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How burglars use social media

Criminals and law enforcement officials are early adopters of new technologies and social media in particular in their battle to outwit each other. There are plenty of ways in which burglars in particular can develop their lean systems to target and gather intelligence on potential victims and minimise the risks of getting caught. Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare are particularly straightforward ways of finding out if someone is away on holiday or business. Google StreetView makes advance reconnaissance a piece of cake. The infographic below summarises some of the main techniques in current use…

12th July 2013
Payment by Results
The 9th Commandment of Payment by Results: Thou shalt join up commissioning

If successful recovery from addiction can only be achieved by a coordinated approach across the health, drug treatment, criminal justice, housing, social care and ETE (employment, training and education) sectors, which government departments should pay for which outcomes? Ideally the Ministry of Justice, Department of Health, DWP and Supporting People should all contribute to a pooled budget. But of course that’s not the way that departmental budgets work – indeed, there’s evidence that, despite the Community Budgets initiative – departmentalitis has actually got worse over recent years in the face of largescale and repeated cuts in expenditure.

11th July 2013
Why I Tweet
Why does a law enforcement princess tweet?

Twitter is like a multi-threaded, multi-coloured tapestry, with a million extra threads being weaved every second. Sometimes the only way to view it, the only way to keep up, is pick the threads you like the colour of and follow those.
I didn’t know what I wanted nor what I would get when i joined Twitter. I had heard it mentioned, promoted, and it struck me – living alone in a new city with few local friends – as an interesting thing to sign up to. I believe I naively thought I would make a few friends and possibly find some new hobbies. How very wrong I was.

10th July 2013
Payment by Results
The 8th Commandment of Payment by Results: Thou shalt share the fruits of thy labours

By focusing on outcomes, commissioners allow providers to design the service in any which way they choose – safe in the knowledge that they will only have to pay out if that service is successful. This “Black Box” approach has become increasingly contentious since the advent of the Work Programme and the introduction of large private companies into the delivery of public services. One of the key reason underlying the choice of the Work Programme contract areas was the desire to introduce direct competition between providers…

9th July 2013
Digital Engagement
Police & Twitter, Spanish Style

Did you know that the Spanish national police force Twitter account @policia has over half a million followers? Only the FBI has more. Police display the national Twitter handle on their uniforms and their patrol cars. Spanish Police use Twitter differently from British Police – the focus is not on engaging with individual members of the public but on gathering intelligence – frequently to target drug dealers.

8th July 2013
Payment by Results
The 7th Commandment of Payment by Results: Thou shalt promote innovation

Payment by results is supposed to be all about innovation. The central idea of PbR is that commissioners set their outcomes and only pay up if the provider achieves them. This leaves providers free to deliver the service in any way they see fit.
The freedom from constant monitoring and reporting on targets, milestones, KPIs etc. enables providers to approach entrenched social problems with new ideas and fresh approaches and also frees up considerable resources currently dedicated to the collection, polishing and submitting of data. But…

4th July 2013
Why I Tweet
Police historian Brian Williams @BriW74: “Why I tweet”

I have learned and gained information faster than I can imagine being able to do anywhere else, I have challenged peoples’ perceptions on policing issues and had my own challenged. This is important. Twitter loses it power if it acts merely an echo chamber for your own views. I have got far more out of tweeting than I ever thought I would. I have made and continue to make excellent contacts, particularly in the police tweeter world, many of whom I would not have managed to reach if not for twitter. I have made friendships with people that simply would not have happened without Twitter. One of these friends described me as “An historian masquerading as a police officer” I like that description!

3rd July 2013
Payment by Results
The 6th Commandment of Payment by Results: Profit shall not be thy God

One of the most controversial aspects of payment by results in the UK has been the way the funding model has been used to outsource public services and open the market up to private providers, typically the sort of global companies who deliver the Work Programme. Many people are opposed in principle to the idea of public services generating profit for multinationals. On the other side of the argument are those that see the introduction of business sense and commercial acumen as a key way of reducing cost and driving innovation. But is financial profit the only measure of success?

2nd July 2013
On Probation
What will happen to the prison population under Transforming Rehabilitation?

One of the key changes under the Offender Rehabilitation Bill currently working its way through Parliament is that short term prisoners will receive mandatory supervision on release. Although this development is broadly welcomed, one of the consequences will be that some of these prisoners will not comply with supervision and therefore will be breached and returned to prison. The recently updated impact assessment of the Offender Rehabilitation Bill estimated that 13,000 short term prisoners will be returned to prison because they will breach the new mandatory period of supervision on release. I can see two other factors which will drive up the custody rate…

1st July 2013
On Probation
The 5th Commandment of Payment by Results: Thou shall not pay for deadweight

Payment by results is about driving improvement, so no self-respecting PBR scheme will pay for results that will happen anyway, known in the jargon is “deadweight”. The proportion of deadweight in a PbR funded initiative varies markedly across different spheres of operation. Despite all the adverse publicity about reoffending rates which has accompanied the debate about the Rehabilitation Revolution, 65.8% of those supervised in the community and 53.1% of those released from prison do NOT re-offend in the first year. However, when we look at the Work Programme…

27th June 2013
Digital Engagement
Police, Twitter and major incidents

Any major incident provokes a firestorm of reaction on Twitter and other social media outlets. In the wake of events such as the terrorist killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich what should the police be doing online. Amongst the general noise and bot-generated confusion, there are opportunities to keep the public reliably informed and gather some key intelligence.

26th June 2013

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