New Community Gateway study identifies Grangetown residents perceptions of safety

A recent study by the UPSI in collaboration with Grangetown residents has identified litter as negatively impacting perceptions of safety in Grangetown.

The project utilises the Universities’ Police Science Institute’s innovative community intelligence tool ‘SENSOR’ which is a is a tablet based data capture application that allows users to identify and target the issues that have a disproportionate impact upon neighbourhood security. SENSOR builds on CSRI Director Martin Innes’ ‘Signal Crimes’ theory which finds that the public’s sense of being ‘at risk’ of crime is not determined solely by the ‘volume’ of offending in an area, but also the ‘impact’ that single incidents have upon their collective risk perceptions and ultimately how they think, feel and act.

Following on from this finding Dr. Mhairi McVicar, the Community Gateway project Lead, has secured a grant to fund the 'Rethinking Litter in our Communities' project, which will take place as part of Grand Challenges week (11-15 June 2018). During this week, students will collaborate with Community Gateway partnerships to suggest physical, social, digital and environmental ideas to eliminate litter.

Trudy Lowe, Helen Innes and Catherine King presented “Safer Grangetown: Understanding Community Perceptions” at the first ‘Community Gateway Engaged Research’ symposium on Wednesday 2nd May 2018. Ideas will also be shared at the Grangetown Festival on 16th June 2018.