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90Urban crime and violenceBox 4.4 The government of Western Australia’s Community Safety and Crime Prevention StrategyWestern Australia’s Community Safety and Crime PreventionStrategy is guided by seven principles: sustainability; working bettertogether; inclusiveness; targeted efforts; evidence-based decisionmaking;focusing on results; and sharing knowledge. It is driven byfive key goals, and under each a set of priority actions is identified.The five key goals are:• supporting families, children and young people;• strengthening communities and revitalizing neighbourhoods;• targeting priority offences;• reducing repeat offending; and• designing out crime and using technology.The other two primary components of the strategy involve thedevelopment of partnership processes, and the establishment ofvarious forms of grant funding which are targeted at helping withthe implementation of the priority actions. Partnerships betweencommunities, police, local government and other public agenciesare encouraged at local level throughout the state to develop localCommunity Safety and Crime Prevention Plans, with both stateadvice and resources being available to assist with this process. Thestrategy also identifies five specific funds that will be established aspart of a total spending of AU$15 million on grants over four yearsin order to take this process forward. These five funds are the:• Local Government Partnership Fund, which will help localpartnerships to get established and produce local CommunitySafety and Crime Prevention Plans;• Community Partnership Fund, which will give small grants forcommunity crime initiatives being undertaken with, orsupported by, the police;• Indigenous Partnership Fund, which is specifically for supportingwork on community safety and crime prevention inindigenous (Aboriginal) communities;• Research and Development Fund, which is about supportingtargeted and evidence-based approaches through research andrelated activities; and• Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)fund, which will support the adoption of CPTED principles inthe planning of new development and infrastructure improvements.Source: Government of Western Australia, 2004Nationalgovernments oftenhave a major role toplay in relation tomilitary, securityand police forces interms of policy,funding anddispositionterms of policy, funding and disposition. All of theseelements impact both directly and indirectly upon theexperience of crime and violence in cities. In particular, theways in which police services are directed and managed areof particular significance in this context, and so it is verycommon to see city political and executive leaders wishing toengage in a regular dialogue about these matters, not onlywith national government, but also with the senior officersresponsible for police operations in cities.Third, while there is often an important local dimensionin campaigns to tackle corruption of various kinds, therole of national governments is absolutely vital since thelegal and judicial systems will both have important parts toplay in such initiatives. National governments can also setthe tone for drives against corruption, as part of a commitmentto good governance. It is important that this is doneotherwise individual local initiatives can quickly losemomentum.Sub-national levelGovernance arrangements vary remarkably at the subnationallevel. Consequently, it is difficult to generalizeabout this level of activity, except to note that where itexists, and depending upon its powers, it is quite likely thatimportant components of initiatives to tackle urban crimeand violence will be found. To illustrate this, three examplesof initiatives at sub-national level are described below. Thefirst is the approach to tackling crime prevention in WesternAustralia, where the state has significant powers and seesthe process on which it is embarking as being strategy led. Inthe second approach – a less direct example – the subnationallevel is responsible for putting in place tools thatcan provide a framework within which crime and violenceare looked at alongside other elements that determine publicpolicy priorities in municipalities. This is the process ofpreparing integrated development plans in the province ofKwaZulu-Natal (South Africa). The third example relates tothe role that legislative processes at the state level can playin crime prevention through the Safe Neighborhood Act inFlorida (US).■ Community safety and crime preventionstrategy: Western AustraliaThe lead in developing policies and practices on crimeprevention in Western Australia is taken by the Office ofCrime Prevention. 24 It has six key tasks:• initiating crime prevention public-awareness campaigns;• developing and coordinating strategic and holisticpolicy;• providing advice to state and local government;• undertaking research to establish best practice to beutilized in community safety and crime preventionstrategies;• informing about relevant training and developmentprogrammes; and• providing grant funding for community safety and crimeprevention initiatives.The state’s Community Safety and Crime PreventionStrategy 25 is summarized in Box 4.4.One of the most interesting elements of this exampleis its use of grant funding to implement the strategy. One of