Harnessing the power of county-wide Disc Networks to drive down crime
In over 500 town- and city-centre crime reduction schemes across the country Disc enables tens of thousands of local businesses to share information about low-level crime, ASB and prolific offenders. But Disc systems can network together to share information across a county or metropolitan area mapped onto police force areas.
Already county-wide Disc Networks represent a step-change in driving down low-level crime across the UK.
Linking together into county-wide Disc Networks means local Administrators can easily and instantly share important Alerts and other current awareness and identify ID-Soughts and prolific offenders. Each participating Administrator stays entirely in control and can choose which other systems to connect with, how to process information received from them and whether or not to share their Offenders’ personal details with them.
And countywide or metropolitan Disc Networks like these can link directly to police, to help them work more effectively to close the ‘policing gap’.
What are the benefits of linking Disc systems together?
Connecting Disc systems across county or metropolitan areas ensures that all schemes in the area, especially those operating under the same police force’s Information Sharing Agreement, forge close links with each other to drive down low-level crime and ASB.
Working together in this way, the individual Disc-enabled schemes enhance their own effectiveness – and make them essential links in an organised county network. Connecting Disc systems together into Disc Networks makes it easier for the police to access the wealth of intelligence that crime reduction schemes and other local organisations such as BIDs share with their members. Higher levels of collaboration between police and the schemes further enhance the schemes’ effectiveness in combatting low-level crime and, in turn, the level of support available from police and their Police & Crime Commissioners.
What information can be networked and shared?
Cross-Disc publishing keeps local businesses continually – and more quickly – informed. It helps Administrators maximise the flow of useful information to their Members: the more they receive, the more they participate in their local Disc system.
So right across the Disc Network, participating schemes can share latest news, Alerts, documents, information about up-coming events and ID-sought images. The sharing process is simple – just one click is all it needs.
Disc Networks also enable each participating Administrator can allow other Administrators in their network to access their databases to search for Offenders known to more than one Disc system and who therefore are travelling, possibly prolific (in police language – ‘Level Two’ Offenders).
GDPR compliance
Like every other aspect of Disc, Disc Networks are GDPR compliant ‘by design’. Administrators as Data Controllers are always in control of who they share their data with: peer-to-peer sharing enables each Admin to decide who they wish to share with within the Disc Network.
Naturally, as always, sharing of personal data in this way will need to be covered by each scheme’s own compliance documentation, specifically their Legitimate Interest Assessment and relevant Privacy Notices.
Another example of Disc’s policy of ‘compliance by design’ enables Administrators to search across a Disc Network using its Cross-Disc Offender-Matching function at the same time as avoiding any question of ‘fishing’ of personal data – that is searching through shared personal data on the off-chance that it may be relevant.
Disc Networks require Administrators to search only on a ‘reference’ Offender within their own Disc databases. And in Disc, ‘Close Matches’ are based exclusively on the Offender’s relevant characteristics, ensuring the data shared is proportionate to the search.
You can read about county-wide Disc Networks in our factsheet here. Or contact us to discuss how we can help you connect with other Disc Networks across your own county or metropolitan area.