Search

Recent national passenger surveys have shown that satisfaction associated with personal security on the railways in Great Britain has been consistently lower than the overall satisfaction level of rail passengers. To address these concerns, and to improve personal security on the railways, the industry has implemented various security measures and schemes. However, in the absence of a value or a set of values to robustly quantify such measures, making a case for investment becomes very difficult. The Rail Personal Security Group asked RSSB to address this knowledge gap. To this end, the project has evaluated the Secure Station and Park Mark schemes implemented by the industry to improve personal security. The aims of the research, which have been fulfilled, were to establish whether the schemes are fulfilling their objectives and to estimate the value of the benefits accrued from their introduction. The project has quantified the schemes’ benefits through increased patronage and crime reduction, as well as identifying wider social and economic benefits. Additionally, the research has delivered a well developed and informed framework to assess the societal and economic benefits of investing in personal security, as well as recommendations on the effectiveness of the schemes. The knowledge gained through this work may be used in the Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook, the New Approach to Appraisal guidelines; and individual train operator and Network Rail business case frameworks. The outputs will help make better investment and deployment decisions associated with personal security on the railways.

The rapid expansion in recent years of the night-time economy (NTE) - now an important part of the leisure, tourism and service industries - raises serious crime and public health concerns.

This paper explores the relationship between the allocation of target hardening and burglary risk based on recent research in the City of Liverpool. Individual property‐level data from a range of sources was collated for each residential property in the city using a unique property reference number. This produced a rich data set enabling burglary and target hardening activity to be analysed through time at both the individual property‐level and across a variety of spatial units (e.g. super output areas, wards and regeneration areas). The results highlight an imperfect alignment between target hardening and burglary risk locations largely attributable to the influence of Liverpool’s area based regeneration initiatives. The paper makes the case for prioritising properties for target hardening based on a combination of the prior burglary history of individual properties, the burglary risk of an area, and existing levels of target harden\ud ing protection.

This paper discusses an evaluation of changes in the Licensing Act 2003 (LA03) on crime and disorder in five English case study areas. The LA03 paved the way for pubs, clubs, supermarkets and other outlets to sell alcohol for up to 24 hours and came into effect in November 2005. This Home Office-funded evaluation was undertaken between October 2005 and March 2007.\ud The methodology included site visits, participant observation, interviews with bar and door staff and the use of Geographical Information Systems to identify pub clusters and areas of concentrated drinking. Levels of violence against the person, criminal damage, sexual offences and disorder were identified prior to and following the implementation of the LA03. Changes in these were measured for town centres as a whole, in streets with a high density of drinking establishments and within individual pubs and clubs. Ambulance data and Hospital Accident and Emergency admissions were also scrutinized.\ud Particular attention was paid to changes in the geographical distribution and timing of offences and incidents following implementation of LA03. The extent to which changes in the LA03 were accompanied by both temporal and geographical displacement of crime and disorder was examined. The paper concludes with an assessment of how far the LA03 actually resulted in changes in pub hours and how far it is possible to link these to changing patterns of crime and disorder in town centres.

This chapter discusses the extant theories used to explain safety and security in transit environments, which are set out within the conceptual framework identified in the previous chapter. A number of theoretical perspectives have been developed to explain the prevalence of crime, disorder and associated fear in society. None of these are without criticism, and none have been developed explicitly for the purpose of explaining safety and security on public transport systems. This section examines current security and criminological theories, and ideas and perspectives from other fields and disciplines, to ascertain their utility for explaining safety and security specifically in the context of public transportation. The aim is to translate these theories into an integrated and theory-led conceptual framework within which safety and security on public transport systems can readily be examined.

This research project was commissioned by the Suffolk Hate Crime Partnership with funding allocated to them from the Ministry of Justice. The aim of the project was to provide independent evidence of: the prevalence of Hate Crime in Suffolk; and the needs of victims and communities affected by Hate Crime across the victimisation themes of race, allegiance to a faith, sexuality, gender identity and disability.\ud For this project, Hate Crime1 encompasses both hate incidents and Hate Crimes as defined by the Association of Chief Police Officers relating to race, faith, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability.\ud The methodology included: a literature review and documentary analysis; analysis of reported Hate Crime and estimating unreported Hate Crime; survey of communities vulnerable to Hate Crime; interviews and focus groups with individuals from communities vulnerable to Hate Crime; interviews with representatives from local agencies and a workshop with representatives from local agencies. Findings from the survey, interviews, focus group and workshop findings should be treated with caution given the relatively small sample of individuals involved. The quantitative data used in the study was affected by the quality and consistency of recording.\ud This summary draws together the key findings from the study and three recommendations for local agencies to implement.