28/09/2022
I am Mike Franklin and I have over 30 years’ experience operating within community safety partnership groups, coming at ‘challenges’ and recognizing ‘opportunities’ to sustainably reduce crime and deliver safer communities. I draw on cross sector service in law enforcement, municipality community safety and crime reduction, in Canada, the United Kingdom and Northwest Europe. I have a portfolio which includes dozens of numerous successful community-based partnership project outcomes, not only delivering social, economic, and environmental benefits but also reducing the personnel, financial, material, and reactive response burdens on public service.
The CSAP is unique to Lions Gate Risk Management Group in the private security sector. I have and will gladly share sanitized case study summaries which in combination provided the proven works best practice foundation for the Lions Gate CSAP Program. Project outcomes and success criteria have been metamorphosed into our product. These studies expand on ‘value’, ‘delivered outcomes’, ‘cost benefits’, crime and nuisance reduction benefits, appropriate performance measurements and obstacles. I have long been an advocate for smarter performance measurements to ensure project and program accountability.
Two fundamental questions. Did it reduce crime and nuisance sustainably or not? Is the community measurably and sustainably safer consequently? If it doesn’t work, then plot a course for change. Too often I hear we do it this way because we have always done it this way. Too often I encounter silo strategies. The case studies include:
Existing data including social needs assessments provide a great data source for shaping solutions. Most reports commissioned in this area fall short on robust holistic recommendations and that is where the CSAP comes in following on the heels of the most often seen recommendation from social needs problem profiles which is to ‘continually review the balance between preventive and enforcement initiatives to address social issues in the community’. We employ our research core team to get deep into the weeds on this. Crime reduction problem profiles as I have already mentioned are heavily weighted on defining the problem and light on robust proven works solutions.
We would advocate for the Lions Gate Risk Management Group Community Safety Assessment Program (CSAP), as the best next step option for community safety partnerships and led by municipalities, not only to provide the review of current approaches, available and accessible data and to balance initiatives, but also to deliver a much broader, all encompassing, municipality crime reduction menu of complementary solutions.
In very short summary for this presentation, the process involves Lions Gate applying subject matter expertise, to source, and then undertake, detailed crime and community data analysis, and review socio-economic characteristics, including existing social data and reports. Our Business & Investigative Intelligence Team is a high-value resource, exceptionally skilled at locating and analyzing critical information from a variety of sources, often across jurisdictions and at multiple levels, in this instance to provide the real community problem insights our clients seek. Led by Dr Alison Sherley, the team includes highly qualified data analysts, with extensive law enforcement analytical experience. Outstanding researchers and reviewers from our research core complete the team. The combined talents, critical thinking ability and problem-solving expertise, of both units, make sense of information and convert it into accurate, actionable intelligence.
The Business Intelligence & Research Core product is then provided to community safety specialists, accredited, and experienced. security consultants. They will assemble a ‘response’ plan based on that actionable intelligence. More often this is, moving, omitting, or adjusting existing pieces with suggested ‘best practice additions to plug gaps, so that they do not create conflict and conducting in depth evaluation of impacts. As it says on the slide and in simple terms “applying the mending agenda to the offending agenda” Rudyard Kipling says in a quote. I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How And Where and Who.
We apply this to establish the offending, What and Why and When And How And Where and Who and, then to establish the mending, What and Why and When And How And Where and Who. This is a good point in the proceedings to visit the CSAP team credentials at Lions Gate.
The CSAP team at Lions Gate meet the criteria for public private community safety partnership participation, with a distinct blend of skills acquired from, law enforcement, public service, community safety, crime reduction, data analysis, project, and program management. We are a dedicated ,coherent and collaborative team who are appropriately licensed and accredited in our fields. In combination we are equipped with the necessary knowledge, experience, skills, and abilities which we consider the minimum standard for a private sector security entity looking to engage in public private community safety partnerships.
The CSAP applied by our team, is an holistic, full spectrum approach to mitigate crime and nuisance, through the provision of balanced and complementary interventions under enforcement, situational risk and opportunity reduction, and social, community developmental and rehabilitation programs, delivering balanced ‘appropriate, realistic and cost-commensurate’ evidence-based solutions. All delivered in a client report.
These solutions are prioritized and action plan ready, and those who should or could ‘mend’, are identified, because supported by justification it will provide a foundation to facilitate broader partnership engagement. Repairing communities that suffer from higher crime and nuisance requires a coordinated, cooperative, transparent agenda approach.
Those that properly measure performance and cost benefits will find tangible direct and indirect cost savings are patently evident. Even though there is very little cost of crime research accessible open source; crimes reduced equals public and private savings, equals enhanced quality of life, and equals a more sustainable social, economic, and environmental future. Actual noncriminal justice system costs, but often not elevated into the costs of crime discussion, are private security, personal security, pain & suffering, crime prevention time costs, stolen and damaged property costs, insurance costs, productivity losses, business losses, direct medical costs. The return on investment from effective community safety partnership working is in the millions if not billions.
Our CSAP is developed for all communities, residential, commercial, retail, industrial, urban, rural, open spaces, diverse communities and any mix or combination of the above. This recognizing that no neighbourhood is defined by single use. The program is sized for ‘neighbourhood’s’ within jurisdictions because of the magnitude of the undertaking, but the methodology is transferable and repeatable and incorporates the principles of overlap by design, where economies of scale can be realized; cause and effect measured. Mitigating crime displacement for example, easy to say, but extremely hard to deliver. Jurisdictions have defined borders, offenders do not.
Our CSAP addresses community crime: on street crime, all visible crime including drug related crime, alcohol related crime, violent crime, property crimes, crimes against the person. It seeks to impact on hidden or behind closed doors crime, by providing guidance to positively impact on visible manifestations of, and criminality risk factors by placing emphasis on the timely delivery of protective factors.
Because of our experiential and empirical pedigree, supported by an academic and theoretical understanding of the subject, we can home in on approaches that may on balance be detrimental to positive community safety outcomes. For example, how harm reduction programs such as safe drug consumption sites, and needle distribution programs, can have unintended crime increasing consequences. How temporary homeless encampments can become crime and nuisance incident hubs.
The CSAP is a product based on proven effective approaches. Its component parts has been successfully delivered in numerous communities both in the United Kingdom, Europe and in BC Canada. I mentioned these earlier under CSAP in Action. In each of the delivered projects partners were willing partners working together to a shared success outcome.
For more information, please contact michaelfranklin@lgrmg.ca. For any support and assistance call 1.604.383.0020 or toll-free at 1.800.212.2026 or visit www.lgrmg.ca at any time. Our expertise is your peace of mind.
