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252Towards safer and more secure citiesThere have beenmany examples ofprojects that havebeen implementedin a locality becausethey have been seenelsewhere and havebeencopied…without anyunderstanding of theextent to which theapparent success ofthe project wasdependent upon aparticular set oflocal circumstancesThe importance ofevaluation has cometo be more widelyrecognized, andmore programmesfunded with publicmoney haveundertaken andpublishedevaluations as acondition ofreceiving supportthe territory of key members of the partnership? Thesignificance of this goes back to the issue of the motivationsof some partnership members. Are they thereprimarily to make an unbiased contribution to the workof the partnership, which includes the possibility ofchange within their own organizations, or are theyprincipally there to defend their territories, which theysee as being threatened by the partnership process?• Does the partnership genuinely add value to what wasdone previously? Is this added value measurable, or isthere a widely held view that the partnership is mainly a‘talking shop’ that adds very little in real terms?These ten questions do not deal with every issue about thework of partnerships; but they are derived from many of themain criticisms that have been made about partnerships.Consequently, careful consideration of these questionsshould help partnerships to structure themselves and theirwork in ways that help them to overcome many of thesecriticisms. Underlying all of this is the question of commitment.Are people truly committed to partnership processesbecause they see them as having the potential to add value toexisting methods of working, even if this challenges theirexisting political or executive territories? Or is this processmerely fashionable window dressing, which is not going tobe allowed to operate in challenging ways but is merely thereto give the impression of change and modernity? The will tomake partnership work for the benefits that it is capable ofbringing, rather than to confine it to the margins by refusingto allow it to challenge existing orthodoxies and territories,is of fundamental importance. This is, in particular, achallenge to local authority leaderships since they often findthemselves in leadership roles in relation to the process ofpartnership and thus need to set the tone for what thepartnership is and what it could become.Adaptation to local circumstances, ratherthan uncritical borrowingThere have been many examples of projects that have beenimplemented in a locality because they have been seenelsewhere and have been copied, sometimes without anyproper evaluation of the original project and almost alwayswithout any understanding of the extent to which the apparentsuccess of the project was dependent upon a particularset of local circumstances. It is easy, in one sense, to see thesuperficial attractions of an approach of this nature – it mayappear to offer a quick fix, it certainly gives the impression ofaction being taken, and it appears to short-circuit the learningprocess. Many projects of this nature, however, haveproved not to be as successful as was hoped, and from thisexperience has come a greater willingness to recognize thatborrowing what appear to be good ideas must be dependentupon an understanding of the particular context in whichthey were originally applied and a recognition of the necessityto think carefully about how they might need to beadapted to local circumstances. These circumstances mightbe physical, political, cultural, resource or skills based, or ofmany other types. Indeed, a simple list such as this underlinesthe need for care when undertaking such activitiessince any one or a combination of these activities could besufficient to make something that is apparently very effectivein one locality more doubtful in another.A good example of this is the difficulty often experiencedin applying ideas from the developed West to thedeveloping world. For example, the British approach tointegrating planning for crime prevention within planningprocesses may be seen as a useful model. But this hashappened over a long period of time in a planning systemthat is now well established and in a police force that hasadopted CPTED as one of the areas where it will offer crimeprevention advice and in so doing will liaise with planners.Even so, there are limitations in terms of what it has yetachieved and there are areas of controversy between police,planners and the development community that remainunresolved. 41There are also important issues about training, aboutbuy-in to this philosophy, and about how well connected thisthinking is with other policy drives. None of these thingswould necessarily stop other localities from going down thisroad or from trying to learn from the British experience. Butthey all should cause people to stop and think carefully abouthow to do this in their local context where the likelihood isthat many or even all of these characteristics may be different.In particular, how to fit such an approach into localplanning systems given their stages of development, how todevelop capacity among planners and the police in order tomake something like this effective, and how to generateacceptance of an approach of this nature given the otherpriorities of planning systems are important questions thatneed careful thought.The importance of evaluationA major review of crime prevention programmes in the USthat was published in 1997 concluded that ‘Many crimeprevention initiatives work. Others don’t. Most programmeshave not yet been evaluated with enough scientific evidenceto draw conclusions.’ 42The situation has probably improved: the importanceof evaluation has come to be more widely recognized, andmore programmes funded with public money have undertakenand published evaluations as a condition of receivingsupport. 43 Nevertheless, the case for evaluation still needs tobe made because there is much that is done in this field thatis either not evaluated, is assessed in the most perfunctorymanner or is declared to be successful without much (if any)evidence to support such a claim. The review by UN-Habitatof the experience of delivering Safer Cities strategies inAfrican cities 44 not only reinforces this point, but alsofocuses on the different kinds of evaluative activity neededat various stages of the Safer Cities process. These are asfollows:• at the stage of the initial assessment of the issues;• when thinking about whether the strategy actuallyseeks to address the issues identified as fully and aseffectively as possible;