Cops to infiltrate worst crime families

WA Police will infiltrate the six worst crime families in Perth by monitoring their day-to-day activities in an attempt to "break the cycle of crime". Picture: File image Source: PerthNow

WA POLICE will infiltrate the six worst crime families in Perth by monitoring their day-to-day activities in an attempt to "break the cycle of crime".

The pilot project will see authorities visiting the families in their homes up to six hours a week and forcing them to take part in programs such as drug and alcohol rehab, mental health counselling, parenting courses and anger management.

Families will even be given help to paint their houses and tidy the gardens in an effort to get them on the straight and narrow.

The "very intensive and persistent approach" will also see transport and childcare arranged so family members can make appointments.

Service workers will also observe the "breakfast routine" of the families to make sure children start the day right – going so far as to accompany kids to school to ensure they go to class.

At the end of the 12-month program, children in the family are required to have 90 per cent school attendance rates.

There must also be an appreciable decrease in police call-outs and anti-social behaviour by family members.

WA Police is advertising for a community service provider to take up the challenge. Applications for the $250,000 contract close next month.

It comes after a similar, though less intense, trial in the south east metropolitan district saw police identify and target the 20 "worst" families in the area.

That trial saw local police give their mobile phone number directly to problem families to become a permanent part of their community.

It resulted in a 43 per cent reduction of calls from those homes.

Crime rates for the whole district have fallen four per cent.

The service provider in the new program is required to visit families selected by police three times a week, as well as being permanently on call.

They have to provide weekly verbal reports to police on the family's progress.

The identity of the families will be kept secret, but police say they need "significant support to reduce intergenerational cycles of poor outcomes, which often results in criminal behaviour."

It will be a last resort to fix families "for whom interventions may not have been successful in the past".

Criminology expert Greg Hall, an Associate Professor at Murdoch University, said strategies like this had been proved to have a "dramatic effect" on crime levels.

"The idea of helping people is vastly more effective than the idea of punishment and policing," he said.

Associate Prof Hall said repainting someone's house – which might seem trivial – actually reduced criminal behaviour by creating pride in the home and community.

And, by targeting the six worst families, police could drastically reduce the overall level of crime in an area at relatively low cost.

"It's a very, very small number of offenders who commit the overwhelming majority of offences," he said.

Acting Deputy Commissioner Paul Zanetti said the program was part of a move toward "proactive problem solving" in WA Police, called Frontline 2020.

The philosophy behind the movement is to free up frontline police officers to target the causes of crime, rather than just cleaning up afterward.

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