Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Reducing urban crime and violence
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2 as an important part of this process, four of the six
groupings of policy responses to crime and violence (see
the previous section on ‘Scope for the continuing development
of key policy responses’) have attracted
particular interest: enhancing urban safety and security
through effective urban planning, design and
governance; community-based approaches; reducing
risk factors; and strengthening social capital;
3 the move away from ad hoc initiatives and towards more
programmatic approaches encompassing some or all of
the approaches described above, backed by broad strategies
and detailed understanding of the issues on the
ground;
4 the use of the partnership mechanism as a key vehicle
for delivering programmes of this nature;
5 the growing recognition of the need to adapt solutions
to local circumstances, rather than to borrow uncritically
from elsewhere;
6 the growing acceptance of the need for honest evaluation
of initiatives and for publicizing such material.
Before undertaking this task, however, it is important to
make the point that it does not follow automatically that just
because something has been identified as a policy trend, it is
inherently desirable. There are several reasons why
something might become a ‘policy trend’, one of which is
the process of emulating something else in the desperate
search to find some action to undertake. Another is the
observable point that some policy ideas do become fashionable
for a period of time. Thus, in order to assess the merits
or otherwise of these trends in relation to particular circumstances,
the following discussion includes a brief analysis of
the strengths and limitations of each trend in question.
Broadening the range of responses to
problems of crime and violence
The first trend identified is the move away from the traditional
reliance on the police and the criminal justice system
towards the idea that crime and violence are complex
phenomena that require broad-based responses. For ease of
reference, these added approaches will be referred to as
non-traditional. The reasons for this policy trend are
complex; but two related lines of argument are outlined
here.
The first is that in many countries the traditional
approaches were seen as increasingly struggling to tackle
crime and violence effectively in societies that were becoming
more complex and less reliant on historic family and
community structures. Thus, there has been a growing need
over the last 30 or 40 years to explore other approaches that
could complement the work of the police and the criminal
justice system. This does not imply that traditional work has
remained largely unchanged during the time in which other
approaches have been explored, although there have been
criticisms about inflexibility and slowness to change in this
context. The growing police interest in CPTED in some parts
of the world and the increasing adoption of community policing
models can both be seen as illustrations of adaptations of
this kind that have been taking place. Nevertheless, it
became clear that this search for alternative ways of tackling
what was widely seen as an increasingly sophisticated
problem was not confined to changes within the police and
the criminal justice system, but also needed to encompass
other areas outside of them.
The second reason why this policy trend has taken
root is that it has been recognized that the nature of the
response must be congruent with the nature of the problem.
Thus, the growing recognition that criminal behaviour and
opportunity are often a function of economic and social
circumstances, as well as the recognition that technological
developments have assisted criminals, as well as the process
of fighting crime, have together seen the development of
more broadly based approaches to tackling crime and
violence.
The main strength of this approach of broadening the
range of responses is that it appears to be appropriate to the
task in hand. To use a simple example: if it is, indeed, the
case that the likelihood that young people will embark upon
a life of crime is related at least in part to both educational
opportunity and to effective processes of transition between
school and work, then measures that seek to address these
issues head on are more likely to be successful than the
traditional work of the police and the criminal justice
services. A related strength is that, by definition, broadening
the range of responses to problems of crime and violence
also extends the numbers of people and groups who are
involved in processes of this kind, and thus adds to both the
range of possible responses they might identify and to the
numbers of people who are prepared to participate in implementing
chosen actions.
These are real strengths, although they also represent
challenges in the sense that the process of ensuring that
these theoretical advantages are always captured, in
practice, is a complex one in terms of issues such as forms of
partnership operation, seeking agreements for all affected
parties, including local communities, and effective coordination.
The main weakness of this approach is that it can
deflect attention from measures to ensure that the police
and the criminal justice system are fully ‘fit for purpose’;
indeed, it can be seen as downgrading the importance of
these traditional services in the ever widening search for
alternatives. It is very important that the approach adopted
does not see this as being about alternatives to efficient and
effective police and criminal justice systems, but rather sees
it as being about the identification of complementary activities
that are simply more appropriate for the particular
challenge being addressed than expecting the police and the
criminal justice system to do what they are not primarily
designed to do.
Available evidence from the experience of African
cities in establishing Safer Cities projects indicates that
tackling problems in these ‘traditional’ areas of the police
and the criminal justice systems is vitally important, and that
it is necessary to look for, and to encourage, change in areas
where existing practices may be contributing to the problem
rather than its solution. 27 Two very difficult illustrations of
this point are the fight against corruption and the need to
In many countries
the traditional
approaches were
seen as increasingly
struggling to tackle
crime and violence
effectively in
societies that were
becoming more
complex and less
reliant on historic
family and community
structures