Local Government

Discuss why and how local government has a role in crime prevention with specific reference to arrangements in NSW and explore future directions for local government involvement in crime prevention.

Today, the role of the local government essentially provides more than just the basic services. Local government plays a major role in the development of crime prevention or community safety within New South Wales. The local government has been active in achieving the goal of improving the quality of life and decreasing the fear of crime by developing and delivering relevant crime prevention strategies in order to make people feel safe and secure within their communities. Shaw says “ local governments have come to see community safety as a basic human right and aspect of the quality of life of communities” (Shaw, 2001: iii). This essay will look more in depth at local government and its connection with crime prevention. It will be broken into four main parts starting with why local government has a role in crime prevention, followed by how local government has a role in crime prevention, the challenges and finishing with the future directions of local government involvement in crime prevention.

Firstly, people rarely view the safety of their community as the sole responsibility of the police and the criminal justice system. This is due to their efforts, which simply deal with the aftermath of crime, rather than preventing it (Shaw, 2001). In addition, lack of police resources has seen police officers working under substantial constraints to accommodate all of the public needs for security, thus why local communities are working together with local governments to do more in defeating crime by implementing crime prevention methods which aim to intervene before the crime occurs (Edwards, 2005). Yet it is not only the increasing expectation from the people for local government to be responsible for instigating or directing action for crime matters, but businesses, State and Federal government also have expectation of local government to address crime (Shaw, 2001).

Local government has been recognised as a key component in leading community crime prevention initiatives. This is based on research that shows a great deal of crime is very local in nature. For that reason, local government have the ability to filter crime out across the community as they are well placed to co-ordinate and manage crime preventive responses (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2004). The local government also has the skill base and appropriate management infrastructure to deliver programs and tends to have greater knowledge about crime and disorder within an area, which makes applying that knowledge to crime prevention activities very highly effective.

Local government or local authorities are the closest source in understanding and aiding the needs of the community. Weatherburn comments, “local government is in a somewhat better position to influence the supply of opportunities and incentives for involvement in crime, through their development control plans and the services and recreational facilities they provide” (cited in Clancey, 2008). This emphasises that local government is the best organisation to handle community safety and to despense services.

Local government is also best suited to carry out audits, which involves walking around public spaces such as shopping precincts and train stations, in order to assess problem areas and discuss what can be done. People who know the area best such as residents, community organisations and businesses are actively partaking in these audits with local government, which can bring all sections of the community together in conferring and revealing the audition findings (Bankstown Council, 2008). Local problems require local solutions and using this subsidiarity function, meaning to ensure that decisions are taken as close as possible to the citizen (Oxford University Press, 2007), can collaborate ideas and strategies in order to make crime prevention much more apt and even more potent.

The subsidiarity function gives out the ingredient of community ownership over the problem of crime. Local government that are close to the people allows the community to take ownership over crime in their locality, resulting in the community wanting to solve the problem and getting the community to work with local government in taking responsibility of crime. Bankstown Community Safety Committee is a reflection of this with its slogan stating "Community Safety, Everybody's Business" (Bankstown Council, 2008). Having this element of ownership allows the best suitable crime prevention outcomes, which include environmental design, land use and zoning (i.e. ...

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There is also the great concern of how much crime can cost our communities with the Australian Institute of Criminology estimating that crime costs the Australian community up to $32 billion a year (Bankstown Council, 2008). This is due to expenditures on policing, the court system, prisons and the security industry. Shaw argues, “The costs of maintaining criminal justice and correctional systems have similarly risen to unprecedented levels” (2001: 1). With this in mind, implementing crime prevention methods such as early intervention program that target risk factors such as Schoolready or CPTED principles that use improved street lighting technique are effective measures and can save all levels of government and the public money compared to the expenses of the criminal justice system and the victims of crime costs, etc (Homel, 2005).

Local governance in crime prevention has come about due to the problems with federalism. The Australian federal system does not recognize nor take much responsibility for ‘urban issues’. Lawson and Gleeson remarks “Local government is not recognized in the Constitution” (2005: 335) but is seen as the state government’s responsibility. This raised tension and perplexity between the three-tiers of government (Commonwealth, State, Local) of who would address the problems within localities and who would fund them. It is said, “ financial dominance of the Commonwealth over State and local governments has affected the way in which cities develop” (Lawson and Gleeson, 2005: 335).

The 3 tiers of government are often overlapped and furthermore the commonwealth policies were considered a failure upon local communities. However State government challenged the Commonwealth and stood up to vigorously engagement into meeting the needs of local affairs. This resulted in a new deregulated structure, better known as ‘reterritorialised’, ‘reconfigured’ and ‘rescaled’, that saw a movement away from local government as the only service provider, especially in the circumstance of neo-liberalism, and saw the escalation of private providers, which has seen local cities/communities develop greatly due to the global economic resources being pumped into those communities (Lawson and Gleeson, 2005). Examples of two positive outcomes from a well-built economic locality are employment opportunities and the quality of local amenities and infrastructure (Clancey, 2008). Overall this movement from government to governance, meaning using all the services around rather than just government services, has seen success of local initiates. (Lawson and Gleeson, 2005).

Secondly, the role of local government in crime prevention has expanded due to the clear picture that relationships between local businesses, services, police, schools and other stakeholders must be strong and collaborative in preventing crime (Shaw, 2001). Local government have been mobilizing these local partnerships in order to develop an agreement about the needs to work for community safety, a broader focus on the issue of community safety and security as a public good, to targeting and intervening risk factors as a means of reducing crime and other social dilemmas (Shaw, 2001). The use of media campaigns is another source used by local government to get communities involvement and responding to issues around their municipal area.

Local government can be a catalyst in making a difference and a vehicle for the set up of partnerships with other key agencies (AIC, 2004). Local government is responsible for crime prevention planning and from these agencies such as youth, employment centres, family, drug and alcohol services, police, schools, can come the establishment of a crime prevention committees. Whose aim it is to analyse the crime profiles and determine which crime is an issue and to create a plan that can be implemented to prevent the crime (Crime Prevention Division NSW Attorney General's Department, 2007). Furthermore local government can assist these committees through funding and seeking endorsements and help with brainstorm potential projects and negotiating future partnerships.

Cherney and Sutton remarks “crime prevention planning at the local level is crucial…it affords a basis for innovation: providing a platform for experimentation, lateral thinking and flexible problem solving”(2007: 367). This is beneficial for a locality as local government and its partnerships with people who are part of the community have an inside knowledge of the way the area works. These people know which crimes are problematic in the community and perhaps a greater understanding of who could be the offenders. They would also have an idea of what steps can be implemented to decrease the crime (Cherney, 2004).

Garner states, “Local government can be effective in coordinating crime prevention strategies through their coordination and management of local advisory groups” (2008: 3) For example the local government of Parramatta has put together a draft City Centre Crime Prevention Plan, which has gathered crucial data and information from local police to assist in combating crime. The plan indicates local government’s support of numerous services and programs that have an impact on crime prevention. For instance it highlights what the Parramatta City Council (a local government) does within its role in crime prevention, which includes alcohol free zones to improve public amenity to encourage residence, families and tourists to utilize the area without the fear of drunk fueled problems, City Care teams who keep the area clean, free of rubbish and repair anything damaged endorses a positive vibe throughout the area. They also promote natural surveillance to detect any anti-social behaviour, provide social programs and service and support the Parramatta Liquor Licensing Accord to reduce alcohol related crimes within Parramatta (Parramatta City Council, 2008).

The Local Government Act 1993 (NSW) provides powers for local government and established councils to plan for, develop and manage local areas in the interests of the public. Crime prevention is a heavy focus in the Act as it gives and allows the local government a guide to operate efficiently through using and managing community lands, planning responsibilities, collect rates and taxes to fund services and programs like rubbish removal, provision and management of local parks, programs and activities (Parramatta City Council, 2008). The 1993 Act also permits local government to maintain local amenities, and to handle local regulatory functions including parks, health and safety issues, illegal dumping, public drunkenness and other behaviours in public spaces, and to carry out actions, appropriate to the current and potential needs of local communities and of the wider public (Local Government Act 1993). Crime prevention is an inter-agency endeavor that requires local government to take up the leadership role in steering local crime preventions efforts by ensuring suitable technical knowledge, strong partnerships, planning and vital resources, are at hand (Parramatta City Council, 2008).

The Children (Protection and Parental Responsibility) Act 1997 (NSW) is another piece of legislation that identifies local government and community presences in the crime prevention process. Section 30(a) states that “to work towards a safer environment by fostering community involvement in the development of local crime prevention plans prepared on the initiative of local government councils (with the assistance, at the request of the councils, of the Attorney General) for measures to be taken within their areas to reduce crime” (Part 4). This reiterates that local government does have an important role in crime prevention.

Local governance has also been significant in practicing valuable crime prevention. Local government and joint up approaches together can undertake existing problematic social policies. Lawson and Gleeson declares, “ The emergence of collaborative or integrated governance recognizes that governments alone cannot solve the challenges confronting urban regions and requires them to adopt new approaches to policy-making and service delivery” and furthermore accentuates that governance can “achieve policy coherence, enhance local democracy and deliver public service…and to develop partnerships across government, community and business that will address complex issues and improve the accountability of these arrangements” (2005: 357).

However prominent local government may be, in the crime prevention process, it still faces many hard challenges. Once again the relationship between the three levels of government can be difficult, with a lack of support for local government, there is the need for more resources such as funding, skills development, access to necessary research and data, and better policy guidance (AIC, 2004). Another challenge is to get local communities, businesses, and agency to form partnerships with local government and to be interested in participating in local ‘urban’ issues like reducing crime within there area. Shaw puts forward “defining communities, developing and sustaining partnerships are not simple or easy tasks” (Shaw, 2001: iii). In other words getting the public to trust local government can be complex and tricky.

Another challenge is having local people part of the process e.g. crime prevention committees, may mean most of the people on the committee does not have the qualifications, expertise or experience to deal with crime prevention (Cherney 2004). This could be a critical problem in a crime prevention plan as it would not have experience and a lack of knowledge compared to other plans that might have a professional working in the industry that has a great level of knowledge an expertise. The local person may not understand what techniques have been tried and which have not, nor which ones work and which do not work. Therefore the level of experience and proficiency in the committee would be very low and consequently crime will persist.

An additional challenge for local government is the “growing urbanisation, increasing poverty and income disparity” (Shaw, 2001: 3). Crime prevention and these problems have lead to ‘social exclusion’ where people are excluded from areas, which puts growing living pressures on their health, employment, safety and other opportunities. The fear of crime and violence by local government and community has seen harsh crime prevention methods such as “fortifying places, excluding individuals, using tougher criminal justice” (Shaw, 2001: 8). Also targeting hot spots of crime using prevention techniques does not necessarily cease the crime but displace it to another area.

Also crime also varies in different location and times, therefore local government have to adopted different approaches and continue to update crime prevention methods, which can be costly and time consuming. Different parts of the community may also want different goals from the outcome of crime prevention, which would create conflict. It is recognised as well that many causes of crime are outside local government boundaries. Risk factors like parrnting, education and issues are predominantly State and Federal government responsibility, thus why the need for enhanced partnerships with all levels government and with the relevant stakeholders (Parramatta City Council, 2008).

The future directions of local government in crime prevention is somewhat bold. Crime will forever be lingering and there will always be an expectation upon local government to fix it.

In conclusion the local government plays a pivotal role in crime prevention. High expectation by the public and all levels of government has made Community safety a major priority for local government. They offer various services and programs and work together in a number of partnerships ranging from police, bussiness, government and non-government agencies, schools, through to the general public. Crime prevention is a much more efficient and cost effective way in reducing crime and local government is usually best suited to employ these crime prevention strategies to co-ordinate and manage crime. Local government has it’s challenges in crime prevention, but getting the right balance of good governce, enhanced policy-making and better prevention planning will help to accomodate future goals of reducing crime. Overall the role local government is to protect and look out for the communty’s best interests and needs and helping achieve that is good crime prevention.

PACT = police accountability community teams

Reference

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