Sentinel ASB is a web-based, incident management system allowing local authorities and their partner agencies to capture reports of anti-social behaviour and manage such incidents through to closure. Information sharing, through a powerful, central database, supported by locally defined protocols and rule tables, promotes effective, collaborative working to protect residents or the local environment and to bring perpetrators to justice. Sentinel ASB is tailored to community requirements and provides comprehensive reporting on all types of ASB. Incidents may be classified using the Home Office or locally-defined categories.
Sentinel is scalable to local requirements, whether operating county-wide, for a single crime and disorder reduction partnership or within a housing association. Each partner has access to its own information and any data classified as shareable. Access privileges identify the data that each user can input, view or manipulate.
Shared data and protocols bring speed, efficiency and a proactive response to public complaints about anti-social behaviour. Sentinel ASB can be set to trigger action notices by e-mail to locality officers, if the complaint is serious or the victim is at risk. Where an incident requires follow up action, personnel responsible will be reminded by prompts at logon.
Sentinel ASB provides a comprehensive database for information about the incident, the people or places involved, the actions taken by each agency, evidence gathered and disposals made against perpetrators. This makes the Sentinel reporting tool ideal for supporting case conferences, applications for anti-social behaviour orders and for reporting incident statistics and trends to residents, council members and government offices.
Collaborative working does not imply additional work or duplicated data entry. Sentinel ASB shares the load by defining roles and responsibilities within agencies, asks for minimum input from those with the information and integrates with existing, operational systems to gather information previously recorded.
Recording complaints - complaints from members of the public or incidents observed by agency officers and staff can be recorded directly into Sentinel, using a customised, on-screen form. Alternatively, police command and control or council customer relationship management systems can feed incidents into the Sentinel database.
Reviewing incidents - when a complaint is registered or an incident is fed in from an operational system, Sentinel alerts the member of staff responsible for its management. The delegated person then reviews the information for completeness and sets in motion the required workflow.
Victim management - the system includes triggers to initiate an early response to and contact with victims, especially the elderly, infirm or those regarded at risk.
Collation & referral - where an incident or series of incidents is seen to have a serious impact on residents or the local environment, the system assists users to find relationships or common threads between them. This builds up a comprehensive picture of behaviour or activity that can be escalated for further action.
Case management - Sentinel allows its users to react to and manage individual complaints or incidents. However, as a pattern emerges based on individuals, groups or locations, an investigating officer is provided with case management tools to investigate and report on the wider picture, typically taking one or more individuals through various warnings and sanctions leading to an anti-social behaviour order.
Logging disposals - once an order has been made against an individual, the scope of that order can be registered in Sentinel. This gives authorised users and managers a single source for reporting offences and disposals.
Offender management - the single source of information brings an opportunity to accelerate a response to breaches of an order. An individual reported to be undertaking further anti-social acts can be reported immediately to responsible officers for further sanction. Recognition of activities that could lead to criminality, gives management the opportunity for early intervention to keep juveniles out of criminality.
Reporting - Sentinel includes an inbuilt reporting suite, which can be used to produce regular and ad hoc reports, trends and locality analysis to focus agency activity on individuals, groups, premises and hot spots.
Built with web technology - Sentinel was conceived as a web-based application, not modified to suit. This means that it can be accessed at any time, from any place, using internet, intranet, extranet or wireless technology.
Industry standard user interface - User access is through standard browsers, providing a common-place, intuitive interface to all system functions and requiring a minimum of training for any user with basic computing skills.
Customer configuration - Sentinel is a fully configured application but it also provides customer branding and user configuration. Drop-down lists, incident classification and protocols are all user definable and maintainable.
Meeting national standards - Standards for reporting ASB incidents are emerging; Sentinel ASB comes with the Home Office classifications used in the one-day-count but these can be replaced, reduced or augmented according to local needs.
Information security - Information is shared only to the levels defined by the customer. Secure, individual user logon profiles allow access to system functions and data.
Development roadmap - Sentinel ASB is part of the wider Sentinel family and continues to develop over time. The roadmap is a timetable for new modules, features and enhancements, and is published regularly.
Peter Hinton, Head of Community Safety at Charnwood Borough Council, said: "Sentinel has helped us to deliver a more co-ordinated and effective approach to tackling anti-social behaviour in the area. It has been extremely beneficial to all agencies in the Borough, especially Leicestershire Police, who use it for in-depth analysis of ASB cases."
"We are the first local authority in Leicestershire to take up this initiative and the first to be able to conform fully to Government reporting requirements. We are very pleased with the results. The success Sentinel has shown in the past year confirms its value and I believe it is a tool which would benefit all authorities across the country."
