Heather Bellamy spoke with Matt Bird, the Founder of Cinnamon Network about crime reduction and prevention through church and civic partnerships.

Matt Bird

New research from Cinnamon Network, endorsed by the National Police Chief's Council and the College of Policing, shows that Church-led social action projects help Police reduce crime and demand and meet community needs. To find out more, Heather Bellamy spoke with Matt Bird, the Founder of Cinnamon Network.

Heather: Why have you commissioned this research?

Matt: The research was commissioned because anecdotally, we think that when the police and churches work together, good things happen in the community, but we want to provide hard evidence. This report provides evidence that when these partnerships are created that there is an impact on crime reduction and there is an impact on preventing crime as well.

Heather: What exactly were you looking at in the research?

Matt: We looked at a couple of projects. One was a City Angels project, which addresses antisocial behaviour and crime in town centres at the weekend. Many people probably know of a Street Pastors, or Street Angels, or Town Pastors, or whatever they call it in their location, but our research shows that when these projects ran in a town centre, antisocial behaviour reduced by 79 per cent and violent crime leading to injury reduced by 82 per cent.

The facts are that this work that the churches are involved with, with the police, really does make a quantifiable impact.

Another project we looked at was a Linked Visiting project, which helps churches work with the vulnerable elderly. This project demonstrated the ability to be able to prevent crime happening in the first place. Volunteers visit elderly people in their homes, who might otherwise be victims of crime whether on the telephone, internet, or caller at the door, who may be looking to con them.

Heather: What has the feedback been from the police in terms of their value of the work that the churches are doing?

Matt: There has been tremendous affirmation. The National Police Chief's Council and the College of Policing are the two main policing bodies in the UK and like the Church, they've known anecdotally this works, but to have the evidence gives them real confidence.

What Cinnamon Network is doing, is we're forming formal partnerships with police forces around the United Kingdom, so that we can develop closer partnership working, between the Christian Church and police forces.

Heather: Will you be acting as a bridge between the different police forces and the local Church?

Matt: Yes. Although churches have a relationship directly with police forces, which is great and we want to encourage that, but Cinnamon Network is able, with the police, to help churches get started in that partnership and deliver a project that leads to crime reduction and crime prevention.

We enter into a contract with the police to help the churches do that, because it makes such a difference. You know, 83 per cent of calls the police receive are nothing to do with crime. Many of them are welfare-related. The more the community can absorb those welfare issues, the more the police can focus on issues of crime.

Heather: What are the list of Cinnamon Network projects that local police forces and local churches can work together on?

Matt: All 30 of the church-based community projects on the Cinnamon menu are supported by the police.

To give you a flavour, I've mentioned two already and another one would be Welcome Boxes that helps churches welcome and resettle refugees in the community. Another would be Make Lunch, which helps churches feed children in the school holidays, who get free school dinners in term time. Then there's Night Shelter that helps churches provide accommodation for rough sleepers during the coldest months of the year.

There's a wide range of social impact projects that all support the reduction of crime and the prevention of crime. So it's really exciting.

Heather: It all sounds very positive. What are the main challenges to the success of these partnerships and projects, or are there no challenges?

Matt: Oh, there are challenges. We have shown that these projects are made possible, or made better by the churches' relationship with local civic organisations, so for some of the projects it's the churches' relationship with the police, for others it's the churches' relationship with the Local Authority, the local school, or the local health services. One of the challenges is to help the church build those relationships and that's why we've done this research and will be doing other pieces of research. We want to help offer best practice local advice on how churches can start these relationships and make them work. It's also advising those organisations about how to work with the Church too, so Cinnamon's very much trying to be this broker and this translator and interpreter, to help us understand one another and what the benefits are of working together.

Heather: Is it important for the Church to see itself as a city Church and for churches to work in partnership with other churches, or do individual churches just set up projects and work with the police?

Matt: Where it works best and this research bears this out, is where churches work together. I call them a Local Church Partnership. They're called different things in different places, but where churches in a village, town, or city can work together collaboratively, it's much better because the police don't want to be working with a dozen different churches. They want to be able to work with the whole Church in a location and so creating a Local Church Network is a really important part of being able to work in a coordinated fashion with civic organisations.

Heather: When the Church works with the police in whatever city, are they free to be the Church still in terms of why they do things? Can they express their faith in Jesus, or are they curtailed in what they are able to express?

Matt: Cinnamon Networkers have never had an experience of being asked to hide our faith. We're always really upfront and say we do what we do because of Jesus. The other important thing, is that we also state that we do what we do for people of all faiths and none and what we do in the community is offered indiscriminately to people in need. On that basis we find that Government and police, business and health and education are all very happy to work with us. I think where the problems come is where the motive is hidden, but we're very upfront and say we are motivated by Jesus, but we do what we do for people of all faiths and none.

Heather: How would you describe where we've come to in the UK now, in relation to the success of these partnerships for the sake of the community?

Matt: We've come a tremendous distance. I travel to many countries around the world and I think that the United Kingdom is leading the way in how churches of different denominations are working together and how they are delivering social impact in the community. Sometimes we don't realise the obvious and I think we should be very encouraged in the Church in the UK.

We also need to seize this moment of opportunity, because not everybody is experiencing it. I'd love to see even more of the 50,000 churches in the UK working in this way with others.

Heather: If people want to find out more about how to set up a project in their area, or how to work with churches or the police, who should they contact?

Matt: The first place to look is on the Cinnamon website. You can see the menu of recognised projects and you can access our £2,000 micro grants. You can find out where the training for leaders is, for leading projects and you can find support for engaging with civic organisations such as the police. We've got teams of people all round the UK that are then able to advise churches one-to-one about what to do next.