The Crime Prevention Working Group was established earlier this year in response to concerns from the community about the crime rate.

Riverina Police District Superintendent Bob Noble shared some of the latest trends with the working group.

"We compared the calendar year to the same time last year, and we have seen a reduction in break and enters on private properties of 28 per cent," he said.

"There has been a modest increase, in order of 10 per cent, of break and enters into commercial premises."

Upon completion of the first meeting, Superintendent Noble said he was positive the group would be an asset.

"It was the first toe in the water, but it was productive," he said.

"We got a relatively large group of individuals - some are from the community, some are from various agencies, there are councillors - and we are all there for the right reasons.

"We want to improve public safety and improve the quality of life for people that live in Wagga."

Superintendent Noble said a priority for him was to learn more about the community's perception of crime hotspots to tailor the police force's response for dealing with the issues.

"Some of the areas that suffer some disadvantage in the city were referenced, without naming any names," he said.

"But ways of improving some of the physical attributes of those areas - passive surveillance and so on - were suggested.

"Various of us have gone away with homework to do and to supply data in the meantime to inform the committee going forward."

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Colin Taggart, the Wagga Neighbourhood Watch representative, said he was pleased with the results of the first meeting.

"People are coming together in a positive sense to try and bring practical solutions to a very complex problem," he said.

" Wagga Neighbourhood Watch has come up with the suggestion that we look at laneways and access.

"We see this as a simple, practical, cost-effective solution to stop perpetrators or vandals transiting between the suburbs."

In the coming three months, Wagga Neighbourhood Watch will be looking at examples of laneways and developing ways of controlling access.

"That can be complex itself with ownership," Mr Taggart said.

Wagga MP Joe McGirr said over the next three months the focus would be on implementing and monitoring the Crime Prevention Plan.

"One of the good things to come out of today, is Neighbourhood Watch are already thinking of areas where they can make suggestions for improvement of the community," he said.

That information is going to be fed through.

"We also decided we needed to invite health and education along and that was based on feedback from the commissioner for the southern region."

Dr McGirr said this group is not just talking about the issues.

"This has got to be a group that identifies what we can do, works out how we do it and make sure it gets done," he said.

Community director Janice Summerhayes said the inaugural meeting was a chance for all the members to come together for the first time.

After introductions, two presentations were put to the working group to set out the context in which they would be working.

"One from social planner Lisa on the current Crime Prevention Plan and what's coming up and what has been implemented," Ms Summerhayes said.

"There was a discussion on what has been funded and what could be looked at in more detail.

"We had a presentation from Wagga police's Bob Noble and Adrian Telfer on the crime data, so what the trends are in our city."

Ms Summerhayes said the next meeting would be in November.

"This is about prevention rather than looking at after crimes are committed so we are interested in how we can divert people away from crime," she said.

"I think it's positive that we have several different agencies coming together working on prevention."