Strategic Assessments Masterclass: Crime and ASB Reduction

During the course you'll explore the key ingredients that should go into a strategic assessment and critique the main approaches for structuring content. These are the:

• 'crime chapters' approach
• problem-oriented approach
• strategic priorities approach

We begin by discussing the role that intelligence products should play in informing and influencing decision-making - what needs to be done and how resources will be used to address community safety problems.

We then explore the practicalities of this against the production and development of intelligence products, considering the role that problem profiles and tactical assessments should play alongside the strategic assessment.

We've been involved in every round of audit, strategy, and strategic assessment production since 1998. Having been involved with the implementation of the National Intelligence Model into policing and CSPs, we've seen what works well and what doesn’t in terms of what should go into a strategic intelligence document that assesses community safety issues. In this session we discuss these key ingredients, and in so doing set out a template against which to critically review the strategic assessment production process.

There are generally three different approaches to writing a strategic assessment:

1. the crime chapters approach (with a chapter on each crime, disorder, and ASB type and chapters on other community safety issues)
2. the strategic priorities approach (each chapter is based on the previous strategic priorities)
3. a problem-oriented approach (chapters are based on place-based concentrations of crime and priority neighbourhoods; offenders, offending behaviour and offender management; and victimisation, vulnerability, and reassurance)

We critique each type in a group discussion and illustrate the pros and cons of each.

We review the data sets that should be used in a strategic assessment, provide guidance on information sharing and illustrate examples of useful analytical techniques that have been used in several of the best strategic assessments.