Safe Cities and Communities

Abstract

The rapid rise in urban crime rates in western countries from the 1970s to early 1990s led to increasing concern about the safety of urban places. A review of the causes of these trends and their resultant drop is followed by summaries of the way that crime should be seen as a socially constructed system which means there is a difference between actual crimes and those that end up being investigated. The major deficiencies in traditional crime-fighting approaches are reviewed before summarizing the key requirements of creating and implementing crime reduction policies in a Safe City strategy. These include the need for widespread recognition of the crime problem and willingness to act to solve problems, the development of a vision to reduce crime, followed by a plan that has several crucial foundational features. Policies adopted under the Safe City banner are not only based on improvements to the existing crime detection and punishment system, but also in changing the urban environment as well as modifying criminal behaviours or predispositions to reduce crime events. Crucial changes involve replacing the silo-like approaches of existing crime fighting and social welfare organizations with more co-operative practices, and adopting policies that have been empirically tested.