Safe Cities and Communities - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 441

in Rotterdam was established to co-ordinate approaches to reducing crime, one
that regularly meets to discuss progress and establish priorities. This high profile
committee is composed of the Mayor, Police Chief, Public Prosecutor, the two Al-
dermen responsible for Security and Neighbourhood Affairs, as well as additional
individuals with special responsibilities for crime prevention or criminal detection.
The involvement of senior figures from various types of government ensure that
priority is given to the policies adopted, as well as encouraging co-ordination be-
tween departments.

12﻽4﻽3﻽9 Range of Policies Adopted

There has been a huge increase in the number of policies suggested and implement-
ed in attempts to deal with crime and its prevention. What these approaches have
shown is that there is no single path to success, perhaps a not unexpected conclusion
because cities have different problems and capacities. Many approaches to summa-
rising these policies have been used, each with their individual advantages, such as
classifications that arrange policies along two scales according to Proactive-Reac-
tive and Repressive-Preventative measures (van den Berg et al. 2006 , p. 23), or ac-
cording to Primary (dealing with the whole population), Secondary (people at risk),
Tertiary (after crime) initiatives to prevent crime (Devine et al. 2004 , pp. x-xi). A
broader scheme is prevented here, one that addresses the major domains of crime
policies that can be used to reduce crime and its perception, as well as being used to
apprehend and charge criminal activity to prevent recidivism. These domains are:
Crime Detection and Consequences; Area-Based Approaches; Behaviour Modifi-
cations; and Societal Policies, although it is inevitable that some individual policies
may overlap such broad types. Each of the domains can be divided into a smaller
number of categories that focus on specific policies that have been used by vari-
ous Safe City initiatives, although some pre-date the formal creation of such plans.
Since crime is a consequence of many factors, Safe City strategies recognize that
crime will only be effectively reduced in all areas by a combination of these poli-
cies, although it must be noted that not all of these can be applied by municipal
based administrations alone.

12﻽5 Crime Detection and Criminal Consequences

12.5.1 New Policing Policies

Despite the general criticism of the effectiveness of the existing police-judicial-cor-
rections systems in the last decade there seems little doubt that these agencies will
continue to play a major role in the attempts to contain and reduce crime. However
many new policing policies have been adopted in democratic countries in recent