Issue - meetings

This report will be sent to follow.

The Board received a report and presentation setting out the key findings of the latest Strategic Needs Assessment.

Following the presentation it was noted that the Assessment demonstrated the strong correlation between health and crime issues. It was suggested that a joint piece of work should be undertaken to assess how this could be addressed by the Council, Police and NHS Haringey and that this should be draw on the model used in Glasgow.

It was noted that the Borough Commander of Glasgow had visited Haringey to observe good practice and that this had informed the model established there.

It was requested that copies of the presentation were circulated to the Board. The Board was advised that the full report would be available by 27 November and it was agreed that this should also be circulated.

Concern was expressed that data that illustrated a prevalence of certain crimes amongst young males of African Caribbean descent was often not address directly. There was agreement that a piece of work focussing directly on this issue was required.

The Board discussed gun crime and it was noted that the Police had recently had to respond to a number of serious incidents in Borough. Targeted work such as ‘Operation Swift’ was aimed at addressing chaotic gang crime. Within this there was a focus on working with the families of young people to tackle this problem. This approach reflected successful work that had been undertaken with young people to address gang related crime in America.

The Chair noted that in order to address entrenched patterns of behaviour and crime all of the agencies involved would need to take on board the experiences of other communities and countries. It was suggested that the Partnership’s approach to tackling gang related crime should be discussed by the HSP.

In response to a query with respect to Hate Crime, the Board was advised that reported incidents of race related crime were reducing; however, incidents of homophobic crime were increasing. Work would be carried out to analysis causes of this.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that as new communities developed and immigrants became more familiar the public services available, the Police had seen an increase in the number of hate crimes reported by people from these communities.

There was agreement that, in some areas, a greater breakdown of the information would be useful to illustrate where one factor may distorting the information. For example it was suggested that this could be applied to information with respect to drug and alcohol data in order to develop a more targeted approach.

It was noted that in December the SCEB PMG would be considering the implications for projects during the last year of the LAA and there was agreement that the findings of the DAAT Needs Assessment would need to be considered as part of this.

RESOLVED:

That the content of the report and presentation be noted.