Keeping You Safe: Strategic partnerships

What we will do

• Connect with partners to respond to local issues.
• Collaborate with partners to enhance crime prevention and reduce harm.
• Invest in and grow strategic partnerships.

Our Neighbourhood Policing Framework

Victoria Police has always been engaged in community policing.

In 2022 we launched our Neighbourhood Policing Framework which provides us with a structured and consistent approach to community engagement, personal interaction and listening to people and addressing their concerns.

It will define our community engagement over the next five years.

It offers a clear purpose, defined structures and consistent processes to ensure prevention of crime and handling of issues that are important to the community are core business for all police.

Focused effort and community partnership

The Neighbourhood Policing Framework aims to standardise our community crime prevention efforts and improve public safety at a local level by focusing efforts in areas where crime and public safety is of most concern.

This will be achieved by building trust and confidence with the community through:

• being highly visible and accessible
• prioritising collaboration by working with community and partner agencies
• developing effective responses that meet local needs
• strengthening our focus on crime prevention
• adopting a problem-solving approach to community safety issues.

Our approach to our partnerships with each community is based on the following principles:

• every interaction matters
• human rights are respected
• communication, language and engagement approaches are interactive and accessible
• accountable partnerships are critical
• engagement is tailored, planned and purposeful.

Connect with partners to respond to local issues

Our response to issues will be at the local level.

While these issues are complex and may be state or nationwide, their impact at the local level is where our community feels it most.

Our engagement with Aboriginal people

Aboriginal people are over-represented in the criminal justice system.

Our goal is to reduce the number of Aboriginal children and adults entering the criminal justice system.

We have committed to current and future work (including the Victorian Aboriginal Affairs Framework and Dhelk Dja) that drive and guide better justice outcomes for Aboriginal people and reduce over-representation.

We are committed to the recruitment and promotion of Aboriginal employees and will build on existing collaboration with external partners, local Victorian Aboriginal communities and our own Aboriginal Employees Network.

On the ground, this will look like strengthened relationships and communication between Victoria Police and Aboriginal people across the state.

Reducing our environmental impact

Policing will be affected by climate change.

Victoria is seeing a change in the scale, frequency and severity of environmental disasters.

As this continues, police will work away from their usual locations, deployed more frequently across the state, to larger scale emergencies and for longer periods of time.

Our structure needs to support flexibility in deployment to respond to the changing nature of emergencies.

With a focus on governance and our ability to manage social and environmental impacts, we will work with partners to improve the energy impacts of our operations and our infrastructure.

We will build or refurbish police stations based on environmentally sustainable design standards.

While some assets will not transition easily away from carbon, other opportunities will be assessed to inform a zero-emission strategy.

A safe, secure and friendly Commonwealth Games

Commonwealth Games Command was established to prepare for the 2026 Commonwealth Games. This event will be delivered via a multi-city model.

The Commonwealth Games Command is collaborating closely with the Office of the Commonwealth Games with a shared goal of delivering a safe, secure and friendly 2026 games.

Collaborate with partners to enhance crime prevention and reduce harm

Working in ways aligned to our vision and focused on building community confidence and trust, we will hold each other to account in support of our community, collaborating to enhance crime prevention and reduce harm in our communities, in our homes and on our roads.

Our focus is on intervening early and supporting at-risk young people before they engage in criminal activity, protecting the safety and wellbeing of victims, and making sure perpetrators are held to account.

Reducing child abuse, gendered and family crime

Gendered crimes (including family violence and sexual offences) and child abuse cause significant community harm. The drivers of these crimes are complex.

We recognise that crime prevention and harm reduction can only be delivered and sustained using a whole of government approach to address disadvantage, complexities and attitudes that support violence.

We know that police are in a unique position to protect victims and reduce harm.

Over-representation in the justice system

Victoria is a proudly diverse state and how we engage and connect with our community groups is critical.

We will continue to deliver exceptional services through work with our priority communities of young people, multicultural and multi-faith people, people experiencing mental health issues, senior Victorians, people with a disability, Aboriginal people and those who identify as a part of the LGBTIQ+ community.

This includes addressing over-representation in the justice system, building trust and confidence in police services and supporting those who have experienced harm from crime.

We will work closely with partners to reduce overrepresentation through embedded outreach models, joint investigations and multi-disciplinary teams.

Community approach to safer roads

Road safety is everyone’s responsibility.

Working with the community is critical in reducing harm and achieving our shared vision of zero deaths and no serious injuries on our roads.

Victoria Police is dedicated to preventing road trauma including through engaging with the community to educate and influence road user behaviour, enhancing technology to better prevent, detect and enforce road safety offences and supporting referral pathways for drug and alcohol affected road users.

As Victoria’s population grows, we will see more vehicles on our roads. At the same time, advanced technology will improve road safety by minimising risks such as speeding, drug and drink-driving, or driver distraction, such as using mobile phones while driving.

A future with fewer road crashes means we could redirect our resourcing in line with community expectations.

Until then, our approach is governed by the Victoria Police Road Safety Strategy and underpinned by the key pillars:

• Engage
• Enhance, and
• Enforce.

Invest in and grow strategic partnerships

By investing in relationships and partnering purposefully on issues that matter most, we will create a collaborative environment with our partners.

Through partnerships and joint accountability, we will improve our back-office processes and make sure we spend our money as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Integrated approach

We want to deliver an integrated response with our partners in the private and non-government sectors.

We want to strengthen our established partnerships with law enforcement agencies both nationally and internationally to tackle crime that occurs outside Victoria (including offshore) but impacts Victorians.

These strong partnerships can be a model of what we can build in other sectors, partnerships based on accountability and clear outcomes.

Co-designed solutions to complex problems

Tackling complexity and new crime areas needs investment and commitment.

Through academic partnerships, we can access research expertise and improve our capacity and capability through evidence-based policing.

By working together with partners in the design and planning phase, we will be able to better leverage new and emerging technologies and build products that help us to deliver better policing outcomes.