DORSET Police are working on a long-term plan to reduce criminal behaviour among school age children.

The county health and wellbeing board was told that this would only be achieved by close working with partner organisations, including health, and even then might take five to 10 years to achieve tangible results.

Chief Constable James Vaughan said the programme would affect everyone in the county and should improve community safety.

He said that over the coming years there would be a greater emphasis on preventative working.

Chief Inspector Lindsay Dudfield, who heads the force prevention strategy, told the online meeting (on Wednesday) that for too long, mainly because of tight budgets, the work had been reactive – rather than proactive.

“We need to change the narrative. For many years, due to austerity, we’ve responded to demand… but now we have an opportunity to create some longer term, sustained work, which might prevent some of the harm in our communities,” she said.

She said the time had come for a cultural change which would need “visionary leadership and political commitment” – especially because preventative work was difficult to quantify and judge, especially in the short term.

The work will include identifying at an early stage young people who may, in the future, be at risk of crime, or become victims.

It will include interventions to keep young people away from criminal behaviour and seeking out ways to mitigate the risk from offending behaviour.

She said that one of the early keys components of the work was collaboration with partners, in the early stages through health, who might be able to identify children at potential risk when they were still very young.

The meeting heard that work has already started with some schools in Dorset, some already having a dedicated safer schools officer while others work with police safer neighbourhood teams.

Networks have also been set up between the police and schools to offer, where needed, specialist advice and guidance and to share information.

A partnership meeting is being held on June 30th involving the police, health, education and others to agree a project timetable and how it might be delivered. Further work will follow in the autumn on agreeing what is needed and the key aims with a pilot project taking place early next year.