Page 1923 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 May 2013

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Firstly, let me go to property crime. Central to the reductions in property crime is the government’s commitment to the ACT property crime reduction strategy 2012-15. This strategy focuses on making Canberra a safer place to live through a collaborative whole-of-government effort to produce a sustainable reduction in burglaries, reduced by a further 10 per cent, and motor vehicle theft, reduced by a further 20 per cent, over the three-year life of the strategy.

The strategy is positioned around three key objectives: firstly, stopping the cycle of offending through justice reinvestment; secondly, engaging the disengaged through early intervention; and thirdly, creating a safer, more secure community, supporting victims of crime, making buildings and public places safer and ensuring that motor vehicles are kept secure.

To successfully fight crime we need a sound evidence base. The government is committed to building the most informed body of evidence that we can as the basis for our strategies to keep reducing crime in the ACT. It is about using what we know from the past and the present to improve for the future. It is about breaking cycles of offending and the associated cycles of vulnerability, including poor mental health and physical health, low levels of education, unstable or no employment, and unreliable or no housing. These all contribute to increases in crime rates. It is about working with vulnerable and at-risk youth to engage them in education, to engage them in training and to engage them in jobs, ultimately choosing education and jobs over committing crime. It is about providing support and crime prevention information to victims and making buildings and public places safer by designing out crime through good lighting, easy-to-read signage and clear pathways.

ACT Policing undertake a range of property crime prevention and reduction strategies in support of the strategy. The volume crime reduction strategy involves a multipronged approach to reducing property crime through intelligence-led targeting of known offenders, proactively patrolling public places to prevent property crime and raising community awareness about being safe and about making homes, businesses and workplaces secure.

ACT Policing’s suburban policing strategy allows ACT Policing to proactively target and address community concerns about motor vehicle theft by patrolling public places where this type of crime is likely occur. Proactive patrolling in areas such as public car parks not only increases ACT Policing’s accessibility to the public but deters and reduces the opportunistic theft of motor vehicles through the identification of suspicious activity.

An activity specific to the March 2013 quarterly report involved the “crime scene house”, a main feature of ACT Policing’s annual ActewAGL Royal Canberra Show display. This interactive mock burglary crime scene was designed to educate our community on what could be done to prevent burglaries from occurring.

In March 2013 ACT Policing conducted project safe plate, a motor vehicle crime reduction activity. Project safe plate involved ACT Policing officers fitting vehicles with special one-way screws designed to reduce motor vehicle registration plate theft.


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