NCJ Number
237752
Journal
Internal Security Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Dated: 2010 Pages: 137-145
Date Published
2010
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the need for community involvement in efforts by police departments to develop and implement crime prevention strategies.
Abstract
The author of the following article points some necessary conditions which must be fulfilled in order to make the decentralization of internal security, which concerns the fight against crime, efficient. Very often strategies concerning crime prevention which were elaborated by different central institutions are unsuccessful. It happens because the essence of the phenomenon is not taken into account and the strategies are limited to a simple pattern of transferring competence to the local government of the lowest level. Such a move very often turns out to be insufficient because a country, while creating a strategy, assume an existence of a strong local society which can bear the common responsibility for the performance of the tasks concerning the fight against crime but which also do not want to or cannot manage it, which in turn make the level of crime and society's frustration higher. The author thinks that a developed society, based on knowledge, conscious of its role and responsibility should become an equal partner for the state institutions within creating proper mechanisms, which will enable the whole country to function as a complex social organism. According to the author one should not identify the security only with individual or collective human behavior. Its nature also relates to the organization of social life and living conditions in order not to allow cases of emergency or cases which provoke such emergency to arise. Within this aspect, entities of the local government, after prior consultation with the police, should make investments in favor of security - especially within monitoring of endangered places or new architectural and town planning solutions. (Published Abstract)