PUBLIC CONFIDENCE TARGET

Working together to deal with crime and anti-social behaviour

The Government has introduced a single top-down public confidence target for the police service requiring 60% of people to be confident that the police and local councils are dealing with anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter locally by 2012. This is measured through national and local surveys.

The confidence of local people and communities is crucial and surveys to measure public confidence enable us to better understand how effectively we are responding to local needs and priorities, helping the police and its partners to make your community a safer and better place to live. However, the focus on measuring public confidence does not mean that we no longer measure crime figures, arrests and detections; these all remain to help ensure that the Force is constantly working to improve its performance in preventing crime and bringing offenders to justice.

The performance of Dorset Police in achieving the single target is measured periodically through the British Crime Survey. However, this is also now supplemented by local surveys that enable a more detailed local breakdown of the findings which are reported on the National Crimemapper website as well as being published locally on the Dorset Police and Dorset Police Authority websites.

Dorset Public Confidence Survey Results

The specific survey question relating to public confidence asks respondents to what extent they agree with the statement that ‘The police and local council are dealing with the anti social behaviour (ASB) and crime issues that matter in this area’ and the same question is asked in both the nationally and locally commissioned surveys. In Dorset, respondents to the nationally commissioned British Crime Survey (BCS) and our locally commissioned Community Safety Survey both indicate that around 50% of people in Dorset agree with this statement.