Evaluation of police and fire reform year 4: international perspectives

4 Prevention work by the police

Key findings: Prevention

• Police reform impacted the prevention agenda differently across the international case study locations. 
• In Norway and New Zealand crime prevention was a specific aim of reform. In both countries, prevention has become a key part of all officer roles, making it a more generalised rather than specialised function of policing.
• Interviewees from Manchester and the Netherlands did not view reform as having impacted on crime prevention. Instead, they perceived that a move towards more evidence-based practice has had a greater impact on prevention.
• Effective prevention requires the police to work formally with partners to identify issues, gain expertise, develop action plans for a range of different approaches and activities, and share resources. But, even on an informal basis, in each of the case studies the importance of partnership working and the support the police gain from working with partners on prevention initiatives was also discussed.
• Adequate time and resources for both the police and partners is a challenge for prevention. Staff culture is another challenge to prevention; it takes time to gain cultural acceptance of prevention within the police service.

Getting the strategy right is key for the successful implementation of more prevention-focused policing (e.g. having leaders who support the changes and communicating the strategy to police officers).

This chapter will discuss the range of prevention activities undertaken by the police, the changes in how the police work with a prevention agenda, the role of partnership working in prevention, and any challenges and opportunities. 

4.1 How has reform changed approaches to prevention?

The role of police reform in changing police services towards being more prevention focused varied across the four case studies. There are clear differences between Manchester, New Zealand, Norway and the Netherlands regarding the impact that they feel reform has had on their prevention agendas compared with other factors. 

For Norway and New Zealand prevention has been a main aim of reform. Reform is viewed as the catalyst for the prevention activities they are now undertaking and is also seen as influencing a change in culture to being more prevention focused. 

“Prevention is…due to the Police Act, prevention is our first job…it's very important that we can ‘prevent’ more than repair and investigate.” (Interviewee: Norway)

In Norway, since reform, all police officers are expected to take on a prevention role including patrol officers. As such, it appears that prevention has become a more generalised rather than specialised function of policing. 

New Zealand has also encountered a significant shift in the prevention agenda as a result of reform, which led to the development of ‘Prevention First’. This is explained by a senior officer as a shift from more output focused policing towards a focus on engaging with communities, with police staff being more empowered to work preventatively. 

For Manchester and the Netherlands, reform was not believed to have impacted on prevention. Instead, interviewees in Manchester indicate that a move towards more evidence-based practice has had more of an impact than reform. This is particularly interesting as Manchester and the Netherlands did not mention that there had been a cultural shift towards prevention. 

4.2 Is prevention a strategic priority?

Although reform has played different roles in moving police practices towards a more prevention-focused way of working, prevention is a feature of policing in varying degrees in all four of the international case study areas. For Manchester, Norway and New Zealand, prevention forms a key part of their strategic plans. Prevention activities in these places are broadly similar, involving partnership working and problem solving, and are being developed on an evidence base.

For the Netherlands, prevention is less of a strategic priority.

Embedding prevention in policing culture is identified as an important aspect for New Zealand and Norway, where they describe a cultural change having taken place, with prevention now being embedded in their working practices. There is also now a stronger focus on prevention in Scotland as evidenced in the partnership, innovation and prevention case study report,^[17] with the Policing 2026 strategy demonstrating a commitment to prevention approaches. 

An interviewee from New Zealand described their prevention activities as moving away from a ‘traditional response’ to a more holistic response. Early intervention is already part of the prevention agenda in New Zealand, with Manchester stating that they would also like to move towards this approach. 

“What we’re trying to do is shift that, so by getting upstream of issues …being able to nip issues in the bud would help to move us to a position in the future where that balance between what we invest in early intervention or late intervention starts to shift more towards the early intervention because we’re seeing a reduction in the more serious offences that are a symptom of us not being able to act earlier.” (Interviewee: Manchester)

In contrast, interviewees from the Netherlands discuss prevention differently. They describe it as a shared responsibility with partner organisations but where their partners take more of a lead. According to the interviewees the police are happy to cooperate with partners, but they view the focus of their role as enforcement rather than prevention, with the suggestion that local government can do more on prevention than the police.

‘We have to cooperate, and things that people can do by themselves or things that local government can do is more on the prevention side of the…of dealing with criminality, and our role is more to … try to take criminals and to bring them…[to]…justice.” (Interviewee: Netherlands)

4.3 What role does partnership working have in prevention?

4.3.1 Prevention work needs partnerships 

Although different approaches have been used in prevention activities across the four case study areas, all of them involve partnership working. These partnerships vary but include:

• working with community members
• partnerships where other organisations are taking the lead
• working with traditional partners such as agencies in criminal justice, health, social work and the community
• working with non-traditional partners such as the private sector to address specific issues, for example cyber-crime. 

These partnerships demonstrate an admission on behalf of the police that they cannot tackle prevention alone and need to draw on partners to identify issues, gain expertise, develop action plans for a range of different approaches and activities, and share resources. This is consistent with the role of partnership working in prevention activities in Scotland. The case study of partnership, innovation and prevention^[18] found examples of different types of partnerships being formed, such as highly structured formal partnerships through to day-to-day joint working with little formal arrangements, and a prioritisation of prevention in partnerships in strategic documents, empowering the police to work collaboratively with a range of partners from statutory and voluntary sectors. 

4.3.2 Formalising partnerships for prevention

In Norway the police are working with a range of partners in education, health and childcare authorities as well as private businesses to improve community safety. The main strategy for prevention work has led to joint meetings with partners and putting in place more formalised agreements.

“…we have also formalised agreements with the security … the private security sector in terms of … and that has been a great thing for us because …acknowledging that we also need to work with private security companies is… something that has been a bit difficult for the Police in the past, but now we have formalised agreements with them in …order to sort of secure a community” (Interviewee: Norway)

The quotation above demonstrates the formalisation of partnerships for prevention work in Norway. But, even on a more informal basis, each of the case studies discuss the importance of partnership working and the support they gain from working with partners on prevention initiatives.

Case study 6

Expanding partnerships to fight crime

For Norwegian police, the way they work with partners in prevention activities is viewed as innovative, by one of the interviewees. This is due to information sharing and the way they are working with partners to address ‘new’ types of crime such as the risks to children using the internet and internet fraud. These identified ‘new’ types of crime appear to be leading to the police working with non-traditional partners such as those in the internet industry and tax authorities, to draw on different agencies areas of expertise to help tackle these issues.

4.4 What are the challenges and opportunities of reform for developing the prevention agenda?

Findings from the international case studies illustrated that reform presented police services with challenges and opportunities regarding the development of prevention agendas. 

Two key themes emerged from this research - time and resources for prevention partnerships, and changing culture – and these will be explored further in this section.

4.4.1 Time and resources for prevention partnerships

As discussed, partnership working forms an important element of the prevention agenda in all the case study areas. However, there are some potential challenges as identified in Norway and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, there was a view that police had to focus on their core policing tasks which meant less time for collaborative working. In Norway, one interviewee discussed the need to allocate budgets for the police to take part in partnership activities. This was seen as particularly challenging when the police might have to invest part of their budget in a partnership initiative, but the benefit may be related to an area that is under another organisation’s jurisdiction.

“I think that’s one of the things that we probably are going to struggle with a bit...is to find the funding to digitalise…the different ways of working together, especially since our budgets are .. you know, we have Police budgets, we have a tax office budget, we have a labour budget, and then sort of be willing to put money where the benefit might not be yours. It might come to another entity.” (Interviewee: Norway)

4.4.2 Changing culture

Another significant challenge on the prevention agenda identified in the international case study areas is the need for a shift in culture to occur. Interestingly, in Manchester, for those working at a strategic level, prevention was viewed as being a core element of the policing role but for the officers working at a community level, there was an identified challenge in moving towards a ‘preventative mind set’, particularly due to the focus on targets and response activities. 

“The incidents you’ve had and trying to manage the demand that I mentioned. So…I’m trying to push all that back to create some capacity to try and move us towards a more preventative mind set but it’s really hard…” (Interviewee: Manchester)

In Norway one of the interviewees explains that due to merging the police districts there has been a ‘struggle’ with cultural differences and how to integrate prevention into the way they police.

Reform in New Zealand is described as having given them the opportunity to concentrate on prevention and to change the culture towards embracing prevention as a core policing role. But it is acknowledged that it takes time to gain cultural acceptance of prevention within the police service. New Zealand are nearly eight years into their reform journey, but there is a belief that the prevention role has really only started to gain cultural acceptance in the last 12 to 24 months. 

In New Zealand interviewees described the key to the successful implementation of more prevention-focused policing was to get the strategy right. This includes having leaders who support the changes and are looking to see a change in culture towards more prevention-focused policing and the importance of communicating the strategy to police officers.

“Get your strategy right, but make sure it aligns with the culture’, and then ensure that the leaders that are actually leading it are actually looking for the cultural change, and not just nodding their heads going, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)