Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
gives the possibility of quick, informal and direct co-operation in the daily work between the
Council and the local participants in crime prevention.
The Crime Prevention Council may, by virtue of its structure, be regarded as a large
“reporting system”. The member organisations report to the sepcialised groups about new
knowledge, collected experience, trends in the present time etc. The reports are worked up in
the committees and communicated to the users through the secretariat and the organisations.
All in all, the fundamental idea in the Council’s communication and advice is that the
recipient:
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- either learns to protect himself against crime,
- or learns to say no to crime as an acceptable form of behavior,
- or is enabled to make a contribution to crime prevention in his local area.
The Council’s interest and target groups are politicians on national and local level, authorities
and organisations, employees in the police, schools and social work etc. and the ordinary
citizens, young as old.
Crime prevention as such is performed locally in the municipalities and local communities
and is based on local needs and conditions.
The Crime Prevention Council is, seen from a local point of view, the place that passes on
specialist assistance, inspiration and the material to implement and develop the local work
further. The secretariat today gives considerable advisory support to local activities. A
recurrent theme - not only in the Council’s organisation, but also in the Council’s
recommendations and advice - is that the Crime Prevention effort must take place in broad,
interdisciplinary co-operation, and that the citizens involved must be active participants in the
work, not just passive recipients of a public benefit. Most of the Danish municipalities have
today, on recommendation from the Council, set up local SSP committees, whose
fundamental idea is an expression of interdisciplinary work that transcends traditional barries.
Crime Prevention in the Nordic Context - “The Nordic Model”
The Nordic countries’ historical, cultural and lingustic affinity constitutes a platform for
extensive and inspiring co-operation within various areas. In keeping with the Nordic
tradition, the Nordic crime prevention organisations also co-operate - Det Kriminalpræventive
Råd (DKR) in Denmark, Det kriminalitetsforebyggende råd (KRÅD) in Norway, the crime
preventing delegation in Finland, Brottsförebyggande rådet (BRÅ) in Sweden and the
Ministry of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs in Iceland. Iceland has established a board for
drug and alcohol prevention in 1997.
The Nordic countries are characterised by having comparatively large public sectors and
generally well developed welfare systems. Public expenditure on social welfare for children,
old people, the socially or physically disabled, is comparatively high. Although the
improvement in welfare has been an end in itself and not a means to prevent crime, it is no
exaggeration to claim that social crime prevention has had and has high priority in the daily
social work and school work in the Nordic countries.
The Nordic crime prevention organisations are national organisations, whose task it is to
further the work within cirme prevention, frist and foremost locally. It is also their task to