Coordination of Local Action for Security

The Swedish Government's 1996 national crime prevention program "Our collective responsibility" emphasizes that crime must be dealt with in the local community, using a broad approach and involving the public and different local actors in collaboration. Local authorities are largely autonomous and the Government guides local action by methodological and financial support from the National Crime Prevention Council (Brå).

The program called for the formation of Local Crime Prevention Councils. Since 1996 the number of councils has steadily grown. Councils have become more active and focus on a wider range of issues, e.g. alcohol/drug prevention, public safety and security, and a focus on youth offenders. They are also increasingly knowledge-based and use a variety of methods.

Since the 1990s, prevention has developed from local special projects to become a central goal for all police as part of the problem-oriented approach. Currently police follow an intelligence-based model, and a new workable definition of what "crime prevention" is, in police context, is being evaluated for further implementation. Since 2008, all regional police authorities are required to sign a Cooperation Agreement with local authorities. The purpose is to create structures for cooperation, despite somewhat different goals and organizational types.

Brå strategically plans its financial support to fund evaluations of local crime prevention projects to achieve a more knowledge-based approach. Increased inter-authority cooperation is key to success and local actors stress the need for higher-level support. A future challenge is to focus on problems where the goals of different authorities may diverge, for example recidivism and organized crime.

When it comes to upholding law, order, and public safety at the local level in Austria, a variety of current issues and developments deserve further attention: In the Republic of Austria, a federal state with nine provinces and over 2,300 municipalities, many aspects of daily life are governed by local or regional authorities. Crime prevention programs, such as the one between the Federal Police in Vienna and the Viennese Chamber of Commerce, helped tackle different crime phenomena in Austria's largest city. Vienna also formed a platform of public safety and civil protection stakeholders, called "K-Kreis" ("C-Circle"), in which numerous agencies such as the police, the fire service, the military, and various city departments co-operate. But not only large cities are in the focus of local security efforts: In 2013, the Federal Ministry of the Interior introduced a new program to reinforce community policing in villages and towns without a police station. Specifically assigned officers of the Federal Police, so-called "local security managers", regularly come to smaller communities to increase police presence and to make themselves available to the public for their concerns and observations. The concept of these "village police officers" is laid down in the joint initiative "Safety in our communities", which was launched by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Austrian Federation of Municipalities ("Österreichischer Gemeindebund") on 1 May 2013. Some Austrian provinces closed new "Security agreements" with the Federal Ministry of the Interior.  The agreement with Upper Austria was signed on 16 September 2013 and also includes the deployment of permanent Federal Police officers in rural communes. Aside from the nation-wide Federal Police, around 40 municipalities still have their own municipal police forces. While some closed their doors lately, others are gradually strengthened. At the same time, a growing number of communities look for other solutions to get uniformed personnel onto the streets. They increasingly draw upon city wardens with limited competencies or even private security firms with no public authority whatsoever. 

In the past few years, the concept of community-based crime prevention has experienced an enormous upward trend in Germany. However, due to the extremely heterogeneous spectrum of various organisational forms and a wide range of substantive approaches, critical voices have become louder; they fear that the concept of community-based crime protection will be diluted and eroded. The "German Forum for Crime Prevention" (DFK) has thus taken on the task of contributing toward the continued development and stabilisation of community prevention bodies by developing a guide for community practice. Above all, the just-published guide identifies structural elements that have proven to be either necessary and beneficial or an impediment to the planning, establishment and work of community prevention bodies.

It is based upon a secondary analytical assessment of selected publicly accessible literature on the topic of "community crime prevention," which posed the question of which prerequisites and framework conditions are discernible for effective community prevention work, and the extent to which impulses for the initiation, optimisation and revitalisation of community forms of institutionalisation may be gleaned therefrom. The results of this analysis have been submitted for evaluation to prevention practitioners from the DFK Working Group "Cities for Safety, Tolerance and Non-violence" within the scope of a Delphi Survey. Relevant for the study was the question of whether the abstract parameters of success and design could be confirmed with the specific experiential insights in the communities of the DFK Working Group.

I will give an an overview of the most important results and recommendations:  Some of the parameters of success and design have proven to be particularly important for helping to meet those challenges.

Belgian criminal policy is integrated in a so-called integral approach. Following this policy, the focus lies no longer purely on crime control, but should include all kinds of safety issues and security problems. Public nuisance and organised crime, for example, but also environmental disasters or road safety should be integrated. Consequently, as insecurity and unsafety exceeds administrative domains, political levels and geographical borders, a multi-level and multi-actor approach is deemed necessary. The central idea is that the local governments should expand their existing crime prevention policies and create an umbrella; a local integral safety policy which takes account of all the safety related policies, organisations and actors on the field. But the local reception of this policy remains nonetheless contested. Our policy supporting research for the Belgian federal government (Bauwens et. al, 2011) suggests that this integrated security policy fails to take the local specificity into account. It presupposes a policy making process where decisions are made on the basis of a rational analysis, but the object of this policy – unsafety and insecurity – is more complex and contested than anticipated. Every municipality not only has a different configuration, but also different ideas, ambitions, possibilities and restrictions in regard to local crime and security policies. Following these findings, I will argue that this local complexity should be the point of departure, rather than ignoring of avoiding it. For example by installing dynamic visiting committees instead of imposing actions or rigid frameworks.

The European Forum for Urban Security (Efus) is a network of more than 250 towns, cities and regions from 17 countries, which was created in 1987 by European mayors under the auspices of the Council of Europe. Based on the principle of "cities helping cities", Efus members share and compare their experiences and expertise to strengthen their local policies and to contribute to the establishment of European crime prevention policies.

For Efus the question of the right institutional setting to coordinate local action for security is one for which there is no general answer or one size fits all model; rather, it seems that different institutional arrangements and traditions can deliver satisfactory results, not at last because they are best adopted to national, regional and local realities. However, Efus members agree that the work for urban security should be guided by general principals. The Manifesto of Aubervilliers and Saint-Denis provides of the European Forum for Urban Security provides such general guidance as well as concrete recommendations on various issues of urban security.

The presentation will outline the principals of the manifesto, discuss its recommendations on methodologies and the interaction of different levels of governance and show at the example of France - a country not represented at the conference- how they can be implemented in practice and where difficulties arise.