Neighbourhood Watch today welcomed the Home Secretary’s launch of the new Modern Crime Prevention Strategy.
The Rt. Hon. Theresa May launched the new Strategy at the 2016 International Crime and Policing Conference in London.
She said: “Crime is down but it is changing. What we might call “traditional” crimes like burglary, vehicle theft and street violence have more than halved. But in recent years, more and more victims have found the courage to come forward and report crimes that many previously suffered in silence, such as rape, domestic abuse and the sexual exploitation of children.
“As with so many of the challenges we face as a society, the prevention of crime is better than the cure. Stopping crime before it happens, and preventing the harm caused to victims, must be preferable to picking up the pieces afterwards.”
The Home Secretary added: “That was the philosophy that drove the expansion in burglar alarms and window locks to cut burglary, better security features to stop car theft, and, in the last Parliament, reforms to the scrap metal industry to tackle the theft of copper and lead from churches and railways.”
Neighbourhood Watch was invited to the conference and had input into the writing of the strategy.
The strategy builds on new research, techniques and technology to update the way we think about crime prevention.
“Putting Crime Prevention at the heart of policing is great news,” said Lynn Farrar, vice-chair of Neighbourhood Watch who attended the conference with other delegates from the field of Crime and Policing around the world.
“Traditional crime like burglary still happens of course, but crime is changing. Where doors and windows were once our weak spot now the telephone socket, broadband cable and wi-fi router pose a greater threat to our security,” said Lynn.
“The Neighbourhood Watch movement is the largest, voluntary movement across England and Wales and has 173,000 co-ordinators and 3.8million household members and we are uniquely placed to continue to be the go-to organisation for practical advice on how to protect yourself from being a victim of cybercrime and fraud.”
The conference saw leading experts from a range of backgrounds – law enforcement, academia, the voluntary sector, industry and government – brought together for 2 days to provide expert opinion and perspective on modern crime prevention.
The strategy focuses on what the evidence suggests are the SIX key drivers of crime: opportunity, character, the effectiveness of the Criminal Justice System, profit, drugs and alcohol