Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

248
Towards safer and more secure cities
Strengthening
educational
opportunities and
providing means to
smooth the path
from school to
work…are vital
components of many
programmes that
address the
problems of youth in
rapidly growing
cities
It is clear that the
strengthening social
capital has an
important part to
play in strategies to
tackle crime and
violence
■ The fundamental maintenance issue
A critical issue in many initiatives of this nature, however, is
that of maintenance. Typically, this can be problematic
because while the provision of new facilities usually involves
finding capital resources for investment at a particular time,
their ongoing maintenance usually involves locating revenue
resources to, for example, pay people to carry out essential
tasks continuously. This often seems to be trickier than the
initial task of raising capital resources precisely because it is
a continuing commitment that has not always been clearly
thought through at the time of initiating the project. Where
maintenance fails, facilities then become neglected, vandalized
or underutilized. There is the risk that this can actually
undermine the good work done up until then and send out
very negative messages about the communities in which
such facilities are located and the level of care for that
community by the people who live there. This argument is
akin to that of the ‘broken windows theory’, which states
that the negative signals sent out by environmental problems
of the type often caused by lack of maintenance convey
messages that an environment is not cared for and, consequently,
invites crime.
■ Creating social capital and reducing crime
through educational opportunities and
programmes
One of the most basic ways of creating social capital is by
encouraging young people to attend school regularly in order
to develop skills that are relevant to the world of work.
Programmes of this nature are important to the social development
of the individual since the likelihood is that someone
who missed many years of schooling will be permanently
disadvantaged and may turn to crime in the absence of
perceived alternatives. Typically, strengthening educational
opportunities and providing means to smooth the path from
school to work through initiatives such as work experience,
training and apprenticeships are vital components of many
programmes that address the problems of youth in rapidly
growing cities.
The need for programmes of this nature that provide
alternatives for young people to a life of crime in a city like
Kingston (Jamaica) is, in part, illustrated by the fact that 53
per cent of the murders recorded between 1997 and 2005
were committed by males aged 25 and under. 24 Many of the
young people involved in crime come from Kingston’s inner
city communities, which are characterized by low levels of
employment, established gang activities and an associated
culture of violence. 25 Consequently, part of the response has
been to tackle the problems of poverty and social marginalization
that are the breeding grounds for these problems. A
specific illustration of this approach is in the Fletchers Land
community in downtown Kingston, where the Citizens
Security and Justice Programme has initiated long-term
creation of social capital and short-term training of individuals.
These have included remedial education, mentoring
programmes, identifying jobs and skills training, dispute
resolution, homework programmes, continuing education
services, and parenting workshops.
■ Creating social capital and reducing
insecurity through innovative infrastructure
development: Nairobi’s Adopt a Light
initiative
Defining social capital more broadly to include not just the
capacity of communities to address issues of crime and
violence themselves, but also the provision of community
infrastructure that helps communities in this regard, carries
with it the likelihood that some elements that fall within this
definition are likely to be expensive. There are ways in which
issues of this nature can be addressed without being totally
dependent upon the public budget. One of these is the use
of sponsorship. An example of this is the Nairobi Adopt a
Light initiative, which is part of the Safer Nairobi Initiative
that sought to address the widespread feelings of insecurity
brought about by poor or non-existent street lighting. Here,
in order to fill an important gap in public service provision by
improving street lighting in major streets and by adding highmast
lighting into Nairobi’s slum districts, sponsors are
invited to pay an agreed annual sum to adopt a light pole in
return for their advertisement being hoisted on that pole.
This project has been well received by firms and advertisers
since its commencement in August 2002.
The use of sponsorship, in this instance, enabled
more to be done than would have been the case if reliance
had been solely on public budgets. A project of this nature
also illustrates the point that many activities fall into several
categories since in one sense this could be seen as a classic
CPTED project, as well as something that is about improving
community safety infrastructure as a basis for getting the
community more actively involved in the fight against crime.
It is clear that strengthening social capital has an
important part to play in strategies to tackle crime and
violence, and that its resource challenges can be tackled by
thinking creatively and by working across traditional boundaries
between sectors. The effect of strengthening what is
available to a community in terms of physical infrastructure
may also have a positive effect on the dynamics of community
responses to crime. Although this is hard to calculate in
individual cases if it does result in strengthening the will of
communities to fight against unacceptable behaviour, then
that is undoubtedly a very significant added benefit of this
approach.
EMERGING POLICY TRENDS
Chapter 4 identified six emerging policy trends that are
discussed in more detail below:
1 the move away from the idea that crime prevention and
tackling violence are essentially matters for the police
and the criminal justice system, and towards the idea
that these are complex phenomena with a range of
causes that require broad-based responses. The
emergence of crime prevention as a specific concern of
urban policy and urban actors is an indication of such a
shift;