TAAGY (Graffiti)

THE TAAGY CONCEPT (Taking Action Against Graffiti in York)

Graffiti is an important issue in York. The presence of graffiti increases the perception of an unsafe area of crime, in the manner of the “broken windows” theory. The very presence of graffiti, encourages further graffiti and it is a low level form of anti-social behaviour that should not and will not be tolerated. It is often forgotten that graffiti is a crime and further more costs large amounts of money to clean.

By sharing photographic and detailed location evidence of instances of graffiti, that are stored in a secure location for investigative purposes, all partners can have a co-ordinated approach. Council and police employees use different computers and the cost and time implications of making all computers compatible for this database made this unviable. The one media that is generic across all partners' computers is the internet, and therefore the project for a web based database was initiated.