Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
presence of probationary services in most countries that are supposed to monitor
people released from prison, mainly for good behaviour and remorse. Unfortunately
limited money and trained-staff shortages to provide rehabilitation are typical in
most countries. So if the Enlightenment's idea of prison, then subsequent rehabilita-
tion, was to deter and re-educate, then the current system is seen by many as being
ineffective in achieving such goals.
Some of the responsibility of the current problems lies with the ideological
differences between those who see the consequences of crime as punishment, and
those who take a more nuanced view and argue for greater rehabilitation. Most
of the conservative governments from the 1980s have argued for the former ap-
proach, in which money allocated to the crime agenda has supported a law and
order approach, rather than also increasing the amount of money or resources to try
and re-educate offenders. As prisons have become ever more crowded and increas-
ingly expensive there has been less opportunity for such progressive measures to
be applied.
All these problems have led many to believe that new ways of dealing with the
escalation of crime were needed. Also politicians, government officials and citizens
in many individual cities realised that they had a major role to play in the fight
against crime and its perception, rather than relying only on the existing crime fight-
ing agencies. This explains why the last decade of the twentieth century saw the
emergence of a series of new strategies and policies designed to reduce crime levels
against property and persons.
124
Creating Safe City Strategies
There can be little doubt that individual parts of the existing criminal prevention,
detection and punishment systems have implemented many new measures to be-
come more effective, which have helped reduce many crime rates. Yet increasing
numbers of criminologists believe the individual agency approach is no longer ad-
equate to deal with the problems of crime and that more integrated and compre-
hensive approaches are needed, of which the various types of 'Safe Cities' or 'Safe
Communities' strategies seem to be the most effective. These have been the sub-
ject of many individual reports or comparative research studies in several coun-
tries (van den Berg et al.
2006
; Alberta Justice
2007
). Even the adoption of this
label provides a greater profile for the new strategies adopted in urban areas. Al-
though the content and organization of these Safe City strategies vary from city to
city and between countries, their success depends on the application of several key
factors that underlie the creation, development, and implementation of these plans.
These issues are summarized in Fig.
12.4
and have some similarity with the types
of strategies that underlie many of the other new themes in urban development of
the last decade.
