Long Road to Cooperative Safety

Presentation by Daniel Sansfaçon, Ph.D.                             
Assistant Director General
International Centre for the Prevention
of Crime 


At the ICPC offices, we often welcome delegations from around the world. They come to us to gain a better understanding of the Canadian justice system, to learn more about the local policing system in Quebec, or simply to meet our staff of ten during an unrelated visit to Montreal. During one of these visits last year, I described an initiative which was undertaken in Montreal, my home town, to address street prostitution in a problem neighbourhood. I explained how, through this initiative, we cooperated with local residents, sex-trade workers, police authorities and health authorities. Representatives of these groups all sat down together, under the aegis of municipal authorities, in order to work out an intervention model based on mutual respect, conciliation and social mediation. When I had finished, one of the visitors, who was an elected official at the municipal level, said in a derogatory manner, “How sweet of you”. I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly was “sweet” about it. Is there any task more difficult, more demanding , than finding a way to cohabitate in a city? Than to attain civility, that elusive concept which is not defined in any legislation, nor circumscribed by any administrative institution? Civility is, after all, the art of getting along.

While laying the groundwork for this seminar, we came across well-intentioned though doubtful hosts. Why a seminar on delinquency prevention? Why in Senegal? Aren’t our challenges poverty, infrastructure, education, economic development? Aren’t those the problems we should be focusing on? Why focus on local authorities, when security is of national jurisdiction, as delegated to the police?

Every year, the Minister of the Interior or of Public Security releases statistics on delinquency compiled by the police. France recently released its figures, and Canada is about to. Lower delinquency levels earn us kudos, higher levels get lemons. And of course, everyone is quick to correlate delinquency figures to insecurity. Commenting on the statistics released by the French Minister of the Interior, an observer wrote in Le Monde:

“What do the most recent statistics tell us? First, that overall, insecurity levels are slightly down. Second, that violence is up again. It looks like insecurity levels waned in 2003. However, they’re still far above 1998 levels, which were qualified as ‘catastrophic’ at the time by the right-wing opposition.”

How can one leap from delinquency figures as produced by police authorities, to feelings of insecurity? Isn’t it widely acknowledged that there is little if any correlation between insecurity and delinquency? Just ask the British Minister of the Interior: while delinquency levels have progressively fallen over the last few years, the general public feels more insecure overall. In Canada, the Minister of Justice and the Solicitor General tell the same story: while delinquency has declined consistently over the last 15 years, feelings of insecurity, admittedly low compared to other countries, have remained the same or increased.

What’s more, in Canada, while delinquency levels were falling, prison populations were growing and prison terms lengthened. In the United States, over two million people are behind bars, including nearly one-third of African-American men born after 1970. California is cracking under the weight of its three-strikes legislation, spending nearly twice as much on incarceration as on education. All the while, convicts are serving their time and being released at a rate of 100,000 per year.

Society is inventive. It seeks solutions to air pollution. It works towards a more rational and accountable style of fiscal management. It has reformed education and health care systems in an attempt to improve services. It has made progress in many fields. But when it comes to delinquency, most societies are stuck in the past. We are still behaving as though 19th century responses to delinquency were all we knew. Emerging social problems inevitably lead to new penal legislation. Every spike in delinquency is flattened by increased policing. We capitalize on the public’s insecurity to finance new prisons. We’re not just judiciarizing poverty, we’re impoverishing justice.

Another commentator had this to say about the French police statistics:

“We should be less afraid of delinquency levels than of our lack of understanding of delinquency. The official line is that increases in delinquency are due to unfortunate circumstances, and decreases are due to increased policing. This reasoning is unworthy of a sophisticated democracy and of a knowledge-based society.”

Society’s misunderstanding of delinquency is not due to a lack of knowledge but rather to deficient use of knowledge. Politicians are an easy target, but they do not have the tools needed to use existing knowledge wisely and effectively. And researchers feed the flames by generally ignoring public policy, except to criticize.

The fact is that we do have some knowledge in delinquency prevention. Granted, we don’t know enough to come up with the answer to every problem. There is no magic recipe. However, the knowledge base we have built over the last fifty years is substantial, and can be used as a basis for action.

For example, we now have a better understanding of delinquency risk factors. There are the obvious ones which I mentioned earlier: living conditions, poverty, unemployment and under-employment, housing. These factors are important. But now, we also know that there are other, indirect factors at play. After all, not every child born in such circumstances resorts to delinquency.

Among the immediate factors are opportunity, of course, such as access to firearms or unprotected property. Among indirect factors are poor parenting support systems, lack of motivation to observe the rules of law and order, or the absence of systems to identify children at risk at an early age. Too many educators, teachers and youth workers are unable to identify which of their charges are at risk. Finally, let’s not forget the weaknesses of the judicial system, ill-equipped to give adequate attention to counseling, rehabilitation and reintegration.

On the other hand, we know which initiatives have been shown to work. For example, parenting support systems for single mothers, academic assistance for children with learning difficulties, tutoring programs for pre-delinquent teens, intensive follow-up for first offenders. The success of these programs acts as a constant reminder of the importance of evaluating our actions and policies.

We have also learned which police actions work, namely, local policing based on problem resolution and partnership-building with local residents. A police administration focused not on statistics but on solving well-defined problems.

Finally, we have been able to identify the pillars of prevention and of cooperative urban security. They are: cooperative assessment, cooperative development of an action plan, shared implementation of action plans, follow-up and evaluation.

This may sound like one of those mantras that are repeated mindlessly to the point where no-one can remember what it originally meant. Few words are more abused and misused than “partnership”, or more misunderstood. Partnership is more than mere sitting and talking. It’s about sharing information, which is easier said than done. It’s about being open to other people, people that are different from us; and that is perhaps the hardest thing of all. Finally, it’s about fostering a results-oriented culture. Beyond mission and vision statements are concrete results in the field.

We will hear mayors talking about the methodological processes used in UN-HABITAT’s Safer Cities Program. We will hear police representatives talk about local policing involving residents. We will also hear from representatives of civil society, who will tell us about their frustrations, their expectations and promises made but not kept.

We will hear them. Whether we will listen is another matter. And listening does not mean obeying. As I said, there is no magic recipe, no absolute truth. Figures on delinquency are relative because they are incomplete, because they only tell part of the story of disturbances, incivilities, offenses and insecurity. It follows then that our knowledge of these issues is relative. Furthermore, traditional answers to delinquency problems are so rigid that they are little more than knee-jerk reactions. They merit reconsideration. Finally, our individual and collective wills to find a better way and to attain cooperative safety must never be taken for granted; in fact, they need constant attention.

Michel Marcus will remind us that collective safety is a social good. Yesterday, Mr. Van de Vloet said that it is a fundamental right. And just like other fundamental rights, it is a constant work-in-progress and needs constant, lucid attention. Collective safety is a social good because it fosters solidarity, interdependence and the realization that it must be worked at as a group. As long as delinquency is dealt with solely through legislation and the judiciary, history will repeat itself.

Allow me to conclude with the following remarks:

1) The International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is a bridge and a translator linking all of us; I can’t think of a better way to launch our initiatives for 2004 than through this seminar in Dakar.
2) The fact that this seminar was partly financed by Canada, through the Agence intergouvernementale de la francophonie, illustrates the fact that we have found a new field of cooperation for the Francophone world.
3) We must find a way to develop strategic partnerships to finance prevention, which is still the most neglected of delinquency-related initiatives.
4) This seminar must give rise to concrete action for Senegal. To this end, I have asked all those who so kindly gave me their time since my first preparatory mission to Dakar in June 2003 to identify concrete courses of action, some of which will be formally proposed at the end of this seminar.

Honorable Ministers, Mayors and Representatives, Officers of order and justice, members of women’s and youth organizations: delinquency and violence are no less of a problem than other social challenges. In fact, these issues cannot be ranked; they are inextricably linked. Just as we are all linked to one another in our search of fair, humane and integrated solutions.