Protecting and supporting victims and the vulnerable
I will continue to place victims of crime at the heart of my thinking, my policies and my actions. Working in partnership with Lincolnshire Safeguarding Adults Board and Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children’s Partnership we will maximise the opportunities we all have to safeguard the vulnerable of all ages from abuse and criminal exploitation and to improve community safety. I will provide supportive leadership and transparency for the criminal justice system at a local level, whilst respecting prosecutorial and judicial independence. The new probation model offers an opportunity to further develop joint working with the Probation Service to take forward work on preventing offending and reducing re-offending which I will fully embrace.
Key priorities:
Continue to ensure all victims of crime receive the support they need to cope and recover.
- Raise awareness of the range of support services available to victims and survivors and how they can be accessed, whether a crime has been reported to the police or not.
- Monitor compliance with the Victims Code of Practice to ensure victims and survivors receive appropriate, timely support from all relevant agencies during their journey through the criminal justice system.
- Actively promote and listen to the needs of those with lived experience, through satisfaction surveys, needs assessments and direct engagement, using this intelligence to improve services and to inform the re-commissioning of victim support services.
- Ensure all victims have equal and fair access to victim support services by monitoring equality of access for all victims regardless of their protected characteristics (sex or gender, sexuality, ethnicity, culture or religion, illness or disability, age, socio-economic status, and/or their personal history).
- Work with the Chief Constable to ensure officers attending domestic incidents have undertaken ‘Domestic Abuse Matters’ training.
- Continue to commission and promote an effective restorative justice programme.
Support the vulnerable.
- Work with partners in health and social care to raise awareness of mental health issues and get local communities involved in helping to prevent suicides in the county and raise awareness of what we can all do to support our friends, family, colleagues and neighbours.
- Support health partners to integrate mental health pathways and services to those in the criminal justice system so that re-offending is reduced.
- Develop a Policing and Crime memorandum of understanding with partners for supporting people at risk of mental health crisis. Working together to prevent crises happening where possible through prevention and early intervention.
- Commit to continue as a signatory to the Armed Forces Covenant and to working with specialist agencies to support veterans.
- Support the commissioning of ‘appropriate adult’ services to safeguard the welfare, rights and effective participation of children and vulnerable people who are detained or interviewed as suspects.
- Work with statutory and non-statutory partners to galvanise actions to protect the vulnerable, focused on early intervention and prevention opportunities.
Combat Violence against people of all genders.
- Develop a Lincolnshire Violence Prevention Strategy focused on education and early intervention to combat violence against people of all genders, which recognises and reflects that certain crimes disproportionately affect women and girls – including sexual crimes, domestic abuse, stalking and harassment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed some unprecedented challenges for policing and the criminal justice system.
- Maximise opportunities to secure and allocate additional funding for policing and other local services to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Highlight the impact on victims and witnesses of COVID19-related pressures on the criminal justice system – notably court backlogs – providing a voice nationally and leadership of local criminal justice boards.