This section of the blog is to discuss the local crime prevention strategies, specifically North Yorkshire, and Yorkshire as a whole, and how the governments wants to help aid us as a community to do better.
In North Yorkshire there has been a plan proposed in order to help people through education, hobbies and other community groups to try and stop the offending rates by giving the people other things to do.
The plan runs until 2029, and focuses on retail crime, violence against women and young girls and also rural offences and antisocial behavior crimes. The plan aims to focus on early intervention efforts to try and stop the crimes from happening in the first place, they are wanting to do this by offering more support from drug and alcohol users, who are statistically more likely to commit a crime. They want to do this by offering treatment to the people with addictions.
This plan also wants to increase police in the areas that have a higher crime rate in North Yorkshire and work with local retail providers for their CCTV to stop retail crime.
This plan aims to be around £200 million in government funding and this money aims to recruit 13,000 more police officers by 2029.
Mayor David Skaith stated "Crime in most areas of North Yorkshire is coming down so we’re going in the right direction already, but retail crime and violence against women and girls is increasing." This shows that other the last few years the plan to stop crime has helped slightly, but not when it comes to retail or violence against women. Retail crime can be put down to the cost of living crisis making it hard for the public to afford necessities so they turn to stealing to get through life, however violence against women can never be justified (Gerrard, J 2025)
It is clear that the local government wants to try and help reduce crime and are putting in a lot of the right steps in order to achieve this.
In West Yorkshire the police have introduced a new plan to try and stop crime from happening, within this scheme there are ten principles, these are recommendations to help lower and prevent crime in the area. These principles are how to protect your home and helping you prevent the crime as the police are not involved. They are listed below:
Target hardening
Target Removal
Reducing the means
Reducing the payoff
Access Control
Surveillance
Environmental Change
Rule Setting
Increasing the chances of being caught
Deflecting Offenders
(West Yorkshire Police, 2025)
While these are good ideas and if the funding was there would possibly work, it is wrong to assume that people all over west Yorkshire have the funds in order to be able to support this plan and be able to afford the necessary steps to meet this guideline.
West Yorkshire is a low income area where a lot of families are in poverty and therefore wont be able to afford security such as CCTV and safer locks.
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I believe the government should introduce more CCTV cameras not only in city centre areas but also in the outskirts, as many crimes, such as robberies and thefts, occur there. The police often rely on residents to provide evidence. By increasing surveillance, criminals would be caught more quickly, and the government could reduce crime rates quicker.
Thank you for your response elena, I think you’ve made a very strong, which I agree with. There is a lack of support for people in villages and towns surrounding cities.
I find it interesting that West Yorkshire is a low income area compared to other parts of Yorkshire, I wonder if the government or local councils will do something to help people in this area through grants or other means to heighten their home security and what more can be done to create better employment opportunities to push people away from the poverty line. This has been a thought provoking read.
Than you for your response Zoe, I agree, West Yorkshire is in a lot more poverty trouble then other parts of Yorkshire. I hope the council and local governments can start to see the lack of support this part of Yorkshire gets