Crime Prevention

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#FFCC80" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="03f8e8e3.jpg"> <div> <IMG SRC="04095810.png" border=0 width="149" height="129" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>A man was walking along the beach after a storm when he saw thousands of starfish washed up on the shore. A young boy was picking them up one by one  and throwing them back into the ocean. </B></div> <div> <B>"You are wasting your time throwing a few starfish back in the sea. There are thousands of them and it won't make any difference", said the man.</B></div> <div> <B>"It will make a difference to those I throw back," said the boy.</B></div> <div> <B>The man thought about it and then spent the rest of the day throwing starfish back into the ocean.</B></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FF9900" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="04500c82dwnjbj.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Cops and Robbers</B></FONT> <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#3366FF" FACE="Arial" > </FONT>   |     </div> <div> <A HREF="id58.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Stories"><U>Stories</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cops II"><U>Cops II</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cracked Image"><U>Cracked Image</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dezs story"><U>Dez's story</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Maries story"><U>Marie's story</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id40.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Gram Seed"><U>Gram Seed</U></A>   |   Crime Prevention   |   <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Useful contacts:"><U>Useful contacts:</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Coppers Story"><U>A Copper's Story</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id33.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Letter"><U>Letter</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Gods text message"><U>God's text message</U></A></div> <div> <B><U>Crime Prevention</U></B></div> <div> The original concept of Cops and Robbers was as a crime prevention initiative - something to offer to young people who had been arrested that they could read whilst in the cell at the police station awaiting their fate! Telling TRUE stories of ex-offenders who had had life-changing experiences which resulted in them being 'better' persons and leading fulfilled lives was something I think we, in the police service, were striving for, in addition to lower crime rates of course.</div> <div> The following is a letter I have sent out to all Regional Home Office departments concerned with crime prevention together with a copy of Cops and Robbers #2:</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> 19th May 2007</div> <div> I hope you can see the value of this comic and its possible effectiveness as a tool for crime prevention. I should say that we reproduced and re-jigged this edition for TRUCE (To reach Urban Communities Everywhere, an organisation from the States who perform hip hop and gospel presentations on inner city estates). Last year they made a huge impact on estates in Hackney and Waltham Forest in a one month crusade. Over 700 young men and women (some gang members) responded positively to the messages and as a result the crime rate in those areas fell. In many cases persistent offenders were shown to have reduced their offending.</div> <bR> <div> The reason for telling you this is that we are in a position to re-jig the second edition in order to include your own messages, ie to personalise it for you provided sufficient copies are ordered (5,000 +). I know this sounds a lot, but I can assure you that reports I have had from many parts of the country are all positive, albeit many are from Christian organisations, but they also include prisons and young offenders' institutions where it is widely available and used. I have been in Dartmoor where the inmates have responded positively to the messages contained in the comic. (We provide the comic free to all the prison chaplains in the country through Holy Trinity Brompton).</div> <bR> <div> Of course you can purchase any amount of comics, but if you are working extensively over a few counties, then you might consider getting together with us and having one or two pages re-branded to include your local services/ messages/ contact points.</div> <bR> <div> At present we are working on edition 3 under the title `H O P E inspirational true stories' in an effort to widen the appeal of the stories and, hopefully, make them readily accessible to many more organisations. Essentially they are still true stories based on crime, the consequences of crime and how people have broken that cycle. We have included a story of a former prostitute and heroin addict as a result of the awful murders in Suffolk at the end of last year (though the person featured is actually from Glasgow).</div> <bR> <div> I look forward to hearing back from you.  If you would like to purchase just a few copies and do some `road testing' I would be delighted to supply a few more, though for ten I would have to charge £10 + post and packing (usually @ £5). If you wanted to consider a print run of a minimum of 3,000, we can do that and they would be delivered to you, but that would be as the comic currently stands. We can, as I said, change some of the pages just for you, but that would require negotiation as to what you wanted to change and or include. </div> <bR> <div> As a suggestion:</div> <div> Remove `CPA' logo in bottom right front page and replace with your CDRP logo or similar;</div> <div> Completely redo the inside front cover to reflect your organisation's principles and aims. Perhaps include some contact details;</div> <div> Replace the letter page with something more appropriate ( and better produced - a mistake by not increasing the `dpi' which had been set);</div> <div> Again redo the inside and back page to your specifications.</div> <bR> <div> We now have a few other stories we could incorporate if you find that you need us to change the stories we feature here, but all have a Christian message. Please consider this proposal as I sincerely believe that it has merit and the potential to reach young people where they are at.</div> <bR> <div> Yours faithfully,</div> <bR> <div> Paul Senior</div> <bR> <div> It remains to be seen what effect this might have but, hopefully, we shall receive orders for this innovation which will help in preventing crime amongst young people by clearly illustrating the true cost and consequences of crime, not only on themselves but also on others.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cops and Robbers"><U>Cops and Robbers</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>