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Urban crime and violence: Policy responses105partners, and be pursued consistently over a period of time ifthey are to make a significant difference.INSTITUTIONAL ANDCOMMUNITY RESPONSESInstitutional and community responses to problems of crimeand violence are integral to many of the policy activitiesreviewed. This section identifies a few key points in thisregard. Institutional responses to crime and violence cancome from all levels of the hierarchy of governance, and veryoften this is what is required in a comprehensive response toproblems of crime and violence. One of the challenges inthese situations is to get the whole range of responses towork together in a coordinated manner, based upon a broadstrategy and programmes of action. For cities, a typicalproblem might be that they do not control the police andcriminal justice systems, but want these systems to doparticular things to support a city-wide or more localizedinitiative.For higher levels of government, they can typicallyfind this kind of spatial differentiation difficult to achieve,either because it challenges their broad policies or organizationalstructures, or it would involve moving resourcesaround and giving priority to one location over another.Thus, getting all levels of the hierarchy to focus in a coordinatedway on a city or more localized initiative can bedifficult. This, in turn, explains why the efforts of the variousarms of the public sector that are apparently contributing toa project can appear to local people to be less well integratedthan would be desirable for the success of the project. Thisis one of the reasons why the role of the local authority isabsolutely crucial in this process.Local authorities are uniquely placed to take anoverview of their locality and its needs, to represent theinterests both of the city as a whole and of its individualresidents, and to work with others to ensure that anintegrated programme of action is drawn up, agreed andimplemented. They control many of the services that needto be fully involved in this process, and they have goodworking relationships with a range of other serviceproviders. Usually, there is no other key player in the processof whom all this could be said, which is why leadership ofthis process often falls to the local authority. Players shouldalso have one other asset that is fundamental in this process:the strength of their links with local communities.Many initiatives to combat crime and violence arestarted and implemented by communities. Where this is thecase, the role of local authorities may be limited to issuessuch as the granting of necessary permissions and offeringvarious forms of assistance. But many initiatives, by theirnature, are more likely to be initiated as part of a morecomprehensive programme and to be put into practice byone or more partners of that programme. In this case, thecommunity role is more likely to be about any or all of thefollowing:• consultation and the generation of community supportsince it is very difficult to mount successful initiativesin the face of community opposition;• the provision of local information because the knowledgebase of local community members is potentially ofvital importance; and• negotiation over the detail, including what the expectationsare of local communities and what kind ofcontributions they are able and willing to make, becauseeven if communities are not project initiators, they canoften play important roles in helping projects tosucceed.These are highly important to the success of initiatives intheir own right; but community involvement in, and supportfor, projects is important in another sense as well. Forexample, an initiative to encourage members of the public tocome forward and report crimes to the police depends uponwhether or not people are prepared to put aside the reasonsfor not doing this previously and cooperate, which, in turn,might depend upon many other issues (e.g. trust in thepolice in relation to matters such as witness protectionschemes).Many initiatives stand or fall based on their ability toengage local communities as active participants or even aspassive participants. Sometimes, the way in which peopletalk to each other about projects in their areas as part oftheir daily conversations can make a difference to howpositively or negatively people feel about such projects.Failure to engage local communities in the past has stoppedmany ideas that in their own right may well have been goodones from achieving their full potential. Community engagementis central to initiatives in this field since communitymembers are the ultimate beneficiaries of such initiatives.This being the case, the basic principle here which derivesfrom people’s rights as citizens is that initiatives should be‘done with’ them rather than ‘done to’ them.PARTNERSHIPSPartnerships can be seen as both a specific mechanism thatcan be used to encourage interested parties to work togetherand a more philosophical approach that recognizes the multifacetednature of the problems of crime and violence. Thepartnership approach in this latter sense is becoming morefrequently utilized in initiatives to tackle urban crime andviolence because experience has demonstrated that if suchinitiatives are to succeed they need to acknowledge thecomplex and multidimensional nature of the problems theyare seeking to address. This inevitably means that a widerange of players will be involved in processes of this nature,which, in turn, creates the requirement for mechanisms toensure that these contributions operate in integrated andcoherent ways.Partnerships offer both a mechanism of this kind anda framework within which individuals and organizations cancommit to holistic approaches. In addition, there is considerableevidence to support the view that initiatives are morelikely to be successful if they are part of an integratedInstitutionalresponses to crimeand violence cancome from all levelsof the hierarchy ofgovernance, andvery often this iswhat is required in acomprehensiveresponse toproblems of crimeand violence