ICPC’s Board of Directors also welcomed new member organizations from the USA, UK, Mexico and Canada.  The appointment of these new members, and the renewal of existing ICPC memberships contribute to the organization’s dynamism..

 

A central work area in ICPC’s first quarter is the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, hosted by the Government of Thailand Bangkok, 18-25 April 2005, involving the organization of an expert reference group in 2004, and a workshop on strategies and best practices for crime prevention, in relation to urban areas and youth at risk. 

A copy of our work programme 2005-2007, will be made available shortly on our website.  It details the progression of our work, including the expansion of ICPC’s knowledge base on preventive policies, practices, tools, and documentation, the experimentation of a virtual network between researchers, policy makers and practitioners on crime prevention and Indigenous Peoples, and the preparation of analytical reports on the role of community safety officers, the prevention of residential burglary, and on the various roles of the private sector in crime prevention.

ICPC’s Police Partnership Programme will continue to examine the key issues and challenges of involving the police in wider community safety partnerships, under the leadership of Mr. Richard St-Denis, on loan to ICPC from the Sûreté du Québec. We would like to thank the Sûreté du Québec once again for their generous contribution to the ICPC’s mandate.

Our international city exchange programme, currently involving the cities of Liège, Bordeaux and Montreal, will continue its activities for the second year.  The first year involved the preparation of a tool to analyze public nuisances caused by the use of drugs, and prostitution in public areas.  We know to what extent these phenomena are widespread and recurrent, and difficult to measure at the same time.  The second year of work will focus on the analysis of a preventive action chosen by each of the cities, leading to the design of an evaluation tool in 2006. Following from the lessons learned in this project, we would like to engage other cities in future exchanges on crime prevention and community safety.

We are also resuming our technical assistance activities related to the evaluation of  Québec’s Crime Prevention Policy and the establishment of an Observatory on Security and Prevention in Québec. ICPC is also continuing its work in the area of Women’s Safety, including its continued collaboration with Women and Cities International.

We are pleased to announce several new publications in 2004, (soon to appear on our website). The French Observatory on Drugs and Drug Addictions, will release a report on social damages related to the use of drugs and alcohol.  This includes a major literary review on several subjects including delinquency and violence, insecurity, school and family related problems, social exclusion, work related problems, etc.  Two papers will also be published by UN-Habitat on youth participation and the development of urban strategies. Also, the Québec National Institute for Public Health (INSPQ) will publish a comparative analysis on the practice of local security analysis techniques. Finally,  each month, we will continue to publish our electronic Newsletter, The International Observer.

As we enter into our second decade, we will continue to reflect upon the strategic development of ICPC in the upcoming years.  To help facilitate this process,  ICPC has recently formed a Working Group which will hold its first meeting in Montreal, Quebec later this month.

The ability to reach security at the citizen level, a just and open security that would mainly focus on preventive actions for crime and the path of delinquency remains the most inclusive, as well as socially and financially responsible response. More than ever, it is a "must", since both delinquency and criminality contribute to social and economic decay and the decline of communities, and are also a fertile ground for extremist movements to thrive.

 

Daniel Sansfaçon,

Director General (ad interim)