Where do I feel unsafe?

What is it?

‘Where Do I Feel Unsafe?’ which was developed by Thumbprint Co-operative in partnership with Greater Manchester Police is a text services that lets local residents flag concerns relating to the local area with their Neighbourhood Police Team (NPT). The NPT can then target their interventions locally to address these concerns and help increase the sense of safety in the community.

Concerns raised by residents might relate to the responsibilities of different government or local organisations but the NPT acts as the fulcrum that then distributes the messages to the different agencies to ensure they’re acted on. All incidents are kept open until they are resolved and residents are updated by text to let them know how their concerns have been dealt with.

How the idea developed

Many inner-city areas across the UK suffer from interlinked problems, including crime and low levels of real and perceived safety. Yet these problems often go unreported because of barriers, including anonymity, perceived responsiveness and access to the right point of contact. Thumbprint City is an existing website that makes it easy for local community and voluntary groups, third sector organisations and front line public service workers to use texting to support their work. The team behind the site worked with a Neighbourhood Police team in Gorton to see how the text tool could be applied to community safety in Greater Manchester.

Over a cup of tea, Inspector Damian O'Reilly and Andrew Wilson of Thumbprint Co-op worked out an idea for using Thumbprint City as a way to open conversations between the Neighbourhood Police Team and local people. They felt that text was the right technology because it is accessible and familiar to most people living in the area. The ultimate aim was to help residents feel safer in their communities and feel that they can take action where they do not feel safe.

After exploring the context further, a design choice was made to build a bespoke platform for Neighbourhood Police Teams to use texting, rather than using the existing Thumbprint City website, and £25, 250 was awarded through Nesta’s Reboot Britain programme to develop and test the prototype tool.

Latest news (as at 27 August 2012) 

The insights gained from building the bespoke platform led to a change in the development priorities for the Thumbprint City site, such as  creating a pre-moderation function which helped reassure those running the platform.

The developed offer of text for communities that Thumbrint City offers  has now been used  by a range of organisations across the country including community safety groups, community mental health groups, Sure Start centres, tenants and residents associations, a charity for people with learning disabilities, bibliotherapists, a volunteering support agency and numerous small neighbourhood groups.

Want to know more?

Andrew Wilson, andrew@thumbprint.coop 07980 224927