Young people entering the justice system for the first time has fallen – taking pressure off Nottinghamshire courts.
Police and Crime Commissioner, Gary Godden, said there had been a “strong reduction” in youths entering the system for the first time, speaking at a Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Panel meeting on Monday (September 22).
It has fallen by 21 percent across the county and by 41 percent specifically in Nottingham city.
It comes as Mr Godden told the panel the police force was now “pointing in the right direction”.
He said: “It really didn’t feel like it was when I joined and I think now we’re pointing in the right direction.
“My priority, I had two priorities – neighbourhood policing and getting out of engaged measures – I’ve managed to achieve both to date.”
Nottinghamshire Police was placed in ‘engage’ status in March 2024 after needing to improve in how it investigates crime, delivers neighbourhood policing, prevent crime and disorder, and improve how it manages performance. The force was taken out of this enhanced monitoring status [special measures] in May 2025, by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services [HMICFRS].
Suma Harding, Independent Co-opted Member on the panel, said: “In the courts we’re still overburdened with cases in magistrates and crown [court]. At the moment we haven’t seen any improvement, other than the fact we’re getting less youths, so less courts with youths.”
But the commissioner also spoke of the “continual battle” in the public’s perception of crime and policing across the county.
Figures in a report presented to the panel showed the overall public confidence in Nottinghamshire Police fell 3.5 percent over the last year, standing at 50.6 percent.
Acknowledging the drop in confidence, Broxtowe Borough Councillor, Gabrielle Bunn (Brox Alliance), pointed out the “mismatch” in data, where the same report also noted a nearly five percent increase in satisfaction levels for people who have had contact with the police – meaning those who had engaged with the police were more likely to say they had positive experiences.
Cllr Bunn asked Mr Godden to clarify what efforts are being made to boost community engagement with the police to help “narrow the gap” in confidence levels between those who have engaged with the police and those who have not.
She said: “One thing we hear a lot from residents is they just don’t report crime because they they [do not think] anything is going to happen… they become extremely dissatisfied because they think nothing is going to happen – how do we break that cycle?”
Mr Godden responded that ensuring the public have confidence in the police and crime levels is a “continual battle”, saying: “Crime is going down, it’s going down in the country – it is, that’s a fact. But the perception is that it’s not, that it’s higher.
“The eternal fight that I have in trying to get our communities to report [crimes], because if they don’t report then we don’t know, therefore we can’t formulate the accurate picture that we need to do. We get a lot of that with hate crime, there’s a lack of reporting in that area.”
The commissioner added technology “has a role to play” in building relationships between communities and their local police officer, where residents could benefit from contacting officers online and not needing to physically visit a police station.
Angela Kandola, Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner, said the force has already attempted to bridge a community engagement gap for ethnic minority women in extending its ‘walk in my shoes’ survey – which wanted to identify which areas women and girls feel safe in public.
She said the original survey which launched on March 31 for eight weeks had a “low representation from ethnic minority women” and the force had since engaged with these women to gain their responses – this is still live and closes in the first week of November.
• Confidence up but knife crime and domestic abuse are concerns in Nottinghamshire Police update
