LOCALLY IDENTIFIED SOLUTIONS AND PRACTICES: a guide to Intensive Engagement By Tim Curtis, Amy Bowkett and Jack Stevens, , with Richard James Illustrations by Laura Brodrick
LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit CONTENTS
Introduction 5 Objectives ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 Foreword .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 1.
The toolkit .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Moving from community engagement to involvement........................................................................................................................................... 8 The proforma ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2.
STEP 1 Justification for the LISP ............................................................................................................................................................. 9
Chapter 3.
STEP 2. Community Assets ................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Community assets and vulnerabilities ................................................................................................................................................................... 10 What is missing? ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 12 Chapter 4.
STEP 3. Stakeholders and networks ..................................................................................................................................................... 13
Map out networks .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 Identify highly capable and highly connected ....................................................................................................................................................... 14 Social capital ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 Trust and legitimacy........................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Grassroots and grass-tips community engagement .......................................................................................................................................... 18 Chapter 5.
STEP 4. Problem Rich pictures ............................................................................................................................................................. 20
Enriching the understanding of the problem .................................................................................................................................................... 20 Defining the problem ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Working definition of the problem .................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 6.
STEP 5 Working group.......................................................................................................................................................................... 23
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LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit Meeting their self-interest ................................................................................................................................................................................. 24 Motivating change ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 24 Chapter 7.
STEP 6 SOLUTIONS ............................................................................................................................................................................... 27
Nudging pro-social behaviour ............................................................................................................................................................................ 27 Chapter 8.
STEP 7. Interventions & Evaluation ..................................................................................................................................................... 29
The evaluation story .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 30 Results Logic....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 30 What is an indicator? ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 30 What are progress indicators............................................................................................................................................................................. 31 Progress ratio evaluation ................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Chapter 9.
STEP 8. ESCALATION ............................................................................................................................................................................ 32
Chapter 10. WORKED EXAMPLE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 32 Chapter 11. Managing a LISP process ...................................................................................................................................................................... 50 Objectives of LISP ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 50 Choosing when to apply LISP processes ............................................................................................................................................................ 51 Tasking a LISP process ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 51 Principles of quality LISP projects ...................................................................................................................................................................... 52 Supporting quality LISP ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 52 Chapter 12. Practising Rich pictures ........................................................................................................................................................................ 54 How to create your rich picture ............................................................................................................................................................................. 54 Chapter 13. Selected reading .................................................................................................................................................................................. 60 BOOKS: ................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 60
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LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit JOURNALS: .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 60 Police Research ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 60 Version 20.4
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LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit
INTRODUCTION This quote from Jeff Conklin nicely describes 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’. This toolkit outlines a set of activities that can be led by community practitioners to shift away from locally identified problems to developing, in collaboration with community members, Locally Identified Solutions and Practices (LISP). This approach is a response to the observation that there continues to be a mismatch between the community’s perceptions of crime, and actual crime incidents. It also further reinforces the Peelian principle that the police are citizens in uniform and therefore their decision-making processes within localities should be made with all groupings of residents, rather than ‘on behalf of’. The activities outlined in this toolkit are designed to help the practitioner investigate and thoroughly analyse problems in the locality, with the active involvement of residents and other community stakeholders, to arrive at mutually agreed solutions and practices that reduce the conditions for crime.
Objectives
The objective of the toolkit is to equip public sector practitioners and members of the public to work together towards mutual solutions, the ‘co-production’ of community safety. It is not a process owned by the Police, but rather a way for the Police to help organise other stakeholders to help achieve their goals. It is built around a core strategy of 'rich picturing', which allows communities of which LISP practitioners are a part to explore how each other perceive a community problem and develop joint solutions for the challenges neighbourhoods experience. The mainstream models of problem solving in policing (the National Decision-making Model (NDM) and Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment (SARA) were designed for problems that are straightforward (although technically difficult), whereas the LISP toolkit is designed to think about, and consult with the public on situations where 'nobody agrees on what the problem is, let alone the solution'. This is known as a 'super-complex problem situation'. LISP is also a way of encouraging the general public, and community organisations, to be actively involved in solving the problems in their neighbourhood. SARA is a process owned by the Police, whereas LISP is a process shared with the community. Doing a LISP requires intensive engagement with the community to establish networks of capable people working together on a specific problem and devising sustainable practices and behaviours that contribute to community wellbeing and a reduction in crime. The NDM and the LISP models are
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LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit shown in Figure 1 to demonstrate how they relate to each other. LISP overlays and further develops the basic models.
Figure 1 National Decision Model and LISP
Sustainable practices and behaviours that contribute to community wellbeing and a reduction in crime are collated in an agreed plan -the LISP proforma- where all parties agreed to sustain a set of solutions and practices. This could be a pre-cursor to a full-fledged Neighbourhood Plan. The whole LISP process is based on the principles of collaborative community-based problem solving. The LISP practitioner is guided to become the organiser of anticrime strategies and solutions, rather than being the solver of problems.
Foreword
Welcome to the second edition of the LISP toolkit from Intensive Engagement. It has been thoroughly updated, with significant changes reflecting the ongoing practice and improvements to Intensive Engagement since 2012. The proforma that is used to manage a LISP process has been through several versions, so using the SARA framework for chapter headings seemed too complicated. This edition focusses squarely on the 8 steps that have been introduced and refined in over 10 different LISP projects, both successful and unsuccessful. Material that had been consigned to the back of the book has been brought forward to the main sections, starting with the practical instructions for each step, and then more detailed reading in support of the practice. The training and toolkit is now aligned, and exceeds, the requirements for Problem Solving Skills of the Policing Professional Framework (PPF), although the material is focused on any practitioner working on public safety, no longer necessarily a PCSO or police officer. This work is now based on the experience of training over 500 police officers, PCSOs and local authority staff, and a thorough investigations of 10 detailed cases through PhD and Master’s degree research. The underpinning literature and research evidence has been omitted from this handbook but is available on the Intensive Engagement website. Tim Curtis Senior Lecturer, The University of Northampton
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LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit
CHAPTER 1.
THE TOOLKIT
LISP is the process of developing locally identified solutions and practices to address the conditions that lead to high levels of chronic crime that affects the public. It is particularly designed for use in areas where there are hotspots of crime (real and perceived) and anti-social behaviour, of which has been going on for a very long time- over several years. It is designed for situations where lots of Police 1 activities have already been tried, but a new approach is thought to be necessary.
Police & Crime Commissioners, Police forces and Community Safety Partnerships are involved in deciding what crime patterns and issues are most concerning and invest in intensive engagement with the neighbourhood with enough resources to catalyse and kick-start self-sufficient responses to reduce the possibility of crime. The Police forces themselves can’t and won’t deliver all the solutions, so community partners need to be galvanised to allow the Police and statutory partners to take a step back, freeing up Police resources for use in other areas.
It is an 8-step journey (Figure 2) that is shared with the neighbourhood that is the focus of the policing problem. Like all journeys, we can turn back to the early stages and keep ‘circling the block’ until we have properly understood the reasons why a neighbourhood is suffering from high levels of crime.
Figure 2 Intensive Engagement 8 steps Figure 3 LISP is a shared journey
The word Police with a capital P denotes the official Police force and their staff. Small ‘p’ policing refers to the work that all citizens engage in to keep themselves and their neighbours safe.
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LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit Each of the 8 steps illustrated in Figure 3 is a collection of techniques, tips and approaches that help you 1) explain why the LISP is needed, 2) what is already available to work with in the locality, 3) who could be involved and their networks, 4) making sure you understand the problem, 5) pulling together a working group, 6) only then developing suggested solutions and planning 7) actions that include immediate solutions and ongoing practices, whilst knowing how to 8) escalate the plan to the right level to get action.
Moving from involvement
community
engagement
to
Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation (Figure 4) is a useful way of describing the direction in which community engagement can move towards more community involvement. The ladder describes different types of community participation, starting at ‘nonparticipation’ represented by the lower levels of the ladder (Manipulation- step 1 and Therapy- step 2) from the viewpoint that “if we educate the public we will change their ill-informed attitudes and they will support our plans”. Level 3 (informing) and level 4 (consultation) begins to allow citizens to hear and have a voice. It fails, however, to allow them to have an influence as they do not possess the power to do so. It is a one-way communication, informing them of their rights, responsibilities and options, involving asking and collecting their opinions and views but the final say goes to those doing the consultation. Moving up the ladder at level 5 (placation) a two-way communication occurs as participants can have an active role, but ideas and outcomes remain with the agency. Often a plan or a project has already been defined and agreed, and the project planners are only seeking the public’s permission to
proceed. Level 6 (partnership) is where true participation begins with negotiation and shared decision-making responsibilities and clear roles, responsibilities and powers are achieved with a common goal. At level 7 (delegated power) and 8 (citizen control) participants from the majority are fully involved with decision-making. They hold managerial roles with clear lines of accountability and two-way communication with those giving away the power. By level 8, the community’s existing power to act is recognised, rather than being empowered. Existing resources, assets and skills are harnessed to solve problems. The purpose of LISP is to move the residents, and the public agencies that are involved in public safety and wellbeing up the ladder towards steps 7 and 8.
Figure 4 Arnstein's ladder, engagement to involvement
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LISP Locally Identified Solutions and Practices Toolkit The LISP process effectively builds the community towards being involved in developing and delivering community-designed interventions that co-produce public safety, rather than just being consulted on by police organisations after important decisions have already been made.
CHAPTER 2. THE LISP
STEP 1 JUSTIFICATION FOR
The proforma
This toolkit is based around a ‘proforma’, a document that provides a single record of all the LISP investigation and activities. Each step in the LISP process will be described and explained in relation to the proforma. The proforma can be downloaded from www.intensiveengagement.com toolkit page. The proforma acts a place to record the investigations of, and share information with, community partners. It should contain enough information so that it can be passed on to colleagues so that they understand the issues and expressed in plain English so that members of the public can read it. It should only contain public information. It doesn’t have to be a perfect document- it needs to be good enough to use and revised when new information becomes available. The worked example in Chapter 10 has been completed in such a way to illustrate this.
Figure 5 Step 1 in the LISP proforma
Not all crimes are conducive to community-based problem solving. Reactive policing will still be required in situations between a few individuals and in emergencies, nevertheless, there are situations, often in vulnerable neighbourhoods where a complex mix of crimes and antisocial behaviour has been on-going for a significant period of time and the Police find themselves being reactive rather than proactive.
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