisions are acted upon
• Ensure relationships are maintained and problems
  are solved collaboratively

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Transferable model process - 4Project evaluation
and closure

• Document and share achievements and acknowledge
  barriers
• Make local arrangements to continue collaboration
• Maximise learning by sharing experiences
• Acknowledge and celebrate successes (effective
  collaboration isnt easy)

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Things that support the process

• Process begins with the right local organisations
• Initial group includes
• Activists
• Creative problem solvers
• People with sufficient seniority and sufficient
  organisational flexibility
• Solution-focused individuals

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Things that inhibit the process

• Group members feel local situation is too
  hopeless to try anything
• People are over-constrained by bureaucratic
  procedures or mindsets
• People with insufficient authority to do anything
• Lack of continuity of involvement
• Participants have too many competing priorities
• Key organisations omitted from initial process