Crime and cohesive communities rds olr 19/06

The 2001 disturbances in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley drew attention to the role of community cohesion in developing strong, healthy communities. Community cohesion is important to the success of strategies and initiatives which aim to improve the quality of people’s life. But is cohesion important to other aspects of Home Office policy and delivery outcomes such as crime reduction? This paper links evidence on cohesion from the local areas boost, with recorded crime data to analyse the links between crime and cohesive communities. The paper finds that cohesive communities have five key attributes. They have a sense of community, similar life opportunities for all regardless of ethnicity, a respect for diversity, political trust and a sense of belonging. The sense of community factor in particular is found to be a strong predictor of various types of crime. Local areas that have a higher sense of community have lower levels of ‘all reported crime’, burglary from dwelling, theft of and from motor vehicles and violent crime. The evidence suggests that policies targeted at increasing sense of community could have a double effect by reducing levels of neighbourhood crime.