Safer Buckinghamshire Plan 2020-2023
4. Crime and community safety in Buckinghamshire
We carried out a study to look at the crime and community safety issues specific to Buckinghamshire. This work was called a Strategic Crime Assessment. The results have been used to decide on the priorities and key actions in the Safer Buckinghamshire Plan. The results showed five clear areas of concern:
1
- Anti-social hotspots across the county.
- Disproportionate levels of crime across more deprived areas.
- Community concerns from the Residents Survey around antisocial behaviour, drug use and crimes such as fraud, scams, vehicle crime and burglary.
2
- Vulnerability to violence and exploitation.
- Emerging criminal activity in Aylesbury – Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and High Wycombe - (CSE and modern slavery).
- Increasing levels of young victims and suspects, increasing levels of female victims and suspects.
- Increased repeat offending and increased numbers of suspects who are also victims.
- BAME over representation in suspects.
3
- A quarter of drug and alcohol treatment service users have an offending history.
- A third of mental health treatment service users have a risk of offending.
- Community concerns from the Residents Survey around drug use, paraphernalia and anti-social behaviour relating to drugs and alcohol use. Drugs and related issues was the most quoted comment in the survey.
4
- Domestic abuse is one of the highest non-crime demand on resources.
- Domestic violence and abuse crimes have increased by 23%.
- Increase in a new problem area among older people (30 – 39 years).
- Increases in females as both victims and suspects.
5
- Negative childhood experiences increase the risk of offending.
- Almost 1 in 2 identified suspects were suspected of more than 1 offence in a 5 year period.
- Homelessness may increase the risk of someone offending.
- Community concerns around young people intimidating, loitering and being involved in anti-social behaviour.
Crime in Buckinghamshire has increased every year for the last five years. This is line with the regional and national picture. There were 33,529 crimes recorded by the police between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019, although the Police will have received many more calls about people’s concerns. This is a 9% increase on the 30,531 recorded crimes in 2017/18 and a 42% increase when compared to 5 years ago (23,643 recorded crimes in 2014/15).
- The largest increases have been in violent crime and public order offences.
- Sexual offences have continued to increase every year.
- Drugs offences are falling overall but drug issues are a key concern for our residents.
- The main types of crime are theft, burglary and criminal damage. However they have been increasing at a slower rate compared to other types of crime.