In January 2019, the Centre for Operational Police Research (COPR) released their final report on Public Confidence and Crime Reduction: The Impact of Forensic Property Marking.

The project was completed in co-operation with West Mercia Police and assessed a field trial involving over 20,000 households in the Telford area. It evaluated the impact of interventions such as Smartwater to establish whether they are likely to improve public confidence and reduce offending.

The interim report (launched in September 2017) discussed the preliminary findings on public confidence in policing. This included the responses from surveys completed by 1,666 Telford residents as well as interviews with police offers, Police Community Support Officers and public offenders. Since then, the COPR team have analysed crime figures from 14 sites treated with commercial property marking. The results are presented in the final report and suggest that such interventions could be beneficial in helping police to reduce crime.

Read the full report | Find out more about the Centre for Operational Police Research.