Attended by representatives from ten countries on four continents, the ICPC’s inaugural International Training Institute, organised in collaboration with the University of Ottawa took place in Montreal at the beginning of October.  The participants attacked the challenge with gusto, and the ICPC would like to thank everyone for their generous support.

 

The main purpose of the Institute was to further the ICPC’s mission of improving strategic implementation of crime prevention by offering practical and advanced training to its member governments and organisations. 

 

ICPC’s members share a common, fundamental belief in crime prevention.  Most also share similar challenges in implementing sustainable crime prevention policies and programmes, whether in terms of negotiating between the different levels of government and other stakeholders, or of learning how to make the best use of the experiences of other countries.  

Another aim of this pilot was to bring together experts from various fields related to crime prevention to establish a curriculum which will enable countries to share and learn from each other’s knowledge in the field.   It sought to transcend political, administrative, institutional, and cultural differences finding relevance for participants with a vast range of experience, including senior police personnel, representatives of local, provincial, and federal governments, academics, and practitioners.


The Institute was organised around a series of ten themes, starting with a general consideration of the history of crime prevention and international standards and strategies and moving on to more specific areas such as women’s safety, preventive policing and youth crime prevention. 

The aim of this broad curriculum was to help determine the essential contents and structure of future international training seminars and also to enable the ICPC to determine the viability of future Institutes, as well the key clientele and best learning methods.  Given, for example, the vast cultural, geographical and political differences between, for example, South Africa, Belgium, Chile and the United States, what can they learn from each other?  Linking nations with similar concerns and facilitating exchanges contributes to understanding commonalities as well as differences and helps side-step models of social development which are inappropriate to the lived experience of local communities.  It also goes a long way towards challenging simplistic and unhelpful dichotomies such as the division of countries into ‘rich’ and ‘poor’.