​"The LISP has had an impact on Burglaries targeting Asian Gold and also SAC within the area which has decreased by 85% year to date. This compares to Northampton where there has been a 77% decreased in SAC and a 60% decrease in Burglaries targeting Asian Gold." Crime Impact Statement 22nd May 2014

Whilst we have evidence from more than 9 case-studies in the UK as to whether Intensive Engagement using the LISP toolkit works, the more important question is HOW intensive engagement works. Click on the document below to read what mechanisms are at work when implementing intensive engagement

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chain of evidence

IMPACT EVALUATION

Evaluating the impact of community policing interventions, and initiatives like LISP, is a very thorny issue. The connection between a specific project within a neighbourhood and the crime rates is often quite remote, and the scale of impact difficult to control. This is before we account for other changes in the community that might also have an effect.

To tackle this problem, we have developed a detailed and structured evaluation process, that scales from assessing the individual trainees' orientation, knowledge and skills, right through to verification by third parties that our approach is robust and a true reflection of the real world.

In the first instance, we will want to know that the right trainees have been identified and trained (this we do by a survey, before and after the training), and that they are getting on with implementing that which they have learnt (by submitting reports on progress made). This earns them ‘registered practitioner’ status. This is important for your less intensive LISP locations, because you will need verified Gold practitioners to cascade the skills out to the remainder of the force. 
We will also report on how much of the LISP process has been implemented. Sometimes, regardless of how skilled and enthusiastic the trainees are, projects get stuck for organisational or community reasons. We don’t regard them as failed projects, but we measure how far they made progress through the LISP steps.
As the LISP implementation matures, we will know what the community stakeholders expect from the police, what success looks like, and what interventions in the LISP project will achieve those success measures. So we will have a record of all the planned impacts from the LISP projects, and will measure their progress towards meeting those impacts.

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1. Training Efficacy

 We test the knowledge and attitudes of the trainees before, immediately after and some time into the Intensive Engagement process to identify how prepared & experienced the trainees were at the start, and how they have changed over the time of the implementation period. This is the shortest term impact evaluation possible. This is done by a survey.

2. Trainee competence

We then evaluate, using a carefully designed standard marking criteria rubric, the abilities of the trainees as they implement the 8 steps of a LISP project. Here we measure a real world impact, as the trainees deliver on the LISP framework and keep working on each step until they have reached a bronze, silver or gold level of implementation. This is evidenced by progress reports from the LISP projects.

3. LISP Implementation

Intensive Engagement is more than training individuals. At this level we measure the ability of the organisation to support the trainees in implementing each step of the LISP toolkit. Each LISP implementation is awarded a team-level bronze, silver or gold implementation award. This is based on progress reports from the LISP projects.

4. Stakeholder Success

Intensive Engagement is only useful to neighbourhood policing if it affects the experiences of citizens in neighbourhoods. This level of evaluation allows the stakeholders in a LISP project to decide on 'what success looks like' for them, and to fairly compare their progess to success with that of other stakeholders. This is captured using data generated by the LISP team, and verified by the IE team.

5. Mechanisms

The body of evidence behind the success of Intensive Engagement as a toolkit is built on 27 different 'mechanisms' that have to be triggered to make neighbourhood policing interventions successful. This level of evaluation determines the extent to which these 'context-mechanism-outcome' chains exist, and to what extent they have been triggered in the LISP project. This really determines the quality of the LISP 'theory of change' and governs the long term sustainability of any planned impact. This is done by a detailed review of all the evidence, produced by the LISP projects and the IE team.

6. Verification

We measure the impact of Intensive Engagement with the above strategies. It is deeply embedded into the way of doing LISP projects. We also invite third-party organisations to independentlt verify that the processes we use, and the data we collect for that purpose, is robust, reliable and accurate. 

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Outcomes

One LISP project, on its own, will not significantly reduce long-term chronic crime patterns and vulnerabilities in a given neighbourhood. The problems are just too deep seated to have such an instant effect. Nevertheless, our  approach to a 'theory of change' for Intensive Engagement is to ensure that that the 6 levels of impact, from the inidvidual trainee up to the level of the whole organisation are in place, and that there is a 'chain of evidence' from one level to another. In this way, we are then able to establish how a police force and its partners are achieving the following outcomes:

Crime rates & vulnerability down

Police effectiveness increased

Resilience increased

Legitimacy & satisfaction improved

Police efficiency improved

Evidence is robust