Download the file - United Nations Rule of Law

250Towards safer and more secure citiesThe extent to whichnon-traditionalapproaches to crimeand violence havenow become wellestablished isillustrated by themain areas of activitypromoted viaUNHabitat’s SaferCities approachtackle the extent to which prisons in some countries 28 havebecome finishing schools for crime, rather than places wherecriminals can be rehabilitated. Both of these involve issuesthat cannot be resolved at the city level, although in bothinstances it is at the level of the individual city where manyof their adverse consequences are felt.Thus, the approach here needs to be one of continuingto find policies and practices that are appropriate totackle both the symptoms and the causes of crime andviolence in cities. Because many of these are socio-economicin nature, and are about much more than simply the criminalintentions of some human beings, it is likely that the range ofsolutions that continue to be seen to be appropriate will bebroadly based and probably will in future be more comprehensivethan has been seen to date. But within theseapproaches, the traditional functions of the police and thecriminal justice system are of vital importance, and it isessential that they are fully involved in the agreed actions,fully aware of their own roles within them and of how theserelate to other roles, and constantly reviewed to ensure thatthey remain ‘fit for purpose’.Developing policies and practices in ‘nontraditional’areasBox 10.4 The place of non-traditional approaches to crimeand violence in UN-Habitat Safer Cities programmesUN-Habitat Safer Cities Programme activities target three main types of prevention:• situational prevention – crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED);• institutional prevention – support to new and alternative forms of justice and policing;• social prevention – actions aimed particularly at groups at risk.In addition, the following are the other significant areas of activity:• promoting local authority leadership and responsibility for urban safety as part of goodurban governance;• supporting crime prevention partnerships and initiatives implemented in collaborationwith local authorities, the criminal justice system, the private sector and civil society inorder to address urban insecurity issues successfully and in sustainable ways;• building city networks to share knowledge, expertise and good practices that can be replicatedin other cities and regions;• conducting training and capacity-building for local authorities and other stakeholders;• disseminating lessons learned in collaboration with partners in the North and South.Source: UN-Habitat, undated, p3Of the six broad groups of policy responses to crime andviolence discussed in the section on ‘Scope for the continuingdevelopment of key policy responses’, one(strengthening formal criminal justice and policing) representsthe ‘traditional’ approach 29 and the other five are themain non-traditional policy responses. Since this section hasalready discussed what was involved in the development ofthese policy responses, the focus of this discussion is on theprocess of broadening out policy development in nontraditionalareas, rather than on the content of these policypackages. Four of these are commonly found in contemporarystrategies to tackle crime and violence; but a fifth (thenon-violent resolution of conflicts) seems to be much lesscommonly utilized.The nine case studies prepared in support of the partof this Global Report that focuses on crime and violencereflect this balance, with the strategies evident inBradford, 30 Durban, 31 Kingston, 32 Nairobi 33 and Toronto, 34and, to a lesser extent, New York 35 and Rio de Janeiro, 36exemplifying this broadly based approach, and the work ondeveloping the Safer Cities Programme for Port Moresby 37also going in this direction. The only one of these thatappears to contain an explicit programme designed aroundthe theme of non-violent approaches to conflict resolution isthe strategy adopted for Kingston (Jamaica). Availableevidence suggests that this strategy, as a whole, hascontributed to the recent reductions of crime and violencein Jamaica, 38 although it is often difficult to be clear aboutwhat elements of success can be attributed to individualinitiatives when several different initiatives are being implementedmore or less simultaneously.The Kingston case is interesting because apart fromits innovative elements, such as the work on non-violentapproaches, it also includes significant measures to improvepolice performance. In addition, it contains an example ofmeasures to target gang operations via Operation Kingfish,which has been successful in recovering firearms, ammunitionand other equipment from gangs operating in the illicitdrugs trade, 39 and which can also be seen as a developmentof the ‘traditional’ role of the police and criminal justicesystems. The lesson that this experience reinforces is thepoint that the process of exploring ‘non-traditional’approaches to crime and violence is not an alternative toseeking improvements in traditional areas, but rather shouldbe seen as a complement to it.The extent to which non-traditional approaches tocrime and violence have now become well established isillustrated by the main areas of activity promoted via UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities approach, which are summarized inBox 10.4.What Box 10.4 shows is a mix of traditional and nontraditionalapproaches, with a strong emphasis on processissues, an emphasis on the leadership role of local authoritiesworking in collaboration with a wide range of partners,and recognition of the need to build capacities in order tomake people and processes more effective. This does notneglect traditional approaches, including the need to supportnew and alternative forms of justice and policing; but itrecognizes that reliance on these alone would offer a verylimited approach to what are seen as major and deep-seatedproblems both for many urban communities and the citizenswho inhabit them and for the process of urban governance.The move away from ad hoc initiatives andtowards more programmatic approachesAs has been previously discussed, urban crime is rarely aone-dimensional phenomenon. It is therefore unlikely that itwill be challenged effectively by single ad hoc initiatives.This does not imply that carefully chosen and well-targetedinitiatives have nothing to contribute. But the recognition of