Our Partners

People Against Crime

People Against Crime is a Crime Reduction Partnership working in Jersey.

The purpose of People Against Crime is two-fold: to provide the States of Jersey Police with an independent lay insight into crime reduction; and actively to involve the community through the voluntary representatives of various bodies along with several independents.

At the time of its foundation, the Crime Prevention Panel was a rare being. Although based on established practice in other communities, it was one of the first such bodies to be set up involving a preponderance of ‘lay’ persons working alongside professionals. Appropriately the secretariat is vested in the States of Jersey Police Crime Reduction Department with administrative services being entirely provided by that body.

The Crime Prevention Panel was set up in 1980 and comprised members drawn from a broad cross-section of the community. In 1998, to come into line with the intents of the United Kingdom Crime and Disorder Bill (published in December 1997) which redefined Crime Prevention Panels as Community Safety Partnerships but not to lose its ‘crime prevention’ identity, the Panel’s name was extended to the Crime prevention & Community Safety Partnership to enable it to fall into line with national guides and to benefit from the material available from the National Community Safety Network.

Since its inception in its various guises, PAC has played a key role in devising strategies for the prevention or reduction of crime, primarily by creating an awareness in the community of how many opportunities readily exist for the criminal, particularly the opportunist, and how relatively easily those opportunities can often be diminished or even eliminated within a community attuned and aware of the potential for criminality within it.

ShopWatch is probably the most successful initiative launched by PAC (in its former guise as the Crime Prevention & Community Safety Partnership) in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce. The scheme has been enthusiastically endorsed by retailers throughout the Island.

During 2002, People Against Crime, in conjunction with the Police and the Health Promotion Unit began the process of establishing a Responsible Retailer Scheme. This is still in its embryo stages but like ShopWatch is a major initiative, in this instance to diminish the opportunities for underage persons to gain access to alcohol, tobacco and other hazardous substances.

Being an unqualified and lay panel it is unlikely that PAC will ever play other than a peripheral role in devising crime reduction strategy but, as representatives of the public, it is uniquely placed to act as a sounding board for such strategies and also to communicate with the public at large in their own language, with their own fears, concerns and aspirations.

Although now known as “People Against Crime” the fundamental purposes of the group have not changed since its inception and that it continues to be a catalyst, raising awareness and by whatever means it does that - through the media, via its range of publications or strategic use of the mobile unit - ultimately reducing crime and the fear of crime in the community.
It is the role of the People Against Crime to involve itself exclusively in issues which impact on crime and it is not its role to involve itself in those areas of health, education, road safety, etc. where crime is not a primary cause or consequence.
It is the role of the People Against Crime to speak out when it perceives any situation, whether within the establishment, government, bureaucracy or the community at large, that could give comfort to anyone of criminal intent that their activities will be tolerated by default, and that the right of the individual to live in peace with his neighbour and have no fear of him should be sacrosanct.