Crimestoppers – the next generation

I spent a large chunk of Thursday in the ridiculously titled  Accelerated Solutions Experience at Cap Gemini, talking about the future of Crimestoppers.

Having grown up watching those public appeals on daytime ITV (best example I could find is at 3:23 here) I, like many people, was aware of the name but knew little about the organisation. Indeed, until recently I couldn’t have told you if it were a government agency, a part of the police or something totally independent. Apparently I’m not alone in this lack of knowledge.

Crimestoppers is, as I’ve since discovered, an independent charity that initially was set up to solve one murder: that of PC Keith Blakelock who was killed during the riots on Broadwater Farm estate in 1985. People had information about the killer, but for a variety of reasons didn’t want to approach the police direct.  The organisation had one simple mission: collect information anonymously, and then pass it on to the police.

But since then, nearly 90,000 people have been arrested and/or charged as a result of Crimestoppers information, and on average 17 people are arrested every day thanks to information provided by Crimestoppers. One in five murders in London is solved thanks to Crimestoppers.  All impressive stats.

The day was actually about strategic planning for Crimestoppers London, although given the significance of the capital it involved people from the national office as well as the local volunteer board. And like many similar organisations, one of the key concerns was getting the Crimestoppers message to younger people who didn’t necessarily know about the organisation, and can’t be targeted in the more traditional ways that charities feel comfortable with. I was there as a representative of YouthNet, to try and bring some of our expertise from that field.

I’m not quite sure how much I helped beyond throwing a few ideas and comments in, but from a personal point of view it was fascinating seeing an organisation at the very early stages of youth engagement try and grasp what it was about. It made me realise how far down the path (not surprisingly) YouthNet is, as is Headliners.  Even the charity I volunteered for, St John Ambulance, whilst not a model of best practice has the feel of an organisation comfortable with the notion of young people making strategic decisions.

And what I think I benefitted most from the day was that it reinforced the notion that young people, like everyone else, respond to things that they feel are genuine. Making a MySpace page, creating a Facebook page, adding yourself to Twitter: these things mean nothing if you don’t embrace the culture where these things live. Of the things I remember saying on Thursday, one of them was that “online and offline don’t exist in separate entities” and I think that patently true. There’s no point in having a fancy-pants online operation if those values aren’t reflected in your offline offer as well.

My only other contribution of note was, when asked to describe what I wanted the organisation to look back in 2012 and say “this is how we did it”, is that it defies convention. (I initially suggested ‘breaks the rules’, but that’s probably not a good message from Crimestoppers!). Doing things differently is a sign of an organisation confident about what it stands for, and gets ‘cut-through’ in a saturated enviornment.

As an example of an organisation prepared to do something differently, I told them to search for Mystery Package on YouTube. Because I think it is possibly the best video of 2008 (even if it is a bit long), I’ve added it here:

Image courtesy of jamaltraveller. Used under licence.