Lesson video

Hello and welcome to today's lesson.

I'm Mrs. Barry and I'm going to be teaching you citizenship.

We are looking at a series of lessons about what is crime.

And today we're looking at what can communities do to prevent crime? Now, hopefully you have got yourself in a quiet area and you have got everything you need, but let's check.

So you need to have your brain with you today, a pen, something to write with, basically, and something to write on.

Make sure you turn off any apps or notifications that might distract you.

And when you are ready to begin our lesson, then we can make a start.

So we've got a lot of things to get through today.

We're going to be looking at how we can work together as a community, linking back to some of the lessons that you might have done in unit two.

We are going to look at different strategies that people might use to prevent crime and how they work and we're going to have a look at Neighbourhood Watch which is an organisation that particularly focuses on how communities can prevent crime in their local areas.

And then we'll do some activities that make sure you understand And you've learned some things from this lesson.

So let's get started.

I mentioned in the intro that we're going to start by looking at what a community is.

We did this in unit two or unit seven and in that we looked at how communities work and what they are like.

So you could always go back to unit two, lesson three if you're interested in this to give yourself a good foundation on communities so that you can understand fully how communities can work together to prevent crime.

But just in case you don't have time, we can have a quick look at that now.

But basically it's a group of people living or existing together, that's what a community is.

And they share common values, interests, and all ways of doing things.

And there's some different features of the community which come together and when they work together, they can achieve a lot.

For example, working together to reduce or prevent crime.

So you've got a diverse group of people.

That means they come from all different backgrounds.

So different ages, religions, cultures, and interests and they might be called members, you'd be a member of a community.

They all tend to have a clear focus or a goal.

So in this case, in this lesson, we're looking at the goal of preventing crime.

It tends to be inclusive, so it doesn't exclude people.

It doesn't say, "Well, you can't be involved in this." It's meant to draw people in together.

And then there's a shared view, shared interests.

And again, we're talking in this lesson particularly about shared interest or shared views about crime in a local area.

I'd like us to start by thinking about some scenarios and have a think about what you would do if you saw any of these following things.

So number one, a purse or a wallet on the side of the road.

Number two, someone about to walk in front of a moving vehicle.

Number three, house keys in the front door of someone's house.

Number four, a person walk out of a shop without paying.

There's a difference here between doing something right and doing something wrong.

And again, this is something we've looked at in a previous lesson.

We did this in lesson one of What Is Crime? So you can always go back to that.

Again, I'm just going to cover briefly this difference between right and wrong.

Because when we look at crime, that's really important.

We think of crimes in things that are wrong.

So in that sense you have to juggle up the decision between, "Am I going to do something positive, something right, or am I going to do something negative, something wrong?" And in all these scenarios, there are things that you can do that will have a positive impact that won't be committing a crime.

And in all of these, there is something where it could have a negative impact and potentially lead to a crime and therefore, essentially, it could be a criminal conviction as a result.

So hopefully you've taken a little bit of thought as I read through those about what you might do.

'Cause if you have got a purse or wallet and you see it on the side of the road, you might be tempted to take it, look if cash is in there, potentially spend it.

But then that would be stealing.

Or you might think, "Right, well, it must be someone local." So you find a local community building, perhaps, and hand it in for them to be able to give it or try and find the right person, the owner of the wallet.

It might have some ID in it, for example, perhaps it could be returned to the owner.

Now, second one, if you're looking and you see someone about to walk in front of a moving vehicle.

Now it's not illegal not to do anything, in this case, it's not a crime not to do anything, but you might, as a member of your community, think, "I want to help that person." And so you might shout out and stop them from walking in front of a moving vehicle.

The house keys and a front door, I've had this scenario myself.

I walk past a house and I saw some house keys in the door of someone's home and I knocked on the door.

And luckily they were in, they'd obviously forgotten to take their keys in with them.

Once they'd unlocked the door and I said, "Look, your keys are in the front door.

You might want to just take those out to stop someone taking them." Because that's the alternative.

Someone could take those keys, potentially come back later, and take something from their house and it reduces their security.

And so, in your community, you've done a good deed today.

You've done something that would be classified as right, a good moral decision because you have opened up that dialogue with some of that communication and stopped them from having a crime committed against them in your local community.

And then lastly, you see a person walk out of a shop without paying.

Now, we're not going to judge that person because maybe they simply forgot.

Maybe they got caught up on a phone call.

But would perhaps help them if you said, "Hang on a minute, you haven't paid for that.

You might need to just think about it." Or if you're not comfortable speaking to that person, saying to the shopkeeper about someone walking out.

And that way you're trying to prevent a crime, you're raising an awareness of what's happening.

Because, essentially, would it be better if you could stop these things happening in the first place? Now for your local community, it would be better because it would make people happier, it would reduce the amount of crime and potentially, for example, with question four, a person walk out of the shop without paying, you're helping the economy, the money within your local community.

'Cause you don't want people's businesses to suffer as a result of someone's wrongdoing.

The final question is, would it be better if you could stop these things happening in the first place? And essentially yes, because it provides a safer community, a happier community where people feel like everyone's watching out for each other.

For task one, I want us to think about reflecting on that idea of looking after our communities.

What can be done to prevent crime? And so I just want you to pause this video, and mind map or list of ways which you think communities can prevent crime.

Spend about five minutes on that, just come up with as many ideas as you can.

And then when you're ready, you can press play and we will continue with our lesson.

So hopefully you've done that.

And these are some of the ideas that I came up with.

That we will have a little think about.

So education is a really easy way that you might've thought about in terms of preventing or stopping someone from doing something.

And therefore it can be used in this instance of crime.

So any form of education, which raises awareness and teaches people about what is a crime, what isn't a crime, how to prevent crime would be beneficial.

And we're going to have a look at that a little bit later.

We have got increasing police, so having a police presence.

So meaning that people are aware that they're being monitored by law enforcement.

You've got campaigns and a campaign is where you try and put forward an idea and stop something potentially from happening.

And we will look more at that in lesson six, a specific campaign which prevented crime.

So you can always kind of have a look at that lesson.

Another way in which communities can prevent crime would be surveillance.

So it might be that you put up security cameras on your home, or it might be that you raise awareness and you ask people to keep an eye out.

Preventing comb through warning posters is another method.

So having posters up saying in this local area something has happened, be aware, so that people are conscious of what is happening.

Just advising people and making sure you lock things away.

So making sure your car is locked, your home is locked.

And so ensuring that valuables are kept hidden and locked away.

Severe penalties so if someone does commit a crime, then there might be severe penalties laid out in the court system to deter or stop people from wanting to commit those crimes in the first place.

You've got security, so ensuring things are safe and secure.

So that would be involving locks on your doors, for example.

And then lighting.

So street lighting is really important in terms of preventing crime, because if there's a light somewhere, you know you can be seen and you're less likely to commit a crime there.

So, for example, if there's a broken street light, you might want to report that to your local council for them to fix it if they are the ones who are in charge of those lights to try and prevent crime in your local area.

So we're going to move on to Task Two, using those different prevention strategies.

And I want you to think about which ones you think are the most effective and which ones you think would be the least effective.

So, most effective, we're talking about something that has a huge impact, it's going to prevent a lot of crime, down to the ones that you think, "Actually, they don't have much of an impact." So they're not going to prevent much crime.

And although they're valuable, they're not as valuable as the ones you put at the top.

And you can go over to the worksheet and print out the diamond nine for you or you can just draw this out yourself and do that by yourself.

So when you're ready, press pause, take some time over this spend five, 10 minutes.

And my challenge to you is is to add some sentences and justify.

So you might just do the top one and the bottom one, that's fine, but justify why you've put your number one at the top and why you've put your number nine at the bottom.

So why do you think it would be the most effective way of preventing crime or the least effective way of preventing crime? Because justification is really important in citizenship.

So press pause now, complete that task, and when you're ready, press play, and we can resume our lesson.

Well done, hopefully you've given that a good go and you've been able to justify those reasons.

And it's important to say here that there is no right or wrong answer.

So it is based upon your own views as to what would be the most and what would be the least effective here.

So I might say, as a teacher, that I think educating others is the most effective way to prevent crime.

And I think that because education is really important, it raises awareness, and it reaches a large audience of people.

And then they can take that information and use it at their own will in their own circumstances, depending on what's going on around them.

So that's me justifying what I think could be at the top and what I think would be the most effective.

Again, in terms of least effective, I think I would go with severe penalties.

And the reason why I'm saying that is because I don't necessarily know if everyone's aware of what penalties are out there for particular crimes.

And so in your local community, which is what we're focusing on in this lesson, I'm not sure that would be the most effective crime prevention strategy that you could enact in your community.

Now, what I need you to do is I need you to keep that activity 'cause we're going to come back to it later.

So just put that to one side and we will come back to your list.

And as I said, there's no right or wrong answer here.

But if you can start justifying your reasons, then that's a really good skill citizenship skill to have.

We're going to have a look at Neighbourhood Watch.

A Neighbourhood Watch is an organisation which predominantly, so mainly focuses on, trying to prevent crime and get communities to work together with crime prevention.

And their vision here is a society where neighbours come together to create safer, stronger, and active communities.

And their mission is to support and enable individuals and communities to be connected, active, and safe, increasing well-being and minimising crime.

And their values are that they should be relevant, accountable, and inclusive in all their work and relationships.

And so they encapture that concept of community that we talked about earlier and they also are really focusing on what can make a safe community.

So what can prevent crime? And this organisation focuses on how to prevent crime and are a perfect resource for today's question.

And going back to that it was what can communities do to prevent crime? What we actually did was I spoke to a colleague and she interviewed a lady, Cheryl, from the Head of Membership and Community Engagement and she asked her all questions for me.

So she asked what can be done to prevent crime? How does Neighbourhood Watch prevent crime? Why is crime prevention important? And what impact can communities have in preventing crime? Now, what we're going to do is we're going to listen to the interview that my colleague did with Neighbourhood Watch and while you watch the video, I'd like you to make some notes on what can communities do to prevent crime? And to help you do that, I've broken it down into seven questions and you can either print these off from the worksheet and jot some notes next to it or I'm going to play the interview with these questions still on the screen so that you can make some notes as you go.

So there are seven questions here.

I'm just going to read you through them to make sure you've got them and then I'll press play on the interview, we can listen to that and see what you can answer.

Number one, why does Cheryl say that careful bin placement can prevent crime? Two, note two ways in which young people can prevent crime.

Three, what percentage of crime is online and over the phone? Four, who do localised Neighbourhood Watch Associations work with? Five, what is the power of hello? Six, what is the broken window effect? And seven, what is the Youth Independent Advisory Group? So let's have a listen to this interview and make sure as you go, you make some notes on those questions.

If you need to pause as you go, then you can do that.

That's up to you.

And when you're ready, we'll be able to go through the answers together.

Good afternoon, everybody.

It's Mrs. Baker, one of your Citizenship teachers and I'm here today joined by Cheryl and she'll introduce herself.

Hi, I'm Cheryl I'm Head of Membership and Community Engagement at Neighbourhood Watch Network.

Hello, Cheryl, really grateful that you could join us today to talk to us about crime prevention and how important Neighbourhood Watch is.

First of all, can I ask you please, what can be done to prevent crime? We can do a lot of things to prevent crime.

And when we do that as a community, it's really important that we make a difference.

So it can be small things such as locking a park or putting the bins in a different area to where you would normally put them so that burglars couldn't use the bins to jump over the fence, for instance.

Small things to large things such as putting burglar alarms, CCTV, et cetera and different things like that for the properties.

Excellent, so individuals can take responsibility for preventing crime in their own area then, and also communities can take responsibility a little bit as well? Absolutely, and we encourage all parts of the community to get involved.

Young people, we have in different areas, go 'round to communities and provide crime prevention advice to them in the form of leaflets.

And also they've helped elderly residents to understand the internet, which is really important because the internet, 51% of crime is either online or on the phone.

Wow.

So it's really important that young people that have got really good technical knowledge, because they've grown up with it, can pass that knowledge on to the older generation.

So it's really, really important.

They've got a really focused part of helping prevent crime in their communities as well.

Because a lot of crime, scams, people knocking on your door saying that they're going to mend your roof, et cetera.

Just passing the information that you've given that you know about crime prevention to your neighbours can really make a difference to them being maybe a victim of crime.

Thank you.

So, Cheryl, can you explain to us what Neighbourhood Watch does itself to prevent crime please? Neighbourhood Watch, as an organisation, provides a way that communities can come together to help prevent crime, become more resilient to crime, and reduce the opportunity for crime.

And what I mean by that is that we provide crime prevention advice on our website in our areas and all of the 75 burroughs and areas in England and Wales.

We provide crime prevention advice on our website and in the areas, we actually have what we call Associations.

And what they do is then provide crime prevention advice on a more localised level and they work with community groups, they work with Scouts, they work with Guides.

They also work with community groups and faith groups to raise awareness to crime and reduce the opportunity for crime.

The reducing the opportunity you can do very simply, as explained before, where you can do small bits to prevent yourself from being a victim.

So, say for instance, you know that there's a lot of people that phone up and pretend to be the bank, or be the HMRC or be somebody and asking for bank details.

What you can do, which is really important, is to tell your community about these different things that are happening and how they can reduce that by simply putting the phone down.

So, by reducing that opportunity for crime, you're reducing crime as a whole.

And also another thing that you can do, as a young person, is also reduce isolation and loneliness in your community by talking to people, obviously not a stranger, knocking on your neighbor's door or picking up the phone, talking to each other.

Talking to each other about crime, really important, because crime doesn't just affect older people, it affects young people too.

And it's really important that you also have a voice in your community and you can do this in various ways.

You can do that as a Junior Neighbourhood Watch or you can also join organisations such as the Independent Advisory Group, with the police, where you can have a voice about how you feel about how your community's policed, how you can make a difference, and how your voice is very important to us.

And that's really important, thank you, Cheryl, 'cause often young people feel quite away from the policing idea or crime prevention, feeling more like they get the blame all the time for crime rather than being able to be involved in solving crimes, or preventing crime.

So thank you very much for that.

Why do you think crime prevention is so important? I mean, nobody wants to become the victim of a crime.

So preventing that from happening is subsequently the main pull to that.

But making your community safer, making your community work together, more resilient, is so important because it brings communities together.

As we've seen during COVID where there is an army of volunteers helping their communities in so many different ways.

Neighbourhood Watch was very much an integral part of that in many communities, not just in towns, but in rural communities as well.

And when you've got that resilience, when you've got that connection with your neighbours, with your community, you are much more safer as a result because you're talking with each other, you're looking out for each other.

And there's a really good bit of advice.

Do you know about the power of hello? No! Okay, so the power of hello, and it's a very, very simple thing.

And it's something that everybody can do and it doesn't cost anything.

The power of hello.

If you say hello to your neighbours, you start that communication, you talk to them, you get that relationship.

You build, same as when you're talking to your friends, the first thing you've done before they were your friends was say hello.

And so it's really important.

When you're saying hello, you're building that community, people are then looking out for each other because they know who you are.

Say, for instance, somebody comes into your, where you live, and they don't look as if they should be in that area, such as they look a little bit like they're going to be doing something rather naughty.

If somebody says hello to that person, it means that they've been clocked.

It means that they've been seen.

So they're less likely to actually commit the crime that they set themselves to do in the first place.

And that's actually been advice that was given to us by antiterrorist police in the Operation Serve It All, who basically said as a deterrent, and this is how they train people, as a deterrent to crime, if you say hello to somebody, they're less likely to actually do the crime such as burglary, et cetera in that area, because they've been seen, they've been noticed, they can be recognised again.

Wow.

What a great, simple piece of advice.

Just by acknowledging somebody's presence, by saying hello, it makes them think twice about actually committing crime because they realise someone might recognise them, then.

That's a really great piece of crime prevention action that everyone can take, thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay, so, what impact can communities have on preventing crime and especially about our young people that are involved in our communities? Okay, so the impact on reducing crime, I don't know if you've heard the broken window effect.

I'm a bit of a sociologist, so I do know about this one, but lots of other people won't.

Okay, so the broken window effect is a well-known fact that if an area looks run down, it looks uncared for, then the people that're going into it, they don't care about what they do to it.

And so what you can do to make your area a safer place is simply you can do litter picks, make it look nicer, plant flowers, you know, just make the community look a lot nicer.

What the impact that would have on communities is it makes them feel better about the community as well, safer, friendlier, healthier.

The wellbeing of the community really makes a difference because where are you in a community that you like, that you feel safe, you're more comfortable in and you know that the community, your children, your friends, your relatives, et cetera, are all happier because there's less crime because it's a nice place to live.

It enhances your wellbeing.

Brilliant, thank you.

And can I also ask Cheryl, I think when we spoke before, you said there's some way for 13 to 24 year olds, a way they can get involved with the police, can you explain a little bit about that? Yeah, so many areas have Independent Advisory Group in their areas, and I know a lot of them are setting up Youth IAGs and, as well as learning about police procedures, you can have an influence about your thoughts about those police procedures and actually become involved with decision making, et cetera.

And that's a great opportunity for you to find that.

Also is good with young people's Neighbourhood Watches, I know in several areas, they do very similar things to the Youth IAG where it's not just association with the police, but it's associated with the local communities.

And so that they can work together with the local community groups under the umbrella of Neighbourhood Watch to help their communities and to make a real difference.

And so there's so many opportunities for young people to make a difference, make a positive difference in their community.

Because I think that young people do get the bum deal, as it were, where people's perception is that young people are always the ones that instigate crime, et cetera, mostly antisocial behaviour and things like that.

And for the majority of young people, that isn't the real young people and we really want people to understand that and work together with the young people.

So we really appreciate receiving your views about how you can make a difference and how we can help you facilitate that as well.

Fantastic.

Thank you very much for your time today, again, Cheryl.

You're welcome.

And all the great advice we've been given.

You're welcome, you take care.

Thank you! Bye.

Buh-bye.

So lots of really good advice in there and I wonder how many of those questions you were able to answer.

Just going to go through the answers, just in case you missed any, or you want clarification.

Number one was why does Cheryl say that careful bin placement can prevent crime? Might seem like an odd thing to talk about, but actually putting a bin next to a fence could mean it might be used to get over the fence to commit a crime.

So if you think about where your bins are, not next to fences, then they can't be used necessarily or people won't think about the fact that they might want to jump over your fence and take something.

Number two is note two ways in which young people can prevent crime.

So she talks about leaflet distribution and helping the elderly, particularly because they might not be as aware as a young person on the internet or scams over the phone and so you can share your knowledge with those who are older than yourself.

Number three, what percentage of crime is online and over the phone? And this is why number two is so important because 51% of crime is online and over the phone.

Number four, who do localised Neighbourhood Watch Associations work with? So you might've already heard of them as part of your youth group, such as through Scouts or Guides.

And they also work with people like faith groups.

Five was what is the power of hello? And Cheryl said that saying hello to someone might deter them from committing a crime locally as they know they have been seen.

And so they might think, "Oh, I've been seen here.

I better not do anything wrong because a person might remember I was around." Number six, what is the broken window effect? So an area that is run down, for example, has broken windows doesn't get cared for and therefore crime is more likely to occur.

And Cheryl said it's a good idea to do things like litter picking to make crime less likely in your area.

If your area looks like it's cared for and looked after, then people are deterred and less likely to go there and commit crime.

Number seven, what is the Youth Independent Advisory Group? And this is a police-based group for young people, aged 13 to 24, where you can be involved in decision-making around crime issues in your local area and Neighbourhood Watch may have similar groups in your area.

And that could be something you decide, "Actually, I'm interested in that.

I want to look that up." But make sure you do that with an adult if you're going onto another website.

So remember earlier, I asked you to keep back your diamond nine.

I said, we're going to use this later because what I would like you to do is to look over that task, which was Task Two, and think about the interview you just watched with Neighbourhood Watch.

And would you change your mind? And I'd like you to re-rank your strategies and just decide whether you did change any of them or not.

When you have done that, spend a few minutes on that, when you've done it, press play and we'll have a quick think about what you may or may not have done.

Now with this one, you may not have changed anything or you might have changed all of it.

And that's, again, completely up to you.

And as I said earlier, there's no right or wrong answer here, but I wonder if you might have thought about what Cheryl said and if any of yours might want to move as a result.

And there's two in particular I think you could potentially put near the top if you didn't already as a result of what Cheryl has told you.

So for example, education, I already said I'd put that at the top because I'm a teacher and I'm a big valuer, really appreciate the importance of education.

But in her interview, she spoke about the fact that 51% of crime was either over the phone or online.

And so educating older generations about that would help prevent crime.

So that might become one of the most effective ways of preventing crime.

Another one, I wondered if you might move up and justify again, with Cheryl's examples is the concept of surveillance.

So she said about the power of hello and that essentially is creating a presence and watching what's going on in your local area.

And there's lots of other examples here that you could use, but importantly, we're using a skill here to justify, to explain why we think what we think and Neighbourhood Watch have given us some really good examples that we can use to put to our answers in justifying how we might prevent crime in our local areas.

So well done on getting to the end of our lesson on what can communities do to prevent crime? We've had a good look at working together as a community and what that involves and the diverse range of people that would have that shared goal of crime prevention in their local area.

We've had a bit of time to think about different strategies used to prevent crime, such as education, leaflets, raising awareness bringing people together, and thinking about different aspects of crime prevention.

And we have looked at a bit of a case study, essentially, on Neighbourhood Watch.

And we watched that lovely interview with Cheryl about how they look at crime prevention and what they feel can be done to ensure our communities are safer.

And we've done some activities, we've done some justification of the effectiveness of different methods to check your understanding.

And hopefully you can answer that question, what can communities do to prevent crime, and justify the different ways that we've spoken about.

So well done and you've done really well.

I have got a takeaway task for you to think about and it's about investigating crime in your area.

So have a think about what does Neighbourhood Watch look like in your local area? And you can access your local Neighbourhood Watch information at the Neighbourhood Watch website, which you must ask a parent or carer to do with you.

And then you can reflect on what is happening and you might decide that you want to get involved in your local area.

That is for you to investigate.

You can share any of your work that you've done, for example, the investigation you've done on Neighbourhood Watch in your local area, with Oak National.

And if you'd like to do that, you can ask your parent or carer to do so on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging in @OakNational and #LearnWithOak.

And I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson.

And I look forward to teaching you another citizenship lesson in the future.

Before you log off, don't forget to complete the exit quiz now.