Abstract
Local government Community Safety Officers (CSOs) are now common in many jurisdictions. While their roles are diverse, most CSOs are actively engaged in various partnership approaches. This article discusses the nature and scope of inter-agency partnerships CSOs participate in or coordinate in the Australian jurisdiction of New South Wales (NSW). Through a focus group discussion with 13 CSOs (predominantly from councils in the Sydney Metropolitan Area), it was found that each CSO participates in a variety of inter-agency partnership groups, including those that focus on alcohol and licensing issues, drugs, domestic violence, homelessness and general community safety and crime prevention. Respondents suggested that only some of these committees are effective, raising questions about the ongoing need for and utility of the plethora of inter-agency crime prevention and community safety inter-agency structures operating in NSW.
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Notes
At the time of writing there were 152 councils in NSW. Councils are the third tier of government in Australia (below Federal and State/Territory governments). Each council is responsible for particular services in their Local Government Area (LGA), which can range from 10 km2 to in excess of 50 000 km2. While councils have traditionally been responsible for ‘rates, roads and rubbish’, they are increasingly engaged in delivering community services, providing diverse infrastructure such as libraries, youth centres and community centres, and responsible for coordinating diverse stakeholders to address locally identified issues.
The CPPRA was introduced to provide a legislative basis to local crime prevention activities in NSW. The CPPRA outlines the processes encouraged for the development of local crime prevention plans, including stakeholders who might be consulted and issues that might be addressed.
Once a council developed a crime prevention plan for their LGA, they could then submit it to the NSW Attorney General for endorsement as a Safer Community Compact. Such an endorsement that enabled the council to apply for funding from the NSW Attorney General’s Department to aid the implementation of their crime prevention plan.
The exact membership of the NSW Local Government Community Safety and Crime Prevention Network is somewhat fluid depending on vacancies in CSO roles and the like. In total, approximately 38 councils affiliated with the network were invited to participate in the focus group. As some councils have more than one CSO, more than 40 CSOs could have participated in the focus group.
This research was granted initial approval by the Sydney University Human Ethics Research Committee in July 2011 [Ref. 13 857] and an extension of this approval was granted to conduct the most recent focus group. Ethics approval was granted on the basis that all focus group participants would complete a consent form, which outlined that they could cease participating in the focus group at any time. All participants completed a consent form before the focus group commenced.
The greatest concentration of CSOs in NSW is in the Sydney metropolitan and adjacent areas. Many regional and rural councils do not employ a dedicated CSO.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the NSW Local Government Community Safety and Crime Prevention Network and the individual local government CSOs who kindly assisted and contributed to this research. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
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This research has been made possible through a grant from the Legal Scholarship Support Fund (Sydney Law School, University of Sydney).
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Shepherdson, P., Clancey, G., Lee, M. et al. Partnerships and NSW local government Community Safety Officers. Crime Prev Community Saf 16, 71–86 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2014.2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2014.2