‘Folks Should Have Access … How You Do it is the Difficult Thing’: exploring the importance of leadership to maintaining community policing programmes for the homeless

Abstract

In the present paper we examine the operation of a community policing programme that facilitates reporting of victimisation by homeless victims of crime through the assistance of local community service providers. Using data from two sources – our original study of Homeless Remote Reporting in 2003 and a follow-up evaluation conducted in 2008 – we examine the extent to which this programme offers a viable model for policing outreach to homeless communities. Based on stakeholder feedback, we conclude that despite positive endorsements of the programme, this is a programme that is largely defunct because of a lack of leadership. The police have abdicated responsibility for its operation and community groups are unable to assume the responsibility. What we draw from the example that this programme provides is that innovative collaborative modes of governance must take into account ‘the unbearable lightness of community’ and thus the necessity of state actors maintaining active leadership roles.

Keywords:

• community policing
• crime reporting
• victims
• governance

Notes

1. Although the programme was subsequently renamed ‘Take Control’, throughout this paper we refer to the programme by its original title, Homeless Remote Reporting Program or HRR.

2. Quote from an interview with a community service provider (2003).

3. The Ark Trust of Edinburgh is now defunct, having been subsumed by another agency.

4. The anti-grassing code is a prohibition against informing to authorities found within street-based communities.

5. Quote from an interview with a male shelter user in Edinburgh (2008).

6. The majority of homeless service users interviewed were of the view that HRR was an excellent programme for those segments of the homeless population deemed particularly vulnerable. The vulnerable, according to our interviewees, variously include women, youth and the elderly.

7. Quote taken from an interview with a community service provider (2008).

8. Quote taken from an interview with a community service provider (2008).