Briefing Note on Community Resilience Strategy Toolkit Academia Edition

7/30/2019 Briefing Note on Community Resilience Strategy Toolkit Academia Edition

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Briefing Note: Community Resilience Strategy toolkit

Innovative solutions

quality value service

Resilient communities and Policing

priorities: a toolkitBriefing Note; November 2012


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INTRODUCTION

Some problems are so complex that you have to

be highly intelligent and well informed just to be

undecided about them.

This quote from Jeff Conklin describes nicely the

challenge of continuing to improve

neighbourhood and community-based policing

beyond the successes of community safety

partnerships. At a time when local authorities,

health trusts and development agencies, who are

partners to the Police in any given locality, are

experiencing severe spending cuts, the complexity

of reducing crime and the causes of crime become

ever more wicked. The introduction of Police and

Crime Commissioners and Panels in 2012 as

elected representatives in policing at a regional

level has also highlighted the challenges of

providing locally sensitive police services1. This

document provides a framework whereby

Commissioners, the Panels, and the Forces with

whom they work, may establish in a robust and

transparent manner the policing challenges in

specific localities, to refine resource allocation, to

set appropriate performance criteria and to

establish clear roles and remits of policing

partners such as local authorities.

WICKED PROBLEMS

This document identified policing issues in each

locality as essentially a wicked problem2, which is

one where those involved cant agree on what the

question is, let alone what the solution should be.

This is particularly appropriate for areas where

public order, deprivation and crime rates have

been a challenge for a long period of time.

The concept of wicked problems dates back to the 1970s when Rittel and Webber (1973:

155) coined the phrase to describe a class of problem that defy solution in the context of

social planning:

The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail,

because of the nature of those problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has

developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described.

Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the indisputable public good; there is

1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDts5XPCHy0and

http://www.academia.edu/1961081/Untangling_Police_Accountability_A_Ne

w_Public_Leadership_Challenge2Ackoff, Russell, (1974) "Systems, Messes, and I nteractive Planning" Portions

of Chapters I and 2 of Redesigning the Future. New York/London: Wiley,.

no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be

meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no s ense to talk about optimal solutions to social

problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions

in the sense of definitive and objective answers.

Whilst community safety partnerships have made

extraordinary strides towards coherent decision-

making between agencies and moved the

agencies involved closer to the top of Arnsteins

ladder of participation3, a continuing problem of

limited public involvement suggests a need to

start at the top of the ladder and work towards

the statutory agencies rather than just extending

the reach of the agencies outwards4.

The focus of this project is to further develop

weak links5 in a given locality and focus Police

priorities on helping community members to

address and resolve community safety issues

through a distinct process of achieving citizen

control .

Figure 1 Arnstein's Ladder of Participation

The approach here is to establish aneighbourhood centred (rather than

neighbourhood focussed6) approach to

3Arnstein, S R. (1969) "A Ladder of Citizen Participation," JAIP, Vol. 35, No. 4,

July 1969, pp. 216-2244

http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&ID=60916&&key

words=wicked%20issues5

Granovetter, MS (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. The American Journal of

Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 6. (May, 1973), pp. 1360-13806The difference is that a centred approach looks out from where the person

or neighbourhood is, how they perceive and experience community safety,

rather than a focussed approach which focusses on the person orneighbourhood. All the agencies peer at the troubled person or locality and

concentrate their current services, rather than look back at themselves to see

what the troubled person or locality sees.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDts5XPCHy0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDts5XPCHy0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDts5XPCHy0http://www.academia.edu/1961081/Untangling_Police_Accountability_A_New_Public_Leadership_Challengehttp://www.academia.edu/1961081/Untangling_Police_Accountability_A_New_Public_Leadership_Challengehttp://www.academia.edu/1961081/Untangling_Police_Accountability_A_New_Public_Leadership_Challengehttp://www.academia.edu/1961081/Untangling_Police_Accountability_A_New_Public_Leadership_Challengehttp://www.academia.edu/1961081/Untangling_Police_Accountability_A_New_Public_Leadership_Challengehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDts5XPCHy0


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communicating neighbourhood perceptions of

safety and wellbeing to the agencies involved.

This is based on assets7 rather than deficit.

Although the localities in question have been

identified because of various vulnerabilities8, this

approach looks at the chosen localities as if they

are asset-full- they remain reasonably successful

in comparative terms, things get done, life goes

on, problems get solved by community members

themselves. Starting with the assets, skills,

knowledge and the weak links of social capital

that already exist, statutory agencies can limit

their interventions to investments in enhancing

the local tangible and intangible assets to enhance

community safety. This means that projects andinitiatives can be better targeted to

Build on existing community capabilities

Reduce focus on short-term projectised

inputs

Develop long-term investment in

community assets

Strategic command in any organisation focusses

on the attributes of a problem that theorganisation has control over. This means that the

Police, naturally, focusses on the parts of a

locality, and people that it thinks it can control or

strongly influence. These are police officers,

PCSOs, those individuals in agencies who are

required to attend partnership meetings and

initiatives and perpetrators and victims of crime.

In a given locality, even if existing consultees are

included (the usual suspects of residents

associations, neighbourhood watch schemes,volunteering groups etc) these still make up a

relatively small proportion of the total population

of a locality and an even smaller part of the

7Kretzmann, JP and McKnight, JL ( 1993)Building Communities from the Inside

Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets (Center for

Urban Affairs and Policy Research,)8 Specifically, the Jill Dando Vulnerable Localities Index Chainey, S. P. (2008).

Identifying priority neighbourhoods using the Vulnerable Localities Index.

Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. Vol, 2(2), pp. 196-209.

population that use a locality without actually

living there9.

TAMING PROBLEMS

Having identified priority areas with respect tocrime through screening processes

10, the next

step is typically devise a project or operation

focussed on tackling the type of crime or the

criminogenic needs or deficits in the given locality.

The projectising of a problem leads to the

taming11

of the problem- through the selection

of a part of the problem, setting clear objectives,

assigning limited and time bound resources to a

limited number of alternative solutions in order to

result in a limited set of outcomes.

An alternative approach is to focus on the locality

as the unit of problem solving, rather than

focussing on the problem. Placing the problem in

a wider context, as a small part of a wider (and

generally successful) system of interest12

allows

the whole locality (the built environment, the

people, their networks and their problem solving

capabilities) to be utilised to address the problem.

PERCEPTIONS

The usual strategy for identifying that a problem

exists is to collate a large amount of existing data,

sift it to find patterns and to prioritise those

patterns. The problem is that people sifting the

data tend to see patterns that they already think

exist13

. In this way, localities are confirmed to

suffer from certain types of crimes. The data then

tends to confirm that which is already known,operationally and anecdotally. A lot of effort is

9An area like Castle is a good example- with relatively low population but

contributes a great deal to town-wise crime statistics, probably because of the

amounts of people that use the area during the day and in the night time

economy.

10 Like those in the Northampton Community Safety Partnership Strategic

Assessment 2011/1211

Chapman, J. (2004). Systems Failure Why Governments must learn tothink differently, 2nd ed. London: DEMOS12

The central concept system embodies the idea of a set of elementsconnected together which form a whole, this showing properties which are

properties of the whole, rather than properties of its component parts.

Checkland, P. (1981). Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. John Wiley & Sons13

Maccoun, Robert J. (1998) , "Biases in the interpretation and use of researchresults", Annual Review of Psychology 49: 25987


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spent on refining the data in an attempt to

understand the problem better. All that actually

happens is that we understand the data better,

not the problem.

Instead, it is possible to look more closely and

deliberately at peoples perceptions of the data,

rather than the data itself. Being interested in

peoples perceptions of data help us to

understand what possible solutions that they have

in their head when they are sifting the data. This

helps us to understand how they are

constructing14

the problem in their heads.

ENRICHING THE DATA/ENRICHING THE PROBLEM

Instead of creating more data, what is required is

a richer understanding of that data, and how it is

perceived by different people and interest groups

in the given locality. This can be done through a

process of rich picturing

Rich pictures were particularly developed as part of Peter

Checklands Soft Systems Methodology15

for gathering information

about a complex situation. Rich Pictures provide a mechanism for

learning about complex or ill-defined problems by drawing detailed

("rich") representations of them. Typically, rich pictures follow no

commonly agreed syntax, usually consist of symbols, sketches or

"doodles" and can contain as much (pictorial) information as is

deemed necessary. The finished picture may be of value to other

stakeholders of the problem being described since it is likely to

capture many different facets of the situation, but the real value of

this technique is the way it forces the creator to think deeply about

the problem and understand it well enough to express it pictorially (a

process known as action learning).

Rich picturing captures the perceptions we have

of data, rather than the data itself. Intelligence

staff and community members can come together

around a table with different types of data about

crime events and insider knowledge and map

them as equals. The picturing process neednt be

tidy or elegant, but works to identify differences

in understanding about priorities and resources in

a locality, and allows partners to have a discussion

14Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1966), The Social Construction of Reality: A

Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books 15

Checkland, Peter B. and Scholes, J. Soft Systems Methodology in Action,John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1990

about those differences in order to solve the

problems.

VISIONS, PRIORITIES AND PLANS

Rich picturing works to analyse the problem, but itis also used to develop a vision and plan for the

locality, placing policing priorities into the context

of the existing assets and capabilities of the

locality and identifying areas where investment

will enhance those capabilities, shifting focus

away from funding of ongoing remediation

projects. The sensitivity of these investment plans

can then be tested to understand the factors that

contribute most to success or failure.

Figure 2 Example of Rich Picture

GETTING THE MIND-SET RIGHT

Its always tempting to suggest that a problem can

be definitively solved, but this process allows the

limits of success to be considered. The following

principles are guides to understanding the limits

to success.

The way a problem is described in the first place

determines the nature of the solution- the right

questions need to be asked to get the right answers

Every wicked problem, and therefore every community,

is essentially unique.

Defining wicked problems is itself a wicked problem.

Wicked problems do not have a limited number of

potential solutions.

Wicked problems dont stop being wicked at the end of

a project.

There is never a problem-solved moment

Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot

operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by

trial and error, every attempt counts significantly.

Every wicked problem can be considered to be a

symptom of another problem.


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You have no right to be wrong (we dont have

permission to get it and try again).

Solution lie in a combination of small actions,

building on assets and capabilities that already

exist rather than big high profile projects which

ultimately finish without addressing the wholeissue.

The full toolkit will contain instructions on how to

complete each of these steps.

PREPARATION

1) Community profile from statistics

a) What is known already

b) What is missing

c) What anecdotal suggestions are there

d) Develop and map weak links networks

TRIANGULATION

2) Observational data- initial street walking

a) Triangulation with statistics

b) Physical assets register- geotag

c) Vulnerabilities and risks register- geotag

LEGITIMACY

3) Kins and Networks

a) Groups- voluntary and funded

b) Statutory agencies and services (bridging

capital)

i) Housing

ii) Social work

iii) Wardens

iv) Health professions

v) Environmental wellbeing

c) Tight & Loose networks (bonding capital)

i) Neighbours

ii) Communities of

affiliation/experience/status

iii) KINS and Community Connect

d) In a-c above, establish intangible assets,

skills & experience

SYSTEMS & STRUCTURES

4) Maps and rich pictures

a) Develop own rich picture (RP) capturing

1-3 above

b) Key informants (KI) develop own

independent RP

i) Their perceptions of the data

ii) Their own perceptions of

vulnerabilities and assets (V&A)

c) Repeat street walking with KI

d) Compare and discuss RPs- commonalities

and differences

e) Derive composite RP from key

stakeholders RPs

f) Conceptualise Key Problem Statement(s)

from RP consultations

g) Keep it wicked

POWER RELATIONS

5) Priorities and foci

a) Simple or pairwise ranking of priorities of

stakeholders

b) Preserve different rankings of different

stakeholders

c) Factor in external pressures and

objectives (like Locally Identified Priorities

(LIPS))

d) Undertake sensitivity analysis on

priorities

SOLUTIONS

6) Visualise solutions

a) Draw RP of desired endpoint(s)- what

would locality look like when successfulb) Which priorities from 5b can be oriented

to achieving 6a to achieve action?

c) Identify & RP assets which contribute to

6a

d) Identify & RP assets which, with

investment, will contribute to 6a

e) Identify interests and blockers

f) Undertake multi-criteria decision analysis

(optional if complex or high investment)

STRATEGY


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7) Community Resilience Strategy

a) Map actions of partners

b) Record interdependencies

c) Consider pre-requisites rules

d) Publish strategy

e)

*Keywords in bold require technical explanation

Documents

Briefing Note on Community Resilience Strategy Toolkit Academia Edition