‘Joint working the key to preventing crime in Arun’

During a meeting of the council’s residential and wellbeing services committee on Thursday (September 30) chief inspector Jon Carter, district commander for Arun and Chichester, said it was key to ‘work together’ to tackle issues like anti-social behaviour, domestic abuse and drug supply lines.

The committee was discussing an annual review of the Safer Arun Partnership.

The SAP seeks to address and reduce anti-social behaviour and crime by fostering a joined-up approach from multiple agencies, including the police, council, fire and rescue service, the probation service and the local NHS trust.

During the meeting, Mr Carter said: “There is almost no crime and disorder issue that will be solved by the involvement of one agency, particularly the police, on its own.

“We enforce the law and that will have an effect around crime and disorder, but it will never on its own tackle the root causes.

“There are deep seated issues that need to be tackled and are outside of the scope of the police to tackle.

“All the police action will do is delay or disperse, but it doesn’t actually stop the issue.”

He said there had been a ‘significant increase’ in anti-social behaviour over the last year and that domestic abuse made up ‘a really worrying percentage of all recorded crime’.

He added: “We cannot underestimate the massively corrosive impact of domestic abuse on people affected by it, particularly children and young people.”

Mr Carter added that some increases may be due to more people reporting crime or being less accepting of it during lockdown, when more time was spent at home.

Serious violence, serious and organised crime, community resilience, improving public confidence and tackling antisocial behaviour were all SAP priorities for 2020 and this will remain the case this year.

Committee chair Jacky Pendleton (Con, Middleton-on-Sea) agreed that a multi-agency approach is important in tackling crime, and especially domestic abuse.

She said: “Tackling domestic abuse is the responsibility of all of us if we see it out and about, if we know it from our community involvements.

“It particularly impacts, not just on individuals, but on children in the family – A really, really important issue for those children as they grow and become community members themselves.”

Christopher Hughes (Con, Barnham) asked the chief inspector if he thought more education was needed for young people on topics such as domestic abuse and drugs.

Mr Carter said he would ‘never say no to more’ but thought that the police were not necessarily the best agency to deliver it.

He explained: “I’m not sold on that personally – that is a police resource that is then not doing something else.

“Education can be delivered by lots of people but arresting people can be delivered by relatively few.”

Gill Yeates (LDem, Bersted) said the figure on drug crimes ‘really jumped out’ at her and ‘is really quite alarming’.

Drugs trafficking and supply in Arun ‘increased significantly’ by 91 per cent between January and December 2020 when compared to the previous year.

Ms Yeates acknowledged that reporting of crime may have increased during coronavirus restrictions but asked: “Is this something we should be very concerned about?”

Mr Carter reassured the committee that the police are a ‘proactive service’ and that drugs trafficking can relate to small quantities as well as large.

He said: “Drugs trafficking sounds like a really scary word but it doesn’t necessarily have to be lorry loads of the stuff – it can be relatively small quantities and supply can be even smaller. 

“A lot of this increase will come from increased proactivity in the community.

“In Arun during this period, we also saw the introduction of community wardens – A fantastic set of eyes and ears.”

What did crime look like across the Arun district last year?

The committee also learned that, although most high-level crime decreased in the district last year, risk to the most vulnerable adults and children increased.

This includes domestic abuse and drug use.

The overall crime rate decreased by six per cent when compared to 2019 but Arun had West Sussex’s third highest crime rate per 1,000, with 65 crimes recorded per 1,000 residents.

The severity of crime in Arun also increased but this remains lower than severity of crimes nationally and across Sussex.

Almost half of the crime committed in Arun is classed as ‘violent’ and last year saw a nine per cent increase in domestic abuse crimes.

It should be noted that the total number of domestic incidents decreased by two per cent and violent crime can range from physical assault and stalking and harassment, to dogs dangerously out of control and some road traffic offences.

It is hoped that the SAP for 2021 will help to meet these challenges.