Communities in Action for Crime Prevention

In this 19-page paper, prepared as a background document for the ICPC Sixth Annual Colloquium, the focus is on collectivities of
interest clustered around crime prevention at the community level, and the role of
community members in responding to them. It seeks to avoid what is characterised here as controversy on the definition of community or approaches to evaluation of community crime prevention. The paper is about the activities and practices
which have been developed by, or with, partnerships of local groups,
residents, institutions and their representatives.


Recent global trends, in brief, are: terrorism
and the urbanisation of political violence; the continuing
expansion of transnational organised crime, corruption and trafficking; and the rapid
growth of cities with increasing rates of migration to urban areas and across borders. According to the author, "These trends in turn have exacerbated problems of racism and adaptation for existing, migrant and immigrant populations, and ethno-cultural communities." Notable also are an increase in the migration of indigenous peoples to urban areas; an increase in concern about urban youth violence, youth gangs and guns; a decrease in preventive policing due to the new focus on terror; increased issues of public space and semi-public space including the privitisation of gated communities and shopping malls; and the isolation of the safety of women from prevention strategies, with greater attention on responding to violence against women than making public and domestic spaces safer for them. The author cites research on the financial cost of violence: "Violence is estimated as costing countries from 5-25% or more of their GDP, and
domestic violence some 2%, providing strong incentives for investing in prevention."

The response strategy on which the paper focuses is the continual application, adaptation and
innovation of good community intervention - projects that are sustainable in the
sense that they can develop beyond the life of initial pilot or demonstration funding, are sustained with continuing support from governments and
partners, and are embedded in regular administrative and management structures. Because communities evolve and change in their active membership, strategic partnerships become a challenge. Five responses to these challenges are:

1. greater stress on local involvement and ownership, as exemplified by partnering with indigenous communities, and by using local knowledge for understanding neighbourhoods;
2. moving away from an emphasis on deficit models, including stereotypes of communities;
3. greater attention to the specificity of local contexts;
4. an emphasis on leadership, skills and capacity building, especially in intermediary
   organisations working with specific populations;
5. the use of participatory approaches, seen as a key mechanism for facilitating ownership, leadership
   and building skills and capacity, and for helping to change attitudes, strengthen social
   networks and build trust between partners - for example, safety audits undertaken by women leading to
   municipal action;
6. social mediation approaches for local dispute resolution - for example, the programme ‘adultes-relais’ of some 6,000 social mediators in
   cities in France, with the twin objectives of strengthening social and cultural ties among
   inhabitants by promoting dialogue and public peace, and supporting the economic
   integration of the mediators themselves, who are often women recruited from neighbourhoods
   with high unemployment; and
7. a more nuanced understanding of partnership building and its challenges, including more flexibility in types of partnership
   involving a broad range of partners including local businesses, corporations, governments,
   and volunteers.

Using the example of Bogota, Colombia, where homicides dropped from 80 to 28 in 100,000 people, the author describes a broad and integrated approach to urban safety as a combination of
strategies included developing strong community-police partnerships at the
neighbourhood level, helping to rebuild trust, developing a culture of citizenship and citizen campaigns on disarmament, restricting alcohol sales, establishing family police stations
for family violence prevention, and professionalising the police. Using the example of a community revitalisation programme in an inner-city neighbourhood in Vancouver, Canada, the paper lists lessons learned, among which are: adopting a theory of change approach using a logic model developed in a participatory way for evaluation; using a participatory methodology (involving project participants in advising, hiring, and
analysis of findings); and hiring project staff to advocate and mediate on behalf of the community and use a flexible approach to problem solving.

Emphasising flexibility in evaluation, the paper notes the need for longer time-frames, broader definitions of success and greater project support through technical assistance and training for community-based projects. In concluding, the paper states that "the message seems to be clear: taking action at the
community level should not be formulaic," and that community action that is "attentive to the local context, based on painstaking and
inclusive partnership building, careful assessment of causal and protective factors and
detailed knowledge and understanding of all the different groups and sectors, and which
includes a range of interventions providing longer as well as shorter-term outcomes, is
likely to be both effective and sustainable."