Crime Prevention Competency Standards

Summary of the processes

A consortium under the leadership of the Centre for Research in Education, Equity and Work (CREEW) at the University of South Australia was granted funding from the Commonwealth Attorney General's Department to develop nationally endorsed crime prevention competency standards. The project has involved (between April and November 2002):

(a) identifying what is distinctive in the work of crime prevention workers and developing elective units of competency that will be added, after endorsement through the Australian National Training Authority, to an already existing Training Package;

(b) recommending ways in which units of competency already existing in other Training Packages might be 'customised' to align more adequately with crime prevention work;

(c) identifying and auditing 'support materials', so as to develop a database of delivery and assessment materials that will support the implementation of these competency standards.

The aim has been to produce a set of materials that will reflect various roles undertaken by crime prevention practitioners around Australia and that can be used by the broad range of industry sectors with an interest in crime prevention. In order to do this, we have consulted widely with stakeholders around Australia, including industry training advisory bodies, State/Territory Training Authorities, members of Indigenous organisations, crime prevention officers in local governments, crime prevention units in State/Territory jurisdictions and police, and practitioners in a range of occupations.

In particular, we interviewed 52 crime prevention practitioners about their work, and taped and transcribed their interviews. The rich information from these interviews has:

• offered an excellent portrayal of the heterogeneity of crime prevention practitioners as well as of crime prevention work,
• furnished insights into the backgrounds and training of crime prevention practitioners, and
• provided a sound basis to inform and guide the development of these competency standards.

The project’s database now contains well over 500 contacts across Australia, all of whom are interested in the outcomes of this project. They are now being presented with the opportunity to provide comment on these standards through this email.

In addition, the team mapped relevant units of competency in existing Training Packages. Once the ‘distinctive’ units had been identified and developed, the team was then able to return to this mapping to identify those units of most relevance that would complement the ‘distinctive’ units so as to describe the scope of crime prevention work.

The result of these research processes is presented in this package for your feedback. We would appreciate you giving the time to reflect on these standards and to provide us with comment on how they could be improved.

The team:  Roger Harris, Frank Wyatt, David Foreman, Michele Simons, Gary Edwards, Angelina Edwards and John Bone