Rural Crime & Engagement Strategy

Event information will be shared on the Dorset Police Rural Crime social media pages.

Our ambition

Rural communities will be a safe place for everyone through visible and connected policing creating a hostile place for perpetrators of rural crime and anti-social behaviour.

Principles

• Rural and isolated communities in Dorset should feel safe.
• We will take positive action to tackle anti-social behaviour which directly effects the lives of our Rural communities.
• All members of our rural communities will feel confident in reporting matters to Dorset Police.
• We will continue to build meaningful partnerships to achieve our shared ambition of making Dorset a safe county for everyone.
• We will relentlessly pursue criminals targeting our rural communities and bring them to justice.
• We will listen to and act upon the lived experience of victims of rural crimes.
• We will build trust and confidence in our rural communities through openness and transparency inviting both internal and external scrutiny. We will continue to build a visible and accessible policing presence in rural areas.
• We will deliver ethical and inclusive policing to meet the highest professional standards.

Priority Areas

This strategy has been written referencing the National Police Chiefs Council Rural Affairs Strategy which recognised that the police cannot solve rural crime problems alone. Engagement with rural communities and partners is essential to enhancing the flow of intelligence, as well as utilising the experience and expertise of the public and partners to resolve issues or concerns. It is important we maintain trust and confidence in police by sharing good news stories and the positive results of partnership action whilst being open to challenge.

Our priorities areas are:

• Engagement with rural communities
• Relentlessly pursuing perpetrators
• Improve trust and confidence in rural policing
• Tackling cross border organised crime
• Working with partners and stakeholders

Collectively, this will contribute to ensuring we are tough on rural crime, we are keeping are communities safe and putting victims first.

Safer Rural Communities

It has been recognised that the rural communities can often feel isolated and do not feel safe in their home, workplaces or open spaces used for recreation. Rural crime often has a significant impact on its victims, affecting their livelihood and adding to their feeling of isolation. We are committed to tackling rural crime and to understanding the issues faced by our rural communities to consistently improve our response to rural crime.

We achieve this by:

• Investment in a dedicated Rural Crime Team (RCT)
• Develop detailed plans focusing on the relentless pursuit of criminals, prevention of crime and antisocial behaviour, protecting vulnerable people and locations, and preparing for seasonal changes or emerging risks, to provide a whole system approach to addressing local problems.
• Work in partnership with our neighbouring police forces to target cross border criminality and organised crime
• Working closely with community safety partnerships to ensure rural crime is a priority with all members delivering against a shared plan.
• Take a strong collaborative partnership approach to promote opportunities for effective crime prevention initiatives
• Work with our wider partnership to protect our environment, wildlife, and heritage from organised crime and reckless or criminal individuals.
• Develop different ways of engaging and reporting matters to the police including online platforms
• Police our rural road networks to reduce nuisance and save lives
• Be ambitious with our citizen in policing offering for rural communities introducing rural watchers.

Prevention and Engagement

A key thread of this strategy is prevention as far more effective than responding to incidents of rural crime. The successful prevention of rural crime will require a broad partnership and community response. Effective engagement will ensure a true understanding of the issues faced by rural communities, enabling an agile response to be developed, focusing innovative crime prevention initiatives.

We will:

• Maximise the use of social media platforms to provide crime prevention advice and demonstrate our visible policing presence in rural communities, ensuring the community is kept informed of emerging issues.
• Work with all partners including community safety partnerships and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner in the development of the Rural Crime Reduction Board.
• Support the introduction of the Country Watch initiative focused on increasing connectivity with our rural community.
• Continue to develop an effective regional response to information sharing and joint working to tackle cross border rural organised criminality.
• Develop a bespoke communication strategy to raise awareness of rural crime with our communities and partner agencies, whilst reinforcing our commitment to be tough on rural crime. The communication strategy will provide effective prevention advice and share positive news stories about rural crime offenders being brought to justice.
• Create bespoke engagement opportunities as part of the forces estate strategy by introducing mobile police stations to give a highly visible and consistent engagement to isolated communities
• Educate communities on the importance of addressing wildlife and heritage crime.

Monitoring and Scrutiny

This strategy is underpinned by a delivery plan. This will be managed by the Local Policing Commands and scrutinised by the Rural Crime Reduction Board. We will work with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and the rural communities for transparency to track our progress against the plan. We will closely monitor outcomes to understand the difference our approach is making to the safety of our rural communities and the prevention and reduction in rural crime.

Conclusion

Farmers and rural-specific businesses are living with, and in fear of crime. The financial strain is significant, and many offences go unreported. Some rural communities have a poor perception of policing in their areas and feel they are not understood. Significant progress has already been made by the Rural Crime Team, however the emphasis of this strategy is engagement and prevention, to ensure our rural communities feel safe in their homes and businesses.

We want everyone to be able to live, work and enjoy our rural communities.

This strategy aims to ensure we deliver exceptional local policing that is visible, connected, and trusted. We will provide a professional response that always puts the victim of rural crime first. Dorset police is committed to responding to rural crime and will relentlessly pursue those involved in rural crime.

What you can do - Please Report Crime

To report a Crime please select a form from the list on this page: Online Crime Reporting forms.

All crimes reported add to our understanding of what is happening in your area. Your information could be the piece of the puzzle we are missing.

So even if you think their is no point please take the time to report. Thank you.