23 February 2004

New crime and disorder initiative goes online in Sussex

By Sergeant Tim Hemsley

CADDIE project manager, Sergeant Tim Hemsley

CADDIE started life back in 2001 as an idea to share data between Sussex's crime and disorder partnerships and after a successful pilot in 2002 has now expanded and launched across the whole of East and West Sussex.

By providing our partners access to combined crime and disorder information from emergency, health, social and other services, plus voluntary groups, it lets them analyse and overlay data from various sources and uncover relationships between different crime and disorder events not available before, therefore identifying 'hot spots' which are displayed geographically. This lets Sussex services better allocate resources and spot trends allowing different strategies to be implemented. Our 13 local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships will also be able to have a more complete picture of crime and disorder issues and work more effectively with community action teams to tackle any problem areas.

A key function of CADDIE was to not only provide partners with data analysis, 'hot spot' mapping and reports but also certain organisations to input directly non-crime incidents such as anti-social behaviour, domestic violence, or racial incidents that are not currently reported to the police. It's hoped that by using this, partners will obtain an improved picture of Community Safety issues in their area and be able to take action accordingly.

In terms of helping citizens directly we are making CADDIE data plus other resources available to the public at www.caddie.gov.uk. Our research shows that fear of crime by the public is between 30 and 300 times greater than the reality - CADDIE aims to dispel this myth by increasing public awareness and understanding of crime and disorder in their area.

"CADDIE is an excellent example of local partners working together to reduce Crime and Disorder and a real achievement for Sussex. Putting CADDIE on the Internet will allow the people of Sussex to see what is happening in their area, what the crime and disorder partnership is doing, and how they can get involved. As a result, the public will be better informed and this will itself reduce the fear of crime which troubles so many people even when crime is actually quite low," explained Hugh Marriage, Regional Crime Director, Government Office South East.

Public interest, civil liberties and privacy

The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) dictates the legal basis for data sharing, whilst the Data Protection Act (1998) provides a legal framework for good practice in handling personal information. When we were creating CADDIE we had to ensure we created a web-based platform that provided legal and effective data exchange. The data sharing issues were solved using Infoshare's software which automatically cleanses, corrects, validates and geocodes all data and de-personalises it. Privacy enhanced data was essential to the success of the project.

CADDIE and the future

Part of the original requirement of the project was to build a system that could work anywhere in the UK, which was not reliant on existing partners' systems - that is, individual networks. CADDIE has worked closely with the Home Office Crime Reduction Teams to develop a system that can deliver in a multitude of areas and CADDIE is in the process of being installed in Kent too.

The potential for CADDIE is huge as it can deliver a complete solution for any partnership involved in reducing crime and disorder to provide relevant, current and active data. This will eventually replace any need for long drawn out crime and disorder audits and provide a tool to monitor and evaluate initiatives.

CADDIE addresses the following agendas:

Crime and Disorder Act, Police Reform Act, eGovernment, e-Policing, Freedom of Information, Partnership working, Best Value, National Intelligence Model, Fear of Crime, Public engagement, Citizen Focus.

CADDIE has been funded by:

	·	PITO - Police Information Technology Organisation
	·	ODPM - Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - eGovernment via - ACCESS East Sussex, ESCC
	·	GOSE - Government Office South East
	·	WSCC - West Sussex County Council
	·	WS CDRP's - The Districts and Boroughs of West Sussex

CADDIE Project Board:

East Sussex County Council Community Safety and ACCESS East Sussex (ESCC IT)
East Sussex CDRP
Sussex Police
West Sussex County Council Community Safety rep and IT rep
West Sussex CDRP

For more information about the CADDIE project visit www.caddie.gov.uk or contact Sergeant Tim Hemsley at tim.hemsley@sussex.pnn.police.uk

Tim Hemsley is project manager of the CADDIE project and has been a Police officer for 20 years, spending a lot of this time working together with partners and the public to reduce crime and disorder.