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Public concern about serious organised crime

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Crime Prevention and Community Safety Aims and scope

Abstract

The 2011 cross-government Organised Crime Strategy (Home Office, 2011) emphasises the need for community safety practitioners to provide information to help citizens recognise when they may be vulnerable to serious organised crime so that they might take steps to prevent victimisation and the need for the state response to serious organised crime to be supported by local communities. Drawing on focus group data, this article examines the nature of public concern about serious organised crime; citizen views regarding the police (and other agency) response to serious organised crime; and how information about serious organised crimes is communicated to members of the public. This article finishes by considering implications for community safety practice in light of the 2011 Organised Crime Strategy.

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Notes

  1. Police and Crime Commissioners were elected in November 2012. For the Home Office their aim is to ‘cut crime and deliver an effective and efficient police service within their force area’. The hope is that they will ‘provide stronger and more transparent accountability of the police, PCCs will be elected by the public to hold chief constables and the force to account; effectively making the police answerable to the communities they serve’. See http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/police-crime-commissioners/, 1 January 2012.

  2. See www.identitytheft.org.uk/ for details of the UK government response, accessed 1 January 2012.

  3. See http://www.police.uk/ for details, 26 May 2012.

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Correspondence to Karen Bullock.

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Bullock, K., Leeney, D. Public concern about serious organised crime. Crime Prev Community Saf 14, 278–292 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2012.8

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