Two new police implementations will drive down local low-level crime and ASB

In addition to the seven new local Disc systems announced this month (see ‘Magnificent Seven’ news item) two others show how Disc can be deployed by Police in new, innovative ways.

Disc is used in over 450 towns and city-centres across the UK to support retailers and local businesses to self-manage low level crime and anti-social behaviour in their local communities. But Disc is a highly versatile platform that can be configured to support policing too.

This month saw Sussex Police adopt two new Disc implementations, each for very different purposes:

• To support the local Disc systems in the force area, with seamless, secure sharing of offender information, fast and effective sharing of current awareness right across the county, and consolidating locally gathered intel about low-level offenders to help identify prolific offenders and help police deploy scarce resources for maximum effectiveness.
• To support the police’s county-wide crime reduction scheme supporting organisations in remote or rural retail areas and enable them to drive down crime and ASB and ‘target harden’ against rural crime.

Sussex Police Disc

Sussex Police has acquired its own Disc system to support the work of the 11 existing local Disc systems currently supporting town- and city-centre crime reduction schemes across the county.

This is the first ‘Police Disc’ implementation to go live and will enable police to share current awareness information with each local Disc implementation, share offender information through the Disc ‘Secure Environment’ in compliance with Management of Police Information (MOPI) and gather intelligence about offenders in order to identify prolifics or semi-professionals who can too often slip below the police ‘radar’.

This is an important step forward. It provides police with access to a ‘consolidated data-view’ of all low-level offender data collected and curated by the local partnerships as independent Data Controllers. Other benefits include online, paperless management of Information Sharing Agreements.

Sussex Countrywatch

Sussex Police have also implemented Disc to support its county-wide rural crime reduction programme. Addressing rural crime is a key priority of Sussex Police & Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne and Disc is now an important part of that strategy.

It’s not the first time that Disc has been deployed to address rural crime and anti-social behaviour but this is the first time that a police force has adopted the system to fight rural crime county-wide. The system will link with Sussex Police’s new main Disc system for cross-Disc sharing of information and current-awareness.