Local elected representatives and local crime

EUROPEAN FORUM

SECUCITES

SAFETY & DEMOCRACY

Local elected officials and crime prevention

With financial support from the AGIS Programme 1 General Justice and Home Affairs European Commission - Directorate

EUROPEAN FORUM FOR URBAN SAFETY

SECUCITIES LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS AND CRIME PREVENTION

Carla Napolano, Project Manager

Anne Wyvekens, Expert

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With financial support from the AGIS Programme European Commission - Directorate General Justice and Home Affairs

Printed : fourth term 2004, Imprimerie Pérolle – Paris N° 2-913181-30-9

EUROPEAN FORUM FOR URBAN SAFETY 38, rue Liancourt 75014-Paris- France tel. 003 (0) 1 40 64 49 00- fax 0033 (0) 1 40 64 49 10 Internet : http://www.fesu.org Email : fesu@urbansecurtiy.org

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Sincere thanks to all the persons who, through their experience and warm welcome, contributed to the outcome of this project.

We want to thank particularly the elected officials and technicians of the cities of Enschede (Netherlands), Fidenza (Italy) Saint Denis (France), Mons (Belgium), Hackney (United-Kingdom) l’Hospitalet (Spain), Arezzo Province, Tuscany Region (Italy), Syvicol (Luxemburg) Deutscher Praventionstag (Germany) for their active participation to the seminars and their availability during the visits.

We sincerely thank all the persons met during the city visits.

Translation from French by Mr J. T. Tuttle JR

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LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS AND CRIME PREVENTION Central issue: Beyond his competence, how does the local elected official position himself on urban security? Does he demand a role? If so, why, what role and how?

PREFACE

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INTRODUCTION

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1. Context and project objectives

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2. The Europe of cities

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3. Methodology - The working party - The process

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4. The plan of the report

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5. The local official in the nine participating countries: politico-administrative data 15 1. LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS IN THE 9 COUNTRIES a) The city: key player in local security policies - Belgium and the example of the city of Mons - Spain and the example of the city of L’Hospitalet - France and the example of the city of Saint-Denis - Slovenia and the example of the city of Ljubljana - The Netherlands and the example of the city of Enschede - The United Kingdom and the example of the city of Hackney

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b) Regional authorities as a bridge between the national and the local 39 Luxembourg and the example of SYVICOL - Italy and the examples of the Tuscany region, the province of Arezzo and the city of Fidenza - Germany and the example of the Land of Lower Saxony c) The city and the State: contrasted relations

2. LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS AND PARTNERS a) The joint structures - ‘Set menu’ or ‘à la carte’

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Two models

b) The players of partnership - Institutional partners - The other partners

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c) Expertise - Internal expertise *‘Local security experts’ *A prevention department - Recourse to outside expertise as needed

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d) The local elected official: driving force of the partnership - The local elected official as ‘ferryman’, as link - The local elected official as initiator of operations

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3.

THE LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIAL AND CITIZENS

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a) The demand of citizens and the reality of insecurity

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b) Two models

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c) Consultation: occasional experience or working method?

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4.

THE LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIAL AND PREVENTION POLICY AS ELECTORAL STAKES 73

a) In praise of pragmatism

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b) A question of words?

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5.

CONCLUSIONS: LEADS AND COMMON DEBATES

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6.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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PREFACE The modesty of an exchange between a few European cities, programmed and financed by the European Commission over a year, does not prohibit thinking about the profound motivation that pushes the authorities of those cities to accept taking time to reflect, even modestly, on the sense of their action. The European confrontation of their questionings and doubts, and their accepting to being published in Europe gives weight to the difficult job of the local official. This publicity is also the Forum seeking to render transparent this dark continent that the cities of Europe constitute as regards their problems of insecurity.

The governance of the affairs of this world sees the promotion of civil society just as much as that of local officials. As much as political personnel occupying the benches of Parliaments or the corridors of central power are undergoing a crisis of confidence on the part of electors, so much do the political personnel in charge of city and regional affairs have a relative attachment with electors. This attachment is created by the link of proximity. Encountering one’s local elected officials in the street, being able to question them in an immediate relation, obtaining answers— even unsatisfactory ones—give content to one’s vote, a reason to vote and—why not? —a reason to stand for the next local elections. The most significant evolutions in the perfecting of democracy and its use are registered in the forms of exercise of the mandate of territorial representatives. All these reforms and evolutions have a go at maintaining the link of proximity with the elector. The challenge is important in the large cities and urban conurbations. This evolution must also take into account the recourse to communication techniques allowing hope for greater citizen participation in decision-making. All these evolutions are only slightly seen on the country level and even less on the European. It is easier to record the constitutional transformations affecting the fundamental balance of powers amongst themselves than the daily improvements in democracy on the local level. And yet, one does sense that it is there, too, that the future of major social issues, such as the integration of immigrants or security, is being played out.

Security and crime prevention are no longer, in themselves, a domain of competence of a single power-holder. Several levels of government are concerned by the implementation of security measures, but increasingly, it is the local level that predominates in the analysis and supervision of measures. The local official is increasingly obliged to take into account spheres of action that the law or budgetary regulations do not necessarily attribute him.

But it is the elector who ‘lays down the law’, and the elector is little concerned with the often-complex sharing out of administrative competences between the levels of power. He will tend to electorally sanction the closest official, for that representative shares all the problems of daily life with him and is supposed to

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have an interest in solving those problems. So it is that an issue as clearly delimited as security has come out of the ‘private preserve’ of the police to also become that of the mayors.

This new positioning of representatives is not always translated by their take-over of new sectors of competence but, at the very least, imposes on them to take an interest in what is being done by all the agencies that are involved with these security issues.

Do these new roles entail new ways of exercising those roles? Or is it simply a matter of adapting management methods and procedures used in other sectors?

How does a representative in European cities, in charge of these issues touching on violence against women and children, drug addition, hate crimes, racial tensions, the prevention of addictive behaviours, burglary of municipal facilities, or violence in schools or public transportation, work? This little, open-ended list illustrates the complexity of what must indeed be called a local governance of insecurity.

With this study made possible thanks to the collaboration of the cities of the Forum that were willing to participate by presenting their local practice of exercising of these new competences, the Forum hopes to contribute to what can be a better approach to a European prevention policy. Indeed, we must fully know the real conditions of implantation and development of local prevention policies in order to be able to improve decision-making on the national as well as European levels. We cannot continue to try to develop the components of policies financed by the European Commission without knowing this ‘cauldron’ at the local level of democracy.

This study, however imperfect, is meant to be an incentive for going more thoroughly into the regulations of governance in the innumerable microcosms that are our local communities throughout Europe. Basically, there is a wager in all that: by dint of exchanging our practises amongst Europeans, and looking for what unites us and what differentiates us, it is the possible appearance, in face of the world, of a European development model facing all the challenges posed by poverty, inequality, exclusion and insecurity. It is indeed in this participation, however indirect, of the European citizen in the elaboration of the dialogue focussing on the common weal, that Europe must affirm an abiding feature in its contribution to world history.

Michel Marcus Executive Director

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INTRODUCTION 1.

Context and objectives

For several years now—and in certain cases, decades—, European and international surveys and polls1 have shown that Europe and her population have a rising feeling of insecurity. In this atmosphere of increased requests for security, as well as in the rise in crimes that directly affect persons and property, whereas, moreover, repressive national institutions are turning out to be incapable of ensuring control of the problem by themselves, the inhabitants’ requests are often returned towards the local level. The local officials, as representatives of the public will, thereby find themselves on the front line, facing the populace that is demanding an improvement in the situation. They have been led to join forces with other partners, in particular the police and justice, to produce local crimeprevention policies. Local partnerships are thereby established on the basis of an implementation of a broadened conception of crime policy.

What is the role played by local elected officials in this situation in continuous evolution? In what form is partnership established, and what are the conditions of its development? Are the representatives ‘key players’ in the prevention policies, capable of best meeting the social demand to which they are subject? The unprecedented place that the prevention and security policies give them is, in fact, of a nature to place them at the centre of said policies. Exactly how is it in countries whose political traditions, institutional frameworks and practises are varied? Is it a matter of a general trend that should be taken up by national and European policies, or is it an isolated phenomenon? What are the questionings and debates to which this evolution gives rise? What lessons or recommendations is it possible to draw from them at the European level?

Studying the role and competencies of local elected officials in the settingup and supervision of local security policies, in order to determine in what way they respond to society’s evolutions; analysing their involvement in local partnerships and reinforcing co-operation between authorities: such are the questions that are the subject of this ‘Secucities: the role and competences of local elected officials in crime prevention’ programme.

Thus, it is not simply a matter of drawing up a list of competences of local elected officials as regards urban security but above all, attempting to understand the role they play in the choice and implementation of urban security policies. That means, beyond the competences as provided for by law, analysing, for example, 1

Ministry of the Interior of Chile, Politicas de seguridad ciudadana en Europe y America latina, Lecciones y desafios. Article by M. Marcus, La politique de réduction de l’insécurité en Europe, Chile, March 2004.

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the way these players assume them and decide to appropriate them. Do they settle for supervising the action of their departments or are they determined to play a driving role in the local security policies? Is security a central concern for them?

And, if they are ready to assume a federating role, is the recognition of this role by the European States and institutions established?

The programme’s objective consists not of an approval of information or determining the profile of the ideal mayor, but rather of an exchange of information and practices aimed at building shared thinking and know-how.

2. The Europe of cities For the past 20 years in Europe, a number of prevention players have sought to stress the importance of the local level as being the best adapted for setting up arrangements capable of meeting the expectations of citizens and consequently reducing the feeling of insecurity.

Our cities and local realities are the material for building national and European public policies and not the opposite. One cannot tack on the same security policy everywhere, indiscriminately. Wanting to ignore specific local characteristics means dooming yourself to failure.

Police and justice, structured and organised into a hierarchy, cannot be the sole players in a successful security policy. Cities must also be recognised as essential players in the fight against insecurity.

Being convinced of the importance of cities in this undertaking is to admit the fundamental role of local elected officials and their partners, who are questioned daily by their fellow citizens2.

Aside from certain documents such as the European Charter (1992), which lays down a series of principles, in particular in Theme 63, and the opinion of the Committee of Regions, which stresses the importance of the intermediate and local levels in the fight against crime, European institutions still acknowledge only timidly a determining role in urban security policies for local players.

As for the Council of Europe, a recent recommendation of the committee of ministers (Rec(2003)21) concerning partnership in crime prevention invites member states to ‘recognise in particular the necessity of involving, in accordance with their Constitution, the local authorities and communities in crime-prevention activities, both as initiators and consignees’.

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Bonnemaison Report www.fesu.org . ‘Prevention répréssion solidarity’ (1982) Topic 6 Security and Crime Prevention, European Urban Charter, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, 1992

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The European Forum for Urban Security (a non-governmental organisation founded in 1987 that brings together approximately 300 local governments) has, since its creation, shown off to advantage the key-player role of local elected officials in the implementation of urban security policies. During the conferences of Paris, in 1996, and Naples, in 2000, which produced the Security and Democracy Manifesto4, the cities that have participated in the discussions have underscored the pertinence of local handling of the crime problem and the necessity of an exchange of knowledge.

In a Europe that is expanding and finding itself confronted with more complex cultural differences, the EFUS considers it fundamental to continue to promote exchange and confrontation in order to increase and improve knowledge and to establish a common background. Cities must compare their local and national experiences so that prevention policies and the discussions concerning them that develop can progress, on the basis of positive experiences as well as failures experimented up to the present.

It is in this same perspective of exchange of practices that, for several years, the European Commission and the Directorate-General Justice and Home Affairs have been promoting co-financing such as the AGIS projects. In the continuation of the projects, supported on this topic by the European Commission5, the present ‘Secucities: The role and competences of local elected officials in urban security’ project, initiated in 2004, is contributing new elements for more in-depth thinking on the pertinence of the handling of urban security problems in the local context.

3. Methodology - The working party For 12 months, this project brought together seven European cities, three intermediate authorities and a syndicate of cities that worked together to draw up an inventory of knowledge concerning the role and competences of officials as regards urban security in eight countries of the Union European.

The choice of partners was carried out so as to obtain a panel as representative as possible.

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www.fesu.org Tools for action, European Forum for Urban Security, 1996: ‘Les politiques partenariales et contractuelles favorisent–elles une approche intégrée et globale de la lutte contre l’exclusion sociale?’

European Forum for Urban Security, 2000 5

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It was necessary that the sample consist primarily of cities, and seven were chosen: Saint-Denis (France), Enschede (Netherlands), London Borough of Hackney (United Kingdom), L’Hospitalet (Spain)6, Fidenza (Italy), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Mons (Belgium). To the degree that, to better understand the effective role of representatives in charge of urban security, it was important to deepen the relation between the different levels (local, intermediate, national), we chose to also have three intermediate authorities participate in the project: the Tucson Region and Provincia of Arezzo in Italy, and the Land of Lower Saxony (Germany).

For Luxembourg, given the fairly small size of its cities, we preferred having the syndicate of cities, SYVICOL, participate, which brings together country’s 118 municipalities and which was capable of providing the other partners with a fairly exhaustive survey of local security policies.

This partnership enabled us to bring together Northern and Central European countries such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom, all precursors as regards urban security and prevention and characterised by national strategies now consolidated, countries of the centre, which are developing rather innovative practices at the local level, and one of the ten countries that acceded to the Union on 1 May 2004, Slovenia, which is beginning to implement practices at the local level. Thus, we had a reasonably representative sampling of the Europe of 2004.

In addition to the geographical factor, the seven partner cities of the project were selected for their differences in terms of size, population and cultural and economic characteristics. The cultural, social and economic contexts indeed play a determining role in the choice of strategies and policies of local officials.

We sought to verify whether these same factors can, in some way, influence and condition urban security policies.

On the basis of these criteria, our sample can be subdivided into three groups.

The first group was made up of small cities, represented by SYVICOL in Luxembourg and Fidenza in Italy, which both represent examples of economically privileged realities, in which the problems linked to crime are not perceived as urgent but rather as a possibility to implement a policy of prevention and maintaining high quality of life.

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Owing to municipal elections, the city of L’Hospitalet left the project once it was underway and therefore participated only in the compilation of the questionnaire and the first working seminar.

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The second group, made up of the cities of Saint-Denis and Hackney— respectively 90,000 and 250,000 inhabitants—brings together, unlike the first group, cities with a fairly high crime rate compared to the national average and rather complex problems. The parallels between these two cities are numerous.

Geographically, they are located in the immediate suburbs of two of the largest metropolises in Europe, Paris and London, and have those advantages but, even more so, the disadvantages. They are affected by the presence on their territory of a fairly high number of different ethnic groups (more than 60 languages are spoken in the town of Hackney) and often, a rather low socio-economic level. The unemployment rates are noteworthy, as is the amount of social housing. The complexity of their social fabric and the continuous increase in inhabitants require of the officials an enormous capacity for innovation and reaction to adapt to the changes and demands of citizens. The priorities of these cities focus primarily on the participation and integration of the various populations present on their territories through the promotion of a local partnership. In the course of this work, it would be observed that the urban security strategies implemented in these cities have fairly similar principles despite their cultural differences.

The third group, consisting of the other cities (Mons, Enschede, Ljubljana and L’Hospitalet), with populations of between 90,000 and 250,000 inhabitants, represents a sample of cities that we can place between these two extremes and which are characterised by complex problems but not of great urgency.

Finally, the two regions—Tuscany (with the province of Arezzo, which is part of it) and the Land of Lower Saxony—represent two examples of innovative regions as concerns crime prevention in their respective countries and which have been trying, over the past few years, to develop integrated and subsidiary urban security policies.

- The process The work methodology was based on the networking of technicians and local elected officials of partner local governments. The work was organised according to a schedule consisting, on the one hand, of two seminars bringing together the 11 partners (12-13 March 2004 in Paris and 28-29 October 2004 in Enschede) and, on the other hand, of fieldtrips to each of the partners involved in the programme (approximately 90 interviews carried out).

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A questionnaire7 was sent to all the partners prior to the first meeting. The objective was to obtain an initial base of general data (demographic, economic, social…) on the city and information on the prevention department and/or the technicians and officials in charge of this area.

The first seminar was the occasion for the partners to mutually present their own problems, their prevention department and their strategies.

In the same way, the fieldtrips, in each of the cities and regions, allowed for conducting interviews—primarily individual—and examining in greater depth the coherence between the officials’ choices and the work implemented by their technicians.

The priorities of these visits were:

Comprehension of the relations existing between the officials and their technicians, as well as methods for exchanging information, the freedom of action and initiative-taking…;

Implemented and prospective actions. What are the city’s priorities as concerns crime prevention? What are the urgencies? What is the budget available for the implementation of actions? What are the tools…;

The partnership and, more precisely, the relations between the local official and the police, justice, civil society and the inhabitants;

The circulation of information. What are the means used and with what periodicity? In the city’s newspaper, is there a space devoted to urban security?...;

The official and his professional career, his political persuasion, his priorities and his point of view in relation to crime prevention.

The persons heard were broken down in the following way: 29% elected officials: mayors or presidents, deputies for urban security and/or peace; 53% technicians and municipal personnel, principal private secretaries; 18% representatives of associations, NGOs and other.

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Available on the website www.fesu.org

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The second seminar, in the course of which it had initially been planned to release the ‘results’ of the visits, was finally devoted above all to discussion between the partners and with a few Dutch elected officials and technicians invited for the circumstance by the day’s host.

Although the participating cities and provincial and regional authorities discussed the rules for dividing up competences in their respective countries, it is understood that strategies and political choices represent realities and options typical only of each contributor and not an overall view of a country.

4. Plan of the report The first part consists of making an inventory of officials’ competences in crime prevention. This is a matter of describing the dividing up of competences as regards security between the national and local levels in eight European countries, as well as an operating description of arrangements in the local contexts of the 11 partners in the project.

The second part is devoted to the analysis of relations between the elected officials and other players through a comparative description of the partnership setups and the structuring of the prevention department.

The third part pays particular attention to the relation between the official and the populace and to the methods used by them to account for their work and make the populace participate in defining the prevention strategy to adopt.

In the last part, on the basis of the information gathered, attention will be paid to the role played by elected officials in the definition and implementation of urban security policies. The discussion engaged on the connection between the security policies and the electoral stakes was broached without being successfully completed. Today, it would deserve more thorough reflection.

5. The local official in the nine participating countries: politico-administrative data To be able to speak about the competences of elected officials regarding urban security, it is first and foremost indispensable to recall the administrative framework of each country and to specify the structuring of its local level, the organs that make it up, their role and the modes for designating or electing mayors or presidents.

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COUNTRY

NUMBER OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES 589 municipalities divided into 262 French-speaking municipalities, 19 municipalities in Brussels and 308 Flemish-speaking municipalities.

STRUCTURE AND DETAILS

COMPETENCES AND ELECT

- the Burgomaster - a town council - a college of burgomasters et deputy burgomasters (échevins).

The town council is the town’s ‘Parliament’, carrying decisions are not laws but regulations and orders that law.

The members of the town council are elected by dire

The college of burgomasters and deputy burgomaster in charge of day-to-day management and must superv decisions.

The burgomaster is elected in the same way as the ot by a majority of the town council to the governor of t He is next appointed by the king to the town council president of the town council and of the college of de representative of the central power and therefore in c regulations and orders of the regions, communities, m council and the permanent parliament.

The burgomaster is also the official of reference as co being the chief of the administrative police on the tow competences of the minister of the interior, the gover institutions) and is in charge of executing laws, edict delegate his attributions to one of the deputy burgom

Belgium

Spain

8,089 municipalities.

Given their size, the cities of Madrid and Barcelona form an agglomeration

- the mayor, - the town council, - the local governmental commission.

The mayor presides over and runs the town council a

The town council is elected by direct universal s remove the mayor from office, and has authority ove The commission of local government is made up of the mayor. Its role is to assist the mayor in the frame

Northern Ireland; 47 unique English local county government councils, 36 urban district councils and 33 London boroughs (including the City of London) in England, the Unitary Authorities in Wales and Scotland (includes 22 unique local government councils in Wales and 32 in Scotland) in Scotland, 1,350 local community councils The local level of Luxembourg is represented by 118 municipalities grouped in districts and 70 syndicates of municipalities.

Luxembourg

called local and intermediate levels.

The county council is an organ with exclusive func executive. The district councils, urban district cou London have local functions similar to the county co

The latest modification that defined a division of competences between these two levels is dated The local town council present in Scotland is an orga May 1997 authority as in England or Wales.

the burgomaster, - the town council, - the college of burgomasters and deputy burgomasters.

The burgomaster is appointed by the grand duke from He is both the representative of the State and the repr the execution of laws and police regulations.

The town council settles everything that is of m member of the college of burgomasters and deputy b by direct universal suffrage with a mandate of six ye councillors, depending on the number of inhabitan according to the principle of absolute majority inhabitants and by proportional ballot for the others.

The college of burgomasters and deputy burgomast

municipalities and the intermunicipal co-operation (syndicates).

- the college of burgomaster and deputy burgomasters

the burgomaster.

The burgomaster is appointed by the government fo renewable) on the proposition of the Queen’s Comm council. He represents the town and executes the mu and security. He has the possibility of occupying ot deputy burgomasters.

The college of burgomaster and deputy burgomaste and a maximum of nine deputy burgomasters, electe council. It constitutes an executive office in charge the council’s deliberations and is responsible to it. useful to the council and answer for its acts10.

The local level in Italy is represented by 100 provinces, 80,103 municipalities and 14 metropolitan areas11.

Italy

- the mayor or president of the province, - the town or provincial council, - the municipal or provincial government.

The provinces are composed of a provincial counci universal suffrage that has a function of general approves the projected budget and execution.

The provincial government12 has broad exe implementation and orientations defined by the pro province.

The president of the province is elected by direct uni

The municipalities are composed of the town cou mayor14. The town council is made up of councillors majority ballot for municipalities of less than 15,000 those of more than 15,000 inhabitants. It is a d orientation competences and approves budgets.

accordance with the orientations defined by the town

The mayor, like the town council, is elected, in inhabitants, with the majority system by direct univ voices, a second round is organised between the tw than 15,000 inhabitants, he is elected by direct univ of valid voices. If no candidate obtains this majority, Approximately 12,500 cities

The local organisation is established by the Land.

Consequently, different systems exist.

The most widespread are:

Germany

the system of the burgomaster the modified collegial system

The German constitution guarantees the administrativ municipal constitutions (the electoral system) presen region to the next. The spheres of competences on w traffic, urban renewal, construction of schools, hospi municipal taxes.

The system of the burgomaster is structured round a suffrage for five or eight years, a town council and a burgomaster prepares and presides over the town cou runs the administration.

The town council is also elected by direct universal s makes decisions and rules on municipal regulations.

The modified collegial system is made up of a burgo municipal administration and a council president (du

The college represents the executive and collegial org deputies elected for six years, with each one responsi The town council is elected by direct universal suffra president and the college and oversees the college’s w

France

36,763 municipalities; three - the mayor, large cities (Paris, Lyon and - the town council Marseilles)16.

The large cities are run by a town council, a council of arrondissements (districts) and a neighbourhood council.

The town council of the municipalities and large citi mandate of six years and presided over by the mayor The municipal administration is ensured by the secre In the large cities, the arrondissement council has town council concerning the running of the area.

The neighbourhood council17 has a consultative char

The mayor represents the executive power and is the representative of the State in executing the law18.

192 municipalities including 11 - the mayor, urban municipalities 19 - the town council - the municipal committee Slovenia

The urban municipalities have more competences tha

The town council, having a deliberative power, is ele suffrage and can number from seven to 45 members The municipal committee is a consultative organ elec

The mayor is elected for four years by direct univ executive power. Since 1999, he is both the head president of the town council20.

The chart shows that the local level, whether it be the English county, the Italian province, the large French city or, more simply, the municipalities, represents an extremely important part of the backbone of Europe. It constitutes a highly complex fabric that is characterised at the same time by numerous similarities.

The local level is structured in several organs: a decisional organ whose members are elected directly by the citizens and generally designated ‘town council’; an executive organ that makes the council’s decisions operational, and an eventual third organ personified by the mayor or burgomaster, that often covers a role of co-ordination and supervision.

In all the countries studied, with the exception of the Netherlands and England, the function of the city’s or region’s ‘first citizen’—be it the mayor or the president—is the expression of the citizens’ will, which takes concrete form through the election. The modes of this election vary from one country to another: it is either direct (1) or indirect (2): (1) Citizens express their preference for a candidate as is the case in Italy. This type of election focuses more on the personality of the candidate and his programme than on the ideology or party he represents. The Mayor is considered first and foremost an inhabitant of the city, who knows its history and priorities and who is, above all, interested in the well-being of the city and its citizens. To such a degree that, often, cities that are historically on the left or right find themselves having to elect, with an absolute majority, a mayor belonging to the opposing party, because he is a well-known and appreciated citizen beyond his political convictions and henceforth represents the right person to defend the city’s interests.

(2) The mayor is chosen from amongst the members of the town council elected by the citizens. He comes from the political majority out of concern for coherence with the wishes expressed by the voters at the time of the election.

In England, cities have the possibility of choosing between the direct and indirect election of their mayor. Currently, only 11 cities have opted for the first method, amongst them the city of Hackney.

Whether direct or indirect, the election of the first citizen (mayor or president) signs the political nature of this function. In both cases, the mayor (who, depending on the country, can stand for re-election indefinitely or only a limited number of times) inevitably sees his mandate end without knowing if he will be able to exercise his role again.

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The case of the Netherlands, where the mayor is appointed by the queen from amongst the professionals who succeeded in the competition required for being mayor, shows a completely different approach to this function. It is conceived as a professional career that includes, before being undertaken, a powerful vocation for it means being mayor for life21. The citizens’ will is taken into account by the fact that the town council, designated by direct election, can object to the queen’s choice and ask her for a new mayor to be designated. The possibility of switching to a system of electing the mayor and abandoning designation by the queen is currently being debated.

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The mayor’s mandate in the Netherlands is for life. He can be designated (by the queen) in the various cities.

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Chapter 1

LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS IN THE 9 COUNTRIES

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LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS IN THE 9 COUNTRIES City, province, Land or region, the ‘local’ is multiple, as is its contribution to the production of security. The different partners in the project brought a double ‘light’ to play on this issue: first, from a general point of view, through the rules of the sharing out of competences in their respective countries; then in a particular register: that of their own strategies and political choices. The two aspects will be developed successively for each of the examples. We shall first direct our attention to the cities, ‘key players’, then to the intermediate levels, before concluding with a brief development on the—variable—content of relations between the local and national levels.

a) The city: key player in local security policies - Belgium and the example of the city of Mons In Belgium, security is a responsibility shared between the Ministry of the Interior and the municipal authorities. At the federal level, the Secrétariat Permanent à prevention policy (SPP)22 was created within the Ministry of the Interior, specifically in charge of crime prevention. Its principal mission is to support the local prevention initiatives and the country’s general prevention policy23, put together a documentary collection and carry out analyses relative to the phenomena of crime, set up training and working parties and manage and supervise the Security and Society Contracts as well as Prevention Contracts.

Since the reform of the police in 199824, 196 local police brigades take care of the police function of the municipal territory in areas called ‘unicommunal’, where the burgomaster exercises his authority over the local police brigades and in areas called ‘pluricommunal’, where the management and organisation of the local brigade is entrusted to a police college made up of the burgomasters from the area concerned25.

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SPP, created by royal edict on 16 May 1994.

The SPP organises its support work for local initiatives round six main themes that take priority in the contracts: burglary prevention, prevention of auto theft and theft from automobiles, the prevention of pickpocketing, the prevention of bicycle theft, the problem of drugs and violence.

24 Law of 07/12/98 The police was divided into two levels: the local police and the federal police. These two levels are autonomous and are dependent on distinct authorities.

23

25

In this case, each burgomaster remains responsible for the security of public order and health on the territory of his municipality.

30

Cities and municipalities can, in certain conditions26, be given a Security and Prevention Contract in which the burgomaster assumes the duties of manager.

This joint set-up, launched in 1992, and which currently concerns 73 municipalities, has been modified on several occasions, in particular with the reform of the police. Once selected, the cities obtain the supra-local financing27 necessary for the efficacy of the arrangement.

In the beginning, rather than favour the development of a concerted action plan with the future local prevention partners, the burgomasters often—but not always—preferred to delegate the elaboration of local prevention policy to the municipal police chiefs or their prevention officers28.

The City of Mons is the principal city of the industrial district of Le Borinage and the administrative and judicial county town in the province of Hainaut. Greater Mons includes 19 former municipalities. The proximity of the major trunk roads to Brussels, Liège and Northern France has always had an influence on crime on the territory. To respond to this problem, the city of Mons developed a crime prevention policy quite some time ago. It has gone through the successive steps of federal prevention and security policy: pilot project, prevention contract, security contract and, today, security and society contract.

In Mons, as in all Belgian municipalities, the burgomaster has police competences: he is the local police chief and in charge especially of executing laws and police regulations; in case of disturbances of public order, danger or unexpected events, he can take over the police regulation. He is the chief of the administrative police, thereby in charge of keeping the peace and ensuring the population’s security and well-being. He can call out the federal police when the public order is seriously disturbed. Up until the merger of the local and federal police29, he had a competence as judicial police officer. As such, he was in charge of looking for infractions punishable in a police court. As the first magistrate of his town, he is informed of all affairs concerning his town.

26

The municipalities obtain a contract in accordance with one of the following criteria: the urban character (a population above 60,000 inhabitants), the crime level and the economic situation (the lowest per capita revenues).

27 By the federal State and the Region (regional subsidies allow for hiring municipal mediators as well as additional police auxiliaries).

28 The lack of experience, competence and expertise of most of the burgomasters in the area of security explains this approach that contributed to reinforcing police domination over the elaboration of security contracts (NB: since the reform of the police, the ‘police’ section of the contracts no longer exists).

29 Reform of the police in 2002

31

The prevention department of the city of Mons celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2004, with the production of a document that sums up the activities set up since the beginning and now known by all its inhabitants.

- Spain and the example of the city of L’Hospitalet As concerns dealing with crime, Spain, in a decade, has gone from a repressive model to an approach relying more on prevention and co-operation with the towns and local authorities.

The structure of the State imposes a close collaboration between the levels of government30 and the principal players, such as the ministries of the interior, justice, social well-being and health, the police (which run the urban areas), the Guardia Civil (which deals with the rural areas) and the local officials. Politicians and representatives of the police meet regularly at the three levels (Juntas Locales de Seguridad) to implement specific programmes and launch thematic or local studies.

The work concerning urban security is focussed on dissuasion, the reduction of situations propitious to crime, and social prevention for groups at risk, but the main debate still remains centred on dividing up competences between the different police forces.

At the local level, the players in charge of following the issues of security are primarily the mayor, the official in charge of the police and the official in charge of social assistance. Most often, the cities do not have a department devoted specifically to prevention or urban security.

The competences conferred by law to the municipalities, jurisdiction county towns, concern security and therefore must themselves dispose of a municipal depot for persons in custody. This department, which occasionally serves for executing prison sentences, represents a large responsibility for the town councils concerned, in addition to the considerable cost that it represents and which is still not compensated by the subsidies of the Generalitat, which should cover it.

Security being a legislative competence of the State, it is primarily the state laws that determine the municipal competences in this area31. However, whether it be by the competence attributed it by the ‘Autonomous Status’ as 30

The main part of the activities and resources is concentrated in the autonomous communities.

Spanish Constitution. Organic law of 2/1986, of the State Security Forces, and Organic Law of 1/1992, of Public Security.

31

32

concerns the co-ordination of local police forces or a consequence of the deployment of the Mossos d'Esquadra, the fact is that the Generalitat of Catalonia also resolves this issue and has just perfected the contents and limits of the municipal competences in this area32. Consequently, municipal competences are defined in part by state laws and in part by those of the Generalitat of Catalonia.

Moreover, the Regulating Law of the Bases of the Local Regime recognises competences for municipalities concerning security in public places and the organisation of the movement of persons and vehicular traffic on the public highway.

To face up to the complex situation of the years 2002 and 2003, marked by a decrease in the number of agents in the State police and the Police of Catalonia, as well as by a lack of co-ordination between the police forces, the municipality of L’Hospitalet proposed a new organisation aimed at making the current model more efficient. Following this renewal, the strategy adopted by the municipality of L’Hospitalet concerning security is structured fundamentally on the following elements: •

the setting-up of a co-ordination mechanism centralising the operational levels and creating joint central offices, unique phone numbers and a single GPS positioning system;

•

the dividing-up of roles and therefore the definition of who has what authority over the system, how agreements are made and who must respect them;

•

the subscription of protocols between the different police forces present on the territory in order to be able to define a list of functions and domains of competences for each force.

The city of L’Hospitalet decided to create a Local Security Commission presided over by the mayor, which defines, with the other partners concerned, the security policy, the security plan and the agreements between the various players at work, and which co-ordinates its police with the other administrations.

The local security commission includes the security and prevention council, which gathers in plenary meeting and deliberates on themes such as diagnosis and studies. It also includes an operational co-ordination centre whose

32

Law of 16/1991, of the police local, and of 4/2003 on the distribution of the public security system in Catalonia.

33

role is to identify conflicts, schedule and co-ordinate operations and ensure the system’s effectiveness. Towards this goal, this centre gives directives to the joint command centre, which executes operations, divides up resources and handles anomalies.

The city of L’Hospitalet, taking inspiration from the experience of the city of Barcelona33, developed a co-ordination experiment between security policies and social policies.

- France and the example of the city of Saint-Denis In 1982, a commission of mayors, presided by Gilbert Bonnemaison, presented a report entitled ‘Facing crime: prevention, repression, solidarity’34, which founded a new dividing up of responsibilities between municipalities and the State in the implementation of prevention35. The report proposed the local level as the place for implementing a security policy that no longer pits prevention against repression, but plays on their complementarity. This was the first time in France that the importance of the local level and the role played by the mayor was brought to the fore.

After the town councils for crime prevention, initiated in 1983 following the report, France would perfect, in October 1997, the set-up of the Local Security Contracts (CLS)36. The main objective of the CLS is to establish at the local level a concrete action plan based on work in partnership between all the players concerned by security. Today, some 650 cities in France have signed a CLS. In 2002, a circular and a decree relative to security and co-operation arrangements for the prevention of and fight against crime, created the Local Security and Crime Prevention councils (CLSPD), presided over by the mayor, which constitute the consultation proceedings on the priorities in the fight against 33

Example of Barcelona: constitution by the mayor of the ‘Technical Commission for Urban Security’ in charge of analysing the city’s situation as concerns security and proposing measures for improvement. In 1984, its work gave rise to the creation of the ‘Urban Security Council’. In 1988, creation by the mayor of the ‘Municipal Council for Social Well-being’, aimed at proposing non-police security policies (this being a matter of social policies), a steering structure for prevention arrangements at the local level, most often serving to symbolise the involvement of elected officials. This decisional organ brings together the mayor, the deputy mayor for security and representatives of the municipal police and the police of Catalonia.

34 Mayors’ Commission on Security, Face à la délinquance: prévention, répression, solidarité, Paris, La Documentation française, 1982.

35 Manifesto of FFSU cities 36 Definition of the CLS: The CLS allow for organising an active, permanent partnership with those who, at the local level, are in a position to make a contribution to security.

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insecurity round which the public and private institutions and organisms concerned37 must mobilise.

In France, the mayor is the holder of power of administrative police and is in charge, under the supervision of the State representative in the département, of executing State acts relative to it. Through these police powers, attributed to him exclusively without any possibility of delegating to the town council, he has to ensure order, safety, security and public health in his municipality38. It is also he who has authority over the municipal police that he is free to create.

In 2000, the City of Saint-Denis set up a Local Security Contract (CLS) then, in 2002, a Local Security and Prevention Council (CLSPD). It participates actively in activities promoted by the French Forum for Urban Security. Its ‘Public Peace’ department supports the local partnership and consultation proceedings of specific topics such as access to the law, criminal damages and social mediation in public areas. It has thereby developed a strong partnership with the police and justice, which has also allowed for setting up a house of justice and law.

The activities of the Public Peace department lie within the perspective of developing: •

A strong local partnership that enlists all the partners involved in crime prevention, whether public or private;

•

The confidence of users of the public areas, in particular by reducing the rate of muggings and thefts;

•

The surveillance and supervision of public areas in order to allow for better use of the City;

•

An intervention with the public authorities to equip the City with police numbers corresponding to its needs, considering its specificity;

•

Forms of neighbourhood police and management methods in consultation with the inhabitants;

•

Reception and assistance for victims of criminal infractions;

37

The CLSPD is an authority, the CLS the contract, the working tool that allows for impelementing the decisions of the CLSPD. Article www.ffsu.org 38 www.ffsu.org

35

•

Projects in response to juvenile delinquency, especially on the topic of criminal responsibility.

- Slovenia and the example of the city of Ljubljana In Slovenia, the mayor is elected for four years by direct universal suffrage and constitutes the city’s executive power. Since 1999, he is both the head of the municipal administration and president of the town council39. Urban security is above all a police prerogative. The Police Act (1998) recommended co-operation between the local police and the municipal administration in the fight against urban crime. The chief of police or the mayor has the power to establish a local security council40.

With the creation of Crime Prevention Councils, a consultative organ, brought together round the mayor on the theme of urban security, different players from civil society (associations, neighbourhood committees, universities), Slovenian cities have given themselves a participatory structure.

In 1998, at the initiative of its mayor, the city of Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, set up the ‘Local Citizen Safety Council’. The principle of the council, which meets every fortnight, is to bring together all the local players to discuss the city’s problems as regards security and strategies to develop. Participation in the work of the Local Citizen Safety Council is on a volunteer, optional basis. The partners, who represent the municipality, the police, civil society and the universities, are invited to share information and propose innovative solutions.

- The Netherlands and the example of the city of Enschede The attention given by the Netherlands to crime prevention materialised at the national level by the setting-up within the Police, in 1979, of a National Prevention Bureau 41, and by the establishment, in 1983, of the Roethof Commission, which constitutes the most significant advance of this42. The Society and Crime programme (SEC), launched in 1985, enabled the financing of nearly 200 crime prevention projects at the local level.

39

European Union, Regions Committees: Study. op cit.

Local Safety Council 41 ‘National Prevention Office’.

42 The work of this commission had, in particular, insisted on the implementation of a prevention policy at the national level, the involvement of representatives from civil society in the prevention policies and the necessity of encouraging co-operation and partnership at the local level.

40

36

In 1989, a crime prevention department was created within the Ministry of Justice. This pursued four general objectives: promoting crime prevention in municipalities; financing police initiatives in connection with prevention; coordinating policies for victim assistance; and regulating the private security sector.

Crime prevention does not, however, fall solely within the competence of the Ministry of Justice since certain programmes are carried out with the help of other ministries, in particular the Ministry of Health and Culture (reduction of vandalism, drug use or alcoholism amongst young people), the Ministry of Economic Affairs (reduction of shoplifting) and the Interior (in the framework of the ‘New social policies’ programme).

At the local level, it is the mayor, the chief of police and the public prosecutor who are the principal players in crime prevention. Numerous municipalities have set up town councils for crime prevention that bring together, in addition to the aforementioned players, representatives from the sectors of youth, education, transportation or even housing.

In the Netherlands, the police are composed of a national force (KLPD) and 25 regional forces.

The head of the municipality is the town council and not the mayor. The mayor is part of the executive organ and is in charge of the urban security portfolio. He is responsible, with the police chief, for maintaining the peace.

Councillors have the right to make proposals, ask questions and open discussions as well as carry out inquiries.

The City of Enschede is located in the eastern part of the Netherlands, near Germany. With a population of approximately 160,000, it is not characterised by major crime problems.

As concerns security, the priorities defined by the municipality are: the solving of crimes and acts of incivility; neighbourhood relations; road safety; and industrial disasters and safety (following the explosion of the local fireworks factory).

The urban security strategy is defined jointly by the mayor, the queen’s prosecutor and the chief of police who meet once a week. At these meetings, they exchange information and define the priorities for the city’s security plan.

Currently, the principal preoccupations concern drug-related offences, urban and street violence, juvenile delinquency and repeat offenders.

The municipal district, which, with the police, takes care of security, consists of a committee in charge of detecting the area’s priorities, a security

37

council having a consultative role, and the Centre of justice and security, which represents all civil servants.

- The United Kingdom and the example of the city of Hackney In the United Kingdom, since March 1988, the ‘Safer Cities’ programme has been financing the crime prevention activities at the local level. This programme has permitted the financing of a co-ordinator, a deputy and an assistant at the local level, backed up by an organisation committee43. The national desire to supervise local authorities, the preference for short-term interventions as needed, and the involvement of the private sector are some of the pronounced aspects of the programme’s functioning. In May 1988, the Home Office set up the ‘Crime Concern’ organisation whose objective is to stimulate the development of prevention activities at the local level44. In 1991, the ‘Morgan Report’ identified a two-level structure of responsibility: co-ordination by the government and a security strategy group based on local authority.

The organisation and running of the police are defined by the Police Act of 1996. There are currently 43 regional police forces whose size and territory depend on the population density and its profile45. Every year, the Home Office sets the priorities for the local and regional police. To these forces are added the National Criminal Intelligence Service46 and the National Crime Squad47, independent of the central government since April 1998 and responsible before the independent administrative authorities (Service Authorities).

A national crime prevention committee, the Ministerial Sub-Committee on the Criminal Justice System, was created in 2001. All these structures and different official texts stress the principle of partnership as the heart of prevention policies.

The local level is consequently invited to set up arrangements for giving concrete expression to partnership work.

At the regional level, nine crime reduction units for England and one for Wales are in charge of handling crime prevention by organising partnerships and co-ordinating the regional players in order to apply the major national orientations.

43 It should be noted that, constrained by the limited nature of financing granted, the responsibility of the ‘Safer Cities’ had limited powers.

44 Example: neighbourhood surveillance and creation of crime prevention commissions.

45 Other, smaller forces have specialised national competences: rail police, police of the Defence Ministry...

46 NCIS, created in 1997.

47 NSA, created in 1998.

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With the Crime and Disorder Act (CDA, 1998), 376 local partnerships corresponding to districts were set up48. A new legal obligation was imposed on the local authorities concerning the development, co-ordination and promotion of a ‘local neighbourhood security partnership’. Local authorities have powers for maintaining law and order and the obligation to implement these partnerships with the local police and in co-operation with the different agencies and organisations established locally. They must develop prevention strategies, and the co-operation of the different players is the object of regular external evaluations49. Numerous local authorities have prevention and crime reduction committees, but the mayors hold few attributions therein50.

In addition, it should be noted that, regarding crime prevention, several NGOs are present in the urban security sphere, the most significant of them being Crime Concern and NACRO (National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders). The statutory Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) were established to allow for the systematic development of agencies of this type in local sectors. Legislation has provided an infrastructure on the basis of which more than 350 local associations have been created.

The CDRP of Hackney, like the other English CDRPs, is based primarily on the implementation of a priority strategy for developing and providing safer services for the city. Where it perhaps differs from the others is at the level of partnership and the scope of consultation.

The City of Hackney decided to elect its mayor directly. Elected in 2002, one of the country’s 11 directly-elected mayors, he is the political leader of the town council as well as the controller of the budget and all the Council services.

According to the audit commission that submitted its report in December 2003, he conducted his council in transparent and responsible fashion and allowed for significant improvements in the Council’s financial stability as well as in the functioning of the Council’s services. In 2004, the central government thereby acknowledged Hackney as one of the best councils in the country51.

48

It is question of the ‘Community Safety Partnership’.

The participation of citizens and community is particularly encouraged.

50 The mayor of London defines the objectives and budget of the London police and appoints 12 of the 23 members of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

51 Detailed description of the city of Hackney’s prevention service in chapter 2 ‘Elected officials and partners’ 49

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b) Regional authorities as a bridge between the national and the local Alongside representatives of municipalities, the programme brought together, for several countries, representatives from local intermediate levels. Their participation allowed for bringing out the specific role that these levels play as places of both impetus and support for the policies that are implemented by the cities.

- Luxembourg and the example of Syvicol In 1999, Luxembourg experienced, at the national level, a reorganisation of the police52: the Grand-Ducal Gendarmerie and police were merged into a single Grand-Ducal Police. This is structured on three levels: Directorate General, the central services and the six departments of regional circumscriptions.

Several national crime-prevention plans were set up. Thus, in collaboration with some thirty associations, the Ministry for the Advancement of Women carried out in 1999 a national campaign concerning violence against women53 and girls. This campaign took over from one in 1993, focussing primarily on ‘breaking the silence’ and children having been subjected to family violence.

Concerning assistance to crime victims, the Victim Aid Department (SAV) was created within the Central Department of Social Assistance of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Luxembourg54. It takes in persons having undergone an invasion of their physical or psychological integrity following a violent infraction.

In Luxembourg, crime prevention is primarily the responsibility of the national level. The ministers of the interior, justice and education work together in crime prevention, within a joint working party55.

At the local level, the maintenance of order is the province of the civilian authority, which, when threatened, can request police intervention. In the course of executing such a requisitioning, the head of the Police informs the civilian authority of the means of action to implement.

Article 64 of the Law of 31 May 1999 provides for communal or intercommunal prevention committees, aimed at establishing or improving, in each regional police circumscription, relations with local officials.

52

Law of 31 May 1999.

Whose slogan was: ‘No more compromise against violence against women and girls’.

54 In accordance with the Law of 7 July 1994 on the system of sentencing.

55 Aside from legal sanctions, this working party supports joint initiatives, particularly as concerns the fight against drug addiction; thus, plainclothes police agents attempt to dissuade young people from consuming drugs, and also organise anti-drug events.

53

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SYVICOL is the intercommunal union of all the cities and towns in Luxembourg, as well as all the other intercommunal thematic unions. On the one hand, its object is the defence of its municipalities’ interests and, on the other, being the favoured interlocutor of the government in the elaboration of all legislation and regulations concerning the local level. It also takes care of networking all information regarding the country’s 118 municipalities, the intercommunal unions and the districts as well as the Ministry of the Interior.

SYVICOL provides information to the municipalities and accompanies them in setting up specific actions.

So it is that, even though Luxembourg is a territory barely affected by security problems, since the reform of the police, the cities found themselves involved and invited to develop prevention and security strategies. In practice, that was translated by the establishment of municipal prevention committees (for towns of more than 5,000 inhabitants), intercommunal committees (regrouping small municipalities) and regional consultation committees (in each of the five regional police circumscriptions).

The communal and intercommunal prevention committees aim at coordinating crime-prevention policy and law and order, and all the players involved on the local scene. The committee, convened at least once a week, is presided over by the burgomaster and includes the deputy burgomasters or town councillors designated by the burgomaster, the director of the regional Grand-Ducal police circumscription and the commander of the neighbourhood police station.

Representatives of the judicial authority and administration can be invited to participate.

- Italy and the examples of the city of Fidenza, the province of Arezzo and the region of Tuscany Italy was represented by three partners from different levels: a city, a province and a region, hence an interesting comparison in points of view.

The competences of the regions regarding urban security are defined by a 1977 decree56, which organised a decentralisation of the State’s administrative functions to the regions and cities. The regions’ principal function is co-ordination, through the production of agreements with other levels57. These agreements are generally signed between the president of the region, the mayors of the main cities and the prefect (who represents the State) with the goal of producing innovative

56 57

Decreto legge del 1977. The New constitution defines the new powers.2005.

Protocolli d’intesa e le intese istituzionali di programma.

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actions. These agreements provide for players being in charge of carrying out prevention and security actions.

The regions can also, for specific actions, initiate co-operations in the presence of the prefect. This model provides for the region’s defining the type of intervention that will then be delegated to the player most appropriate for its implementation.

Amongst the regions’ most important functions, we find the promotion of projects through financing granted to the municipalities and provinces, the creation of security observatories or research institutes, and the setting up of specific training for the police and local security co-ordinators.

Finally, the Italian regions have a legislative power that allows them to produce laws concerning the region’s territory and which have an immediate effect. They can also create regional police but, up until now, no Italian region has exercised this power.

The prefect who represents the State on the territory plays the role in urban security policies. Since 1981, ‘provincial committees for public security’, presided over by the prefect, were created by the State to organize the local safety and to developer several local players participate (the president of the province, the mayors of the main cities, the chief of police58) with the aim of improving the collaboration between the players.

The regions and provinces do not take initiatives themselves regarding prevention or security actions. Their role is two-sided: on the one hand, a role of impetus in relation to the cities; on the other, a support role that is expressed in actions such as the regional or provincial observatories, in professional training as well as in financing.

At the local level, the competences regarding prevention and repression are defined primarily by a law of 199059. If there isn’t police stations it is the mayor who, on the municipality’s territory, is the official representative of the national government. His role regarding the police is thus the expression of his function as representative of the State on the territory, in charge of supervising everything that concerns public order and passing on information to the prefect. As

58

Questore. Since 1999, following the legislative decree, the ‘provincial committees for public security’ were opened up to other players.

59 Law of 8 June 1990 no.142. Currently modified by the D.Lgs. 267/2000

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for what concerns the municipal police, its running is the exclusive competence of the municipal administration60.

Since the year 2000, the Tuscan region has developed an innovative urban security policy for the Italian context. This policy took shape on the idea of promoting integrated, rather than exclusively repressive, policies. The goals of these policies are the affirmation of the principles of legality, solidarity and reception, and social cohesion. The ‘Toscana sicura’ project has a double base: 1.

The principle of subsidiarity: the recognition of the proper and specific competences of the local authorities;

2.

Collaboration with the State for the co-ordination of security actions.

Starting from these two principles, the region has developed actions such as aid to crime victims, the reinforcement of social policies (reception, integration of immigrant populations, insertion in employment…), the policies of housing, training and support for local police. All these actions were carried out on the basis of a regional law specific to security issues61, whose objectives are the financing granted to local authorities for projects concerning the development of social and territorial prevention, the supervision of public areas, the reinforcement of the local police, victim support, incivilities and social mediation.

The financing from the Tuscan region concerned 181 cities and all ten provinces, or a total of approximately 90% of the region’s population.

Since 2001, the region has organised numerous training programmes for local and provincial police agents and concluded collaboration agreements with the Ministry of Home Affairs and the universities of Florence, Pisa and Sienna. The collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs was formalised in a ‘protocol62‘ dealing with the following topics: •

The exchange of security data;

•

The co-ordination of work for implementing actions on the territory;

•

The creation and specialisation of professionals connected with security;

60

Art.38, L. 142/1990 Legge regionale n. 38, 16/08/2001 ‘Interventi regionali a favore delle politiche locali per la sicurezza della comunita toscana’ 62 Stipulated 5 November 2002 61

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Since November-December 2002, the collaboration with the ten Provinces has also been the object of protocols.

Amongst the provinces concerned by these agreements is the province of Arezzo. The financing allotted to the province by the region primarily concerns the gathering of information for the regional observatory on integrated policies and studies and specific research themes of local interest.

As it is a matter of a territory, the security problems are minor, the security policies being based on a strategy that seeks to develop a preventive culture. That has not, however, prevented the province from creating a security department, under the direct control of the president. The provincial police, which exist since 1996, collaborate directly with the president of the province.

All the province’s activities are founded on the principle of subsidiarity to the municipalities for the construction of integrated projects for security.

The principal activities developed by the province are as follows: The development of the culture of legality et and security; Information and awareness-heightening campaigns, in particular with schools and young people on the norms and rules of behaviour.

Publications In the framework of these activities, the province created the Provincial Commission for the culture of legality and security, of which 39 municipalities are part, the chamber of commerce, industry and craft, and school inspectorate.

Since 1996, the provincial departments in charge of social policies, youth and equal opportunities, have instituted a provincial observatory that was then reinforced by financing from the region. This observatory works in accordance with the following principles: Integrated work, with the creation of a network (formal and informal) of players, institutional or not, concerned with the problem; The continuous exchange of information, with a reorganisation of the administrative departments; The creation of a database and the use of cutting-edge technologies.

The past few years, the province has invested particularly in financing aimed at promoting partnership work. It often collaborates with the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI) and the Union of Italian Provinces (UPI). Its main role is ensuring the co-ordination between the different activities being carried out on its territory.

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The strength of the work on this territory, as on the entire territory of Tuscany and the Emilia Romagna region, is that the social fabric is historically characterised by strong social cohesion as well as by the association and volunteer sectors that are fairly well developed. The principal financing comes from the Tuscan region, that the province then takes charge of dividing up between the municipalities. Other financing is unique to the province, which can choose to finance certain projects rather than others. The province of Arezzo has, for example, promoted projects of assistance in finding housing or projects for integrating foreign populations.

Even though the crime rate (2.5‰) is extremely low in relation to the national rate, the city of Fidenza has focussed its work on the development of security policies and the exchange of information and practices with other European partners. The principal player as regards security is the municipal police, who work in constant exchange of information with the municipality. The activity is turned essentially towards the reduction of ‘disorders’ such as degradations or incivilities, a new management policy in the municipal police department through the creation of neighbourhood watchmen (2002), and missions of professionals from the police that provide for temporary service abroad in other European countries, especially Spain, France and Germany. The management of the municipal police foresees the possibility of a co-ordination with the national police.

The city of Fidenza has also developed an urban video surveillance department, principally in city squares and a neighbouring town. The cameras are used for keeping an eye on uncivil behaviour (speed checks, bicycle thefts).

- Germany and the example of the Land of Lower Saxony Amongst the countries of Western Europe, Germany is one of those that has adopted most lately the process of prevention by partnership. For a long time, the federal government considered prevention as falling under the competence of the federated states. The creation of a national prevention council (Deutsches Forum für Kriminalprävention) dates only from the end of 2001. Moreover, the states have varied conceptions regarding prevention, and these are not necessarily of a joint nature. Finally, the idea according to which prevention would be under the competence of the municipality has only spread slowly63.

63

Source: German report for the committee of experts preparing the recommendation of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on partnership in terms of prevention.

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Lower Saxony is one of the 16 German Länder, located to the south of Hamburg in a strategic position at the centre of Europe, this having considerably conditioned its economic and cultural development. Its 8 million inhabitants represent approximately 10% of the overall German population.

The Lower Saxony crime prevention centre is an independent committee that works on this theme in close partnership with the regional government. It is made up of the 155 local prevention centres of the centre’s 155 member cities. The other partners are foundations, universities and 16 NGOs from different sectors: teaching, economy, industry... The partners meet every two months to transfer and adapt, at the local level, the government’s directives and decide jointly on the guiding lines for the following year. These meetings are attended by the prime minister and four representatives of other ministries: Justice, Interior Affairs, Education and Social Affairs. This committee promotes new projects and new initiatives, basing itself on local experiences, and organises European meetings with the aim of enlarging the collaboration and proposing the development of specific projects. The collaboration with the Länder governments is ensured by five representatives of the cities who work in constant relation with the minister of the interior. A technical team, made up of ten technicians and based in Hanover, implements activities decided upon by the committee.

The work of the Lower Saxony crime prevention centre consists of: 1. spreading local initiatives; 1. providing information, advice and suggestions to the government of Lower Saxony as concerns prevention and security; 2. promoting and carrying out specific projects; 3. organising the German Prevention Day To improve its work, the prevention centre has brought in new partners and established new collaborations. Whereas a few years ago, the police did not collaborate with the prevention centre, its collaboration has now become regular and bilateral.

c) The city and the State: contrasted relations Comparisons between the various participants, in the course of seminars, allowed for adding to the report on competences and practices of each city or country, elements for thought on the type of relationship between the cities and the State regarding security policies. The importance of the municipal level is, certainly, the object of an a priori consensus to the degree that, in all countries, it is

46

at this level that the joint prevention policies are implemented64. Nonetheless, this consensus is, in a way, relativised when the question of relations is broached that it appears opportune to establish between the local and national levels. Beyond institutional differences, it is then differences of political culture that appear between countries.

In a number of European states there exists—for a more or less long time—a joint national authority organised, generally a crime prevention council.

Along with this, in all the countries, the local approach is primordial. The drawing closer in relation to the territories is, in fact, with the idea of cross-disciplinary, the second main axis of European prevention policies.

Generally, a division of roles occurs between the national level, on the one hand, seat of a general definition of policies or, at least, of a force of impetus in direction of the local, and, on the other, this local level where the implementation of policies takes place65. Even in the absence of joint national authority, the State can play a more or less driving, instigating role in relation to policies implemented locally. It is in this perspective that various types of contractual tools are creating, whether or not including a dimension of financing local actions by the State.

Moreover, the role played by the national level is likely to evolve over the course of years, which provokes reactions in various directions.

The discussions thus brought out two contrasting situations66. On the one hand, the representatives of France deplored the current reduction in State involvement in security policies. On the other, representatives of the Netherlands, observing an increased desire for intervention on the side of state authorities, deplored this opposite situation. How to explain such reactions coming, in both cases, from local players?

In substance, the French discourse consists of observing the national police being put in the background. The abandoning of the ‘neighbourhood police’ reform has led policemen to refocus on missions of fighting crime, inquiries and the judiciary. They are giving up areas like traffic, supervising the letting-out of school, or the request for identity papers. In return for which the most daily demands of inhabitants as regards security will be sent back to the city, which finds the task quite heavy. Similarly, a participant would mention the mayor of a city in

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‘Municipalites are thus the best placed to conduct policies or elaborate approaches that apprehend, in overall fashion, the problem of crime prevention […].By their proximity, the municipal administrations appear, in the eyes of the public, as the most accessible and best informed authorities on real or potential crisis situations.’ In Urban Crime Prevention. A guide for local powers, editions of the Council of Europe.

65 Cf. A. Wyvekens, ‘Quels partenaires pour quelle prévention?’, in P. Ekblom, A. Wyvekens, Le partenariat dans la prévention de la délinquance, Editions of the Council of Europe, 2004, pp. 65 and s.

66 These two situations do not exhaust the possibilities of articulation between local and national.

Rather, through their opposition, they represent two extremes allowing for fueling broader reflection.

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the Paris suburbs who refuses to adopt the Local Security Contract approach, deeming that security is a competence of the State.

In the Netherlands, the movement is somewhat the opposite. One issue amongst others for a long time, security has recently become a national stake.

Diverse explanations are proposed: terrorist attacks, the assassination of a far-right leader or the passage from a left-wing government to a right-wing government.

Regardless, the Dutch state wants to assert its presence on this terrain, which is translated in particular by contracts made with cities and the police, which subordinates financings to the achievement of objectives backed up by figures (arrests, speeding tickets…). Local players considered this involvement counterproductive: the set objectives did not make the cities safer. Purely bureaucratic, or defined in accordance with national priorities, they are unrelated to the necessities observed in the field and to which they have faced up for a long time in a way that has proved itself.

Although the French representatives do not contest the existence and irreplaceable character of local know how, to their eyes, the State’s instigator role (financial and possibly statutory) remains necessary. Indeed, it allows for attenuating the effects of the occasionally excessive personalisation of initiatives: ‘The prosecutor is leaving, the arrangements he set up collapse’. The exchange brings out a totally different situation in the Netherlands. Representatives of the major institutions rarely change affectation, and local elected officials have a longterm implantation. In addition, the non-elective, more ‘professionalised’ nature of the mayor’s duties lets them escape from the pressures of re-election. But above all, ‘it is the State representatives who adapt to what is built locally’, and in no case the opposite. We will see in situ an example of this type of partnership, the Enschede community centre, where inhabitants go to lodge a complaint for minor matters that are not really penal. One will also observe a police presented as being more serving than protecting, who do not remain in their office when something is wrong in the neighbourhood.

What about in other countries? A few elements came out of the discussions, but the examination is worth pursuing.

In Luxembourg, municipal prevention committees (presided over by the burgomaster) and regional committees (presided over by the prefect) were made obligatory, which initially provoked fear in the burgomasters of seeing their prerogatives cut into as regards security. Similarly, the creation of a national police, coming to replace police forces that had heretofore been municipal67.

According to the director of SYVICOL, ‘at the level of the municipalities, a certain worry was seen at the beginning with the appearance of a national police: the 67

Law of 31 May 1999.

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burgomasters feared being prevented from exercising one of their essential missions (inherited from decrees of the French Revolution), which consists of dealing with everything that concerns security and the convenience of passage, maintaining law and order or else the care of obviating or remedying annoying events’. It will be noted that there is no national prevention authority: the Minister is afraid of being subjected to pressure by local officials. As for local players, they expect a political impetus from the national rather than financial means. In 2004, security went from the competence of Ministry of the Interior to that of the Ministry of Justice. The concerns aroused by this change have been calmed… by the Minister of Justice’s announcement of an increase in the security budget in 200568.

In the United Kingdom, the situation is completely different: the joint approach is imposed, and the national level largely finances the local (70% of the financing of local security policies comes from the State), hence a strong link of constraint on the local in relation to the Home Office.

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15/11/2004 Conference of the SYVICOL and Luxembourg Forum for Security and Urban Prevention.

‘The local security diagnosis’, Luxembourg

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Chapter 2 LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS AND PARTNERS

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LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS AND PARTNERS In all European countries, the local level has developed joint arrangements as concerns security. An overview of the diverse forms of joint structures, players involved and expertises mobilised provides indications on the role likely to be played by the mayor, the central piece of the network. a) The joint structures The joint structures, which bring together all the players concerned with security problems to make them work together, are based on a few essential principles:

Building consensus; Promoting local strategies; Co-ordinating actions; Reinforcing the local entity on the territory.

- ‘Set menu’ or ‘à la carte’ As concerns urban security, it is the national and/or regional laws that define the rules of functioning of the partnership arrangements at the local level. Various ‘formulas’ are possible.

1.

Legal obligation. In the United Kingdom, the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 made obligatory the setting-up at the local level of a partnership arrangement called Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership in which the local authority and the police are the pillar-partners in setting up a crime prevention strategy on the local territory. In exchange for financing for carrying out prevention actions, the local authority is obliged to intervene in the priority domains as designated by the national level. This partnership, in which the State is not only the financer and decider, but also principal player in the partnership, favours the development of a collaboration between the local public, private and volunteer players.

2.

Dividing up of competences defined by the law. In the Netherlands, the law provides for the existence of a ‘triangular structure’ made up of the mayor, the chief of the local police and the Queen’s Prosecutor, who works on the definition of the local urban security policy. These three players meet regularly, exchange information and make decisions after consultation. The presence of the Queen’s Prosecutor ensures the

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coherence of the local initiatives with national policy. In case of conflict, the final decision is made by the mayor or the prosecutor (the police chief’s role is more in the background, in relation to the two other players). In addition, the triangular structure guarantees the decisionmaking since it excludes the hypothesis of equality of voices.

3.

Encouraging the development of working in partnership through contractual forms giving access to national or regional financing. The Local Prevention and Security Contracts in Belgium provide for the granting of financing by the national level to the local level in exchange for respecting agreements made in the contract. The set-up provides for supervision and an evaluation of actions carried out on the territory by means of national financing.

4.

Encouraging the development of working in partnership. In France, the object of the Local Security Contracts, set up since 1997, is the establishment of an enlarged partnership round the mayor, the prefect, the prosecutor and the chief education officer. The arrangement does not provide financing, but the cities that decide to adopt this type of arrangement have the possibility of obtaining security deputies and local social mediation agents.

5.

Occasional form on the basis of a player’s sporadic initiative. In Italy, aside from the Contratti di sicurezza, which provide for collaboration between the prefect and the mayor, there exists no national norm that encourages or obliges the setting-up of contractual or joint arrangements regarding urban security. Generally, it is the regional levels that are in charge of defining documents for their territory, giving the main lines for the creation of a local partnership.

- Two models We thus have two principal types of approach to partnership. The first, represented by countries of the North such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, has a more contractual and formal character that ensures the reproduction of national security policies at the local level. The second, on the other hand, represented by the Italian and Spanish examples, is based more on territorial particularities than on national directives and tries to adapt to the cultural and socio-economic needs of the regional level.

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The Tuscan region has thus developed different protocols69 based on the idea of creating a partnership between players with identical motivations. These protocols define the activities of the region that materialise through financing, laws that give directives to the provinces70 and specific laws referring directly to the cooperation between different institutions. We can mention, for example, the protocol signed between the region and other local levels (provinces and municipalities) on ‘the rules for regional consultation’71‘ for the provinces and municipalities, aimed at developing a joint strategy and coherent collaboration with them. This document provides for the regular organisation of ‘consultation conferences’ between local authorities and the public, private and volunteer sectors. On the basis of this protocol, the region financed and supported different activities implemented by the provinces and cities.

In the United Kingdom, joint work is structured differently in relation to other European countries. The primary difference lies in the fact that it does not represent a local political will but the implementation of national directives.

National financing obliges the city to create this type of arrangement. It must also be said that the city of Hackney and its partnership strategy represent one of the most complete and complex examples in Europe.

The Safer Communities Partnership of the Borough of Hackney has developed, in close collaboration with the inhabitants, a crime-prevention and reduction strategy for the years 2002-2005. Its activities are prepared in relation with other city strategies. The city of Hackney has developed an integrated strategy between the department of drug-addiction prevention, aid to victims of domestic violence and racial crimes, and the video surveillance and emergency department72.

The chart below shows how the partnership functions.

The organisation includes an executive technical group that meets once a month jointly with the municipal police and the administration to define together the partnership’s strategy, priority actions and management. The work in partnership thus consists of having the same priorities and objectives to try to reduce the crime rate. All the players—local officials, technicians, the association sector…—participate together in determining a common strategy as well as the implementation of actions.

69

Protocolli d’intesa.

Leggi direttive 71 ‘Le regole della concertazione regionale’ subscribed on 5.01.2001 and the ‘Protocollo d’intesa Giunta Regionale-Enti locali’ subscribed on 11.09.2002.

72 Drug Action Support Team, the Community Safety Team, the Domestic Violence and Racial Harassment Team and CCTV and Emergency Planning Team.

70

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Crime and disorder reduction strategy 2003-2005, Hackney LOCAL STRATEGY PARTNERSHIP

HACKNEY SAFER COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP Police, local authority, Health Authority Crown prosecution Service and Probation service ,

DRUG ACTION TEAM

HACKNEY SAFER COMMUNITY SERVICE

Borough-wide projects and programmes

Neighbourhood projects and programmes

Metropolitan police service

Voluntary organisations

YOUTH OFFENDING TEAM

CRIME AND DISORDER REDUCTION STRATEGY

Hackney council service

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Resident traders groups

Statutory organisations

b) The players of the partnership At the local level, the public administration, represented by the mayor, finds itself facing institutional—police, justice (regional or national)—and association partners.

- Institutional partners The police Amongst the institutional partners in crime-prevention policies, the police are, without any doubt, considered the priority partner. The debate on relations between the local official and the police thus occupied a large share of the presentations during the first seminar, to the point that a remark of the technicians as elected officials came back on several occasions: ‘There is too much of a tendency to speak only of the police when speaking about local security policies’.

In all the partner countries, we have seen how the relationship between the local official and the police materialises through a bilateral collaboration. This relation, in certain cases such as Belgium, is facilitated by the fact that the mayor is at the same time chief of police; in others, like Slovenia, it is based rather on a necessity of sharing information; or else, as in the United Kingdom, it is made obligatory by the law73.

The principal role of the police, as regards elected officials, is still that of tracking down crime on the territory and providing statistics and analyses of data, as well as ensuring public security and keeping the peace. In several countries, their role and relationship with the local elected officials are cause for considerable discussions that are not yet resolved.

In Spain, for example, owing to its configuration as a highly decentralised country, the police model is extremely complex because it is made up of four police forces having different types of organisation, each acting according to its own rules, often separated between themselves by impermeable compartmentalisations and distrusting each other. The Catalan town halls (which are also at the head of the local police) are debating two options: either giving the local police a larger role regarding security, including the functions of judicial police, or limiting the activity of local police to tasks involving prevention, surveillance and execution of municipal competences. Legislation currently in effect seems to be going rather in the direction of the latter.

73

The Crime Disorder Act of 1998 and the Police Reform Act of 2002.

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Starting with its competences as concerns the co-ordination of the local police forces, and faced with the necessity of co-ordinating the deployment of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalonia police) with the municipal police forces, the Generalitat de Catalunya has developed different mechanisms of collaboration and co-ordination between the town halls and their police.

As for the municipality of L’Hospitalet, in order to have an effective partnership with the police and be able to obtain a co-ordination of information and communication, it developed an operational system based on: The creation of working teams from the two police forces present on the territory; The creation of a single incidents database The creation of a single communication network Shared processing of information A co-ordinated operations command A mobilisation of resources strategy are: a revision of the police and security forces law; the definition of a joint intervention procedure between the police forces; the creation, in the large cities, of a position of urban security co-ordinator with duties as defined by the law and appointed directly by the mayor, from professionals in the police forces Justice As opposed to the police, justice turned out to be, except for the cities of Enschede and Saint-Denis, the major player absent in local partnership actions, where its presence is limited to specific and highly sporadic collaborations. And when the question of knowing what were the reasons for this absence, no partner could or wished to respond‌ What is certain is that a more sustained collaboration is desired by all the partners. Thus, the city of L’Hospitalet would like to have the possibility of integrating justice into the local security plans and, more precisely, into the Council for Participation in Security and the local security assembly.

The example of the city of Saint-Denis and the Maison de la justice et du droit.

The first houses of justice and law (MJD) were created in France at the beginning of the 1990s, their objectives being to make justice closer, more accessible and rapid and to enable citizens to have access to information concerning their rights and obligations. They are the result of a joint approach by the local court and the municipality of implantation. The city of Saint-Denis

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created its Maison de la Justice et du Droit in 2003 in the framework of the Local Security Contract signed in 2000.

The MJD is a structure placed under the joint authority of the president of the county court in Bobigny and its state prosecutor. It is characterised by its nature of being strongly centred on the partnership for it networks, in addition to representatives of the city and justice, various associations whose goal is access to law and aid to victims and institutional judicial interveners, concerning criminal law. Access to the law is structured round offices open to the public and which provide advice concerning housing benefits, the small lawsuits of civil order and aid to victims. Aside from access to the law, the MJD is a neighbourhood place of justice that fulfils different missions such as prevention and reinsertion actions, criminal mediation, reconciliations‌ It is also the place where alternative measures are taken quickly regarding criminal proceedings aimed at responding to petty crime, with the objective of reparation of the damages by the author of the infraction.

The city and Justice divide up the responsibilities of functioning. Justice furnishes personnel, and the city takes care of the premises as well as the employment of a ‘city-justice correspondent’ who is in charge of ensuring the relations between the two partners. The set-up of the Maison de la Justice et du Droit is therefore the fruit of the collaboration between the different partners but, above all, a powerful political will of the municipality.

The city of Mons created within its prevention department an Alternative Judicial Measures Department (SMJA), founded on a collaboration between the city and the ministry of justice. Its principal missions are the supervision and organisation of alternative legal measures (in particular, community service).

In 1998, the prevention department also instituted free legal aid for all inhabitants of the city.

- The other partners The association sector The integration of the association sector into the local partnership is essential because it allows local elected officials to:

have access to precise information and know their territory better. Thanks to its fieldwork, the association sector possesses detailed knowledge;

enter into contact with the most difficult populations. The noninstitutional nature of the association sector permits better contact with

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these populations that often no longer have confidence in institutions and the aid that these can bring them;

be confronted with different working methodologies. The work of the association sector is often focussed on individual cases and relies on tools different from those at the disposal of a municipality.

intervene on a specific problem as the need arises. Associations, given their financial and personnel constraints, often target their actions on a specific part of the city’s territory (neighbourhoods, district, street).

co-ordinate sporadic actions on the territory in a joint strategy.

The example of the city of Ljubljana is emblematic for understanding the importance of the work of the association sector. The city of Ljubljana established a continuous collaboration with the association sector for issues of youth, drug prevention, violence towards groups at risk (women, children‌), in the form of a delegation by the municipality to associations of the implementation of actions.

Thus, as regards drug addictions, the municipality finalised a strategy and an action plan after having consulted the health professionals, social services, the police and representatives of justice, as well as NGOs. Once the strategy was defined and on the basis of available funds, the municipality prepares calls for proposals and indicates the rules to follow in order to be able to have access to financings for the year.

Even though the municipality has personnel able to follow the theme, the concern for a more in-depth technical competence leads it to call on other partners.

The role of the municipality remains important since it is what decides on the chosen approach for the resolution of the problem and which selects the organisations that will be financed for taking care of carrying out the project. The municipality has, on several occasions, supported associations proposing to develop innovative approaches. Each of the partners finds its own interest in the operation: the municipality enlarges the range of players likely to help it in carrying out an adequate policy. Associations not only have access to financing but also participate in the definition of policies.

The private sector Another fundamental partner is represented by the private sector.

Countries of Northern Europe, more so than those of the South, have developed collaborations with private partners that contribute financially to works. The city of Enschede, for example, in the framework of a renewal project in a sensitive

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neighbourhood, made an agreement with ‘commercial’ partners (primarily banks) that allowed the municipality to plan a fairly extensive project on the territory without asking for a budgetary effort from the administration. This renewal operation procured advantages for the two partners concerned, to the degree that the requalification of the neighbourhood allowed for a development of business and activities as well as a reduction in crime and vandalism in that part of the city.

c) Expertise Just as local investment on security issues, work in partnership constitutes a new approach for which technical competences are necessary. Various forms of organisation of ‘internal expertise’ are observable. In addition, the cities resort to external expertise from time to time.

- Internal expertise On the internal level, we shall first mention the United Kingdom, a country in which the joint approach has been set up as an obligation. The law accompanies that of a model of organisation applicable to all municipalities. The Crime and Disorder Act determines priorities for the three coming years. On the basis of economic and social criteria and the crime rate, the national government decides on the amount of the subsidy. Hackney, because of its fairly negative parameters74, is considered one of the three cities in England to which it was urgent to grant financing for developing an intervention plan on the city’s problems. On this basis, the city of Hackney created a large prevention department whose employees work on the whole security problem.

In other countries, where partnership remains the initiative of each town, one distinguishes, concerning municipalities, two principal tendencies: the most frequent consists of placing a state employee or a small team in charge of coordinating actions and the link between the different partners; in other cities, to the contrary, we witness the constitution of a large prevention department in which are found various professions associated more or less closely with this problem.

In addition to the diversity of forms of organisation, the type of dividing up work between the official and the technician(s) also varies considerably.

74

Data from the city of Hackney. Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategy 2003-2005.

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* The co-ordinators75, ‘local security experts’76 When no law regulates the partnership, in municipalities, a position of technician is frequently created, in charge of co-ordinating the action regarding security: sharing of information, follow-through on dossiers, contacts between partners... This is the case in Enschede, Saint-Denis, L’Hospitalet, in the province of Arezzo and in the Tuscan region.

The mayor or official in charge of security delegates in part to his technician the relations with the other players and the implementation of actions. Several weekly meetings between the official and co-ordinator are organised to guarantee a regular follow-through on the works.

The co-ordinator, at the centre of the partnership, will seek to propose thinking and notions that might enrich and develop the policy, in order to give body to the orientations stated by the elected officials. He will call on his ability for interpretation, especially of police and legal statistics to organise the return of information towards the official in charge of security. From his multidisciplinary and expert position, it is up to the co-ordinator to ensure that the prevention and security policy defined by the local elected officials is coherent in relation to other municipal orientations and to social demand.

In many cases, the technician’s role also includes a representative function. Often, for example, as is the case in the Tuscan region, the technician is called upon to speak in the name of the official and his policy. The confidence and relationship of transparency and exchange of information are then essential.

The interactive relation between elected official and co-ordinator means that the latter is not a simple executant of put-together policy but participates actively in its conception. * A prevention department The city of Mons is distinguished from this model, having made the choice to bring together in a vast department the different municipal interveners in close or distant relation with the prevention issues. Its prevention department, created in 1994, at the initiative of the mayor, and thanks to the support of his technician, began with a pilot project supported by a few social workers. It now numbers 107 persons. The 75

French Forum for Urban Security, Le coordonnateur des politiques locales de sécurité, February 1999 76 Cf. J. Faget, F. Bailleau, Les experts locaux de sécurité, research for the INHES, 2004.

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first steps consisted of improving the knowledge of the territory and meeting with the local associations and institutions, in particular the neighbourhood committees, so as to develop projects that meet the citizens’ needs. Since the beginnings, the work of the security department has been organised between the burgomaster, his principal private secretary and the project manager. Today, the methodology is still the same, and the current principal secretary and project manager of the prevention department meet once a week to define the actions and priorities together.

- Recourse to outside expertise as needed To improve and enrich their knowledge regarding security, the elected officials (mayors, presidents…), can resort to external expertise—or more exactly, participate in the exchange of expertise—in national and international structures.

Thus, the cities of Saint-Denis, Mons and Fidenza, the Tuscan region and the Province of Arezzo are respectively members of the French, Belgian and Italian Forums for Urban Security. In 2003, the SYVICOL created the Luxembourg Forum for Security with the objectives of exchanging experiences and the promotion of the best practices at the local level. Or again, the technician on urban security of the Tuscan region, whose president placed him in charge of handling relations with European institutions, collaborates with the European Forum for Urban Security for running its headquarters in Brussels.

d) The local elected official : driving force of the partnership How does the official position himself in this approach? A priori, his place is central. What about the facts? Several questions arise, and the possible stands are multiple.

There are considerable expectations concerning the official: he is often described as the one who, owing to this central position and his legitimacy as an elected official, allows a common language to gradually develop, beyond cultures and particular professional reflexes, at the same time as concerted actions are put together, in face of such and such problematical situation in relation to which he is the first questioned. ‘The official’ is meant here in a broad sense: it is sometimes the mayor himself, sometimes a deputy delegated to security issues.

The official’s personal involvement, whether greater or lesser, will have an impact on the importance of the role played by the co-ordinator.

In addition to the personal positionings, the legal-political context also plays a role. Thus, in the United Kingdom, the partnership being obligatory and organised uniformly, the mayor probably has a less ‘crucial’ place due to this. It

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would also be interesting to go more deeply into the implications that the nonelective character of the function of mayor has in the Netherlands.

- The local elected official as a ‘ferryman’, as a link The partners unanimously express the need for co-ordination that involves the implementation of prevention actions. In the course of discussions, the contributions brought out on several occasions the expectations placed in this regard in the person of the elected officials. Thus, for a Dutch policeman, the mayor is ‘the one who breaks the tendency that every agency spontaneously has of concentrating on its tasks; he obliges all to co-operate’. For another contributor, the official ‘helps in meeting professional cultures’.

The issue of passing on information, an indispensable element for elaborating and carrying out a concerted security policy, makes a lot of ink flow.

Respect of professional secrecy, limits in which that secrecy can be ‘shared’—we shall not go back here over the whole debate77. Sharing of secrecy, often difficult between professions as different as police officers and social workers, also turns out to be quite delicate when it is a matter, precisely, of the official. Although he plays a driving role in security/prevention policy and ensures its co-ordination, he must be the preferential ‘consignee’ of information regarding security and be able to ask for an accounting. In France, a bill on prevention (currently being profoundly revised) that placed the mayor at the centre of the policy and imposed, in this perspective, obligations of information (for example, on behalf of the Ministry of Education on truancy) has given rise to strong opposition. The idea is nonetheless gaining ground. Also in France has been seen the publication of a ‘Guide of good conduct in the circulation of information between mayors and the public ministry’ (2005).

The official’s role of ‘passer’ can also have its place between the local and national levels, as ‘intercessor’ with state authorities in favour of his community.

In the example of Enschede, in addition to the local mounting of the operation, an intervention of the city at the national level allowed for the real-estate aspects of the operation to benefit from a tax exemption.

- The local elected official as initiator of operations To the degree that the official finds himself in the forefront for receiving the inhabitants’ grievances, he can, beyond his role as link, take on that of project carrier. This is the case for responding to such and such isolated problem that is 77

French Forum for Urban Security Secrets, partage, information, July 2002.

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particularly crucial. The Dutch thus practice the creation of taskforces. The operation carried out in the neighbourhood of Enschede visited in the course of the second seminar is the product of this kind of approach. The neighbourhood is described as one whose inhabitants felt abandoned. On the initiative of the city, a vast operation was started, carried out on several registers (penal, social, property) and involving multiple partners (police, city, social workers, banks, social lessors‌).

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Chapter 3 THE LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIAL AND CITIZENS

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THE LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIAL AND CITIZENS The analysis of the role and competences of local elected officials cannot be conceived without dealing with the relationship that exists between them and those who choose and concretely legitimise their action: the citizens. Our partners were unanimous in stressing the necessity and importance of involving the inhabitants in the production of crime-prevention actions.

Why elected officials consider this involvement as indisputable as it is necessary? The official has the concern for the inhabitants because he is on the front line when a problem arises and because his re-election depends on the satisfaction of the inhabitants. He must therefore show effectiveness, and that what he is accomplishing must be visible. Moreover, he can consider that the inhabitants have something to bring to him: sometimes this will essentially be information, letting him know where problems lie and giving him opinions on how to solve them; sometimes, he will expect veritable involvement from them.

Before analysing, in more precise fashion, the (variable) nature of this mutual relationship, we will mention the various instruments used by the different partners in the project putting them in contact with the inhabitants.

Two tools are implemented in a fairly generalised way: - the questionnaire, - meetings of inhabitants.

The questionnaire is the tool most valued by our partners. Not too costly, it allows them to collect information and, above all, show that the municipality is interested in the opinions of its inhabitants. The questionnaire is not really used for decision-making78 but provides elected officials with a database for orienting their action. All the partners have used this tool on particular themes.

The elected partners of the project are also in the habit of participating in meetings of inhabitants to present their action programmes to them and hear the citizens’ remarks and proposals in order to better understand their priorities and demands. The mayor or president of the province or region generally attends in person. His presence mobilises the participation of the inhabitants who feel directly concerned because their opinion is requested, and they then have the opportunity to state their needs.

Thus, the local Luxembourg prevention committees organise information meetings with the populace. Therein are broached, amongst others, the security issues and the functioning of the police is explained.

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It must not be forgotten that the average response rate to no-matter-what type of questionnaire is approximately 20% of the queried sample.

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The city of Hackney has set up multidisciplinary neighbourhood committees, councils of elderly persons and a new youth parliament, which are consulted for sharing not only information but also proposals and ideas. This work is co-ordinated by the town council and its councillors.

a) The demand of citizens and the reality of insecurity What do the citizens’ demands consist of, as they are revealed by these various instruments? Quite often79, the inhabitants express extremely varied demands that are not always closely associated with security issues, strictly speaking. Thus, in Saint-Denis, inhabitants’ complaints especially concern incivilities or even simple neighbourhood inconveniences (the presence of groups of young people, noise, parking problems, abandoned wrecked automobiles...) that fuel the feelings of fear and provocation in the neighbourhoods.

This observation refers, on the side of the elected officials, to two ways of taking over security issues. For some, security is limited to questions that they are then, depending on the case, going to take charge of themselves or want to have it taken charge of, more or less broadly, by the state authorities. For others—for example, the province of Arezzo—, security is understood in a broad sense: it includes public peace and, and taking care of security means being concerned with the populace’s quality of life. In Mons, the city produced a ‘charter of respect of one’s neighbour’ whose goal was to considerably reduce the nuisances that poison daily life: illicit dumping, public degradations, excessive noise...

Basically, that refers to the ‘broken-windowpane’ theory: the feeling of insecurity is not only the result of infractions. Conversely, the minor disturbances, including the physical degradation of a neighbourhood, contribute to inhabitants losing interest in the neighbourhood, which subsequently more easily becomes prey to crime. From this reasoning, it becomes as important to take care of the ‘little things’ as of more serious crime.

And then, above all, the fact that the local authorities take into account what truly preoccupies the inhabitants, even though these are seemingly things of lesser importance, allows them, as in exchange, to ask the populace to invest itself in the production of security. This is what is illustrated in the ‘Chicago’ model of community policing80: it is because the police and the city, by common agreement, are beginning to repair potholes in pavements and broken street lamps, that they

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Verified during interviews J. Donzelot, A. Wyvekens, ‘Community policing et restauration du lien social. Politiques locales de sécurité aux Etats-Unis et en France’, Les Cahiers de la Security intérieure, no.50, 4th quarter 2002, pp.

43-71.

80

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can ask inhabitants of the neighbourhood to notify them of more important problems and give them the means to confront them.

b) Two models Thus, although the elected officials are unanimous in recognising the importance of their relationship with the inhabitants, the form that takes varies. To analyse it, we will take up here, adapting it, the analysis grid used in a comparison between the city policies in the United States and in France81. We have said that the official on the one hand and the inhabitants (electors) on the other had a mutual interest in working together. What does that collaboration consist of? Two models can be distinguished: in one, the elected official-populace relationship is rather vertical; in the other, it is rather horizontal. The first will be illustrated here by the French example, the second by the Dutch example.

Communication with the inhabitants: the example of the city of Saint-Denis In the first model, the relationship essentially revolves around communication. The local authority informs the inhabitants, informing them as to which structures are at their disposal; what policy it is implementing; how it is responding to a given problem, general or particular. It also informs them of their obligations; it collects their requests and listens to their grievances. But it does not really associate them either in the decision-making or in the implementation of actions.

The tools used can be more or less sophisticated. Thus, besides the aforementioned questionnaires and meetings of inhabitants, the city of Saint-Denis set up a system for welcoming new arrivals in the town. They are invited by the municipality to spend a day in the company of elected officials and technicians.

After a greeting from the mayor, who wishes them welcome, the official in charge of public order, or other officials, accompany them on a tour of the city during which they introduce them to the technicians and show them the services offered by the municipality. This first direct contact with the elected officials and city personnel is aimed at establishing straightaway a mood of availability for dialogue and communication, and for creating a feeling of belonging to the city. It comes down to ‘showing that Saint-Denis is not simply a city but rather a community in which everyone is responsible for the quality of life82‘.

81

J. Donzelot, with C. Mevel and A. Wyvekens, Faire société. La politique de la ville aux Etats-Unis et en France (Paris, 2003).

82 Mr Alain Lautte, deputy for public order in Saint-Denis, Enschede seminar, 28-29 octobre 2004

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Encouraging inhabitants to assume more responsibility: the example of the city of Enschede The second model83 establishes a more horizontal, more egalitarian relationship between elected officials and the populace. Here we find a concern for getting inhabitants to assume greater responsibilities, this being closely linked with a pledge to explain and be accountable, and not merely to inform them.

Thus, several years ago, the city of Enschede undertook a work of collaboration with the inhabitants in the framework of the requalification and animation of one of the city’s most sensitive neighbourhoods. The inhabitants’ openmindedness and habit of participatory work typical of Dutch culture evidently facilitated the task. The citizens were delegated by the municipality to take over the running of certain places in the neighbourhood. The work they achieved is financed by the municipality, but the inhabitants are directly responsible for it, i.e., in case of degradation of materials or of the children’s centre, the citizens will be held directly responsible and obliged to repair the damage. During the fieldtrip to the Velve-Lindenhof neighbourhood, we were able, through brief interviews with the inhabitants, to verify their degree of involvement in the project. The strong feeling of responsibility conveyed by the local authority transformed this public space into an almost-private space, to the point that children from other neighbourhoods who want to participate in the initiatives of the children’s centre, need permission from the inhabitants of the neighbourhood to benefit from these structures.

Another form of getting the inhabitants to take on responsibilities, when some of them complain about a situation, consists of showing them that it is not simple to handle problems by involving them in the co-ordination of the solution project that they are calling for. c) Consultation: occasional experience or working method?

Do the methods used by the elected officials for accounting to inhabitants and making them participate in the activities fall within a working method or rather are they occasional experiences? Are electoral campaigns perceived by elected officials as occasions motivating consultations and the passing on of information?

The responses of our partners are fairly varied and correspond, on the one hand, to the structuring of the local strategy and, on the other, to the method of

83

Let us recall that the models are constructions aimed at providing food for thought and not ‘copies’ of reality.

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electing the mayor as well as his political strategy. They can be regrouped in several categories.

Consultation: an integral part of the crime prevention set-up The United Kingdom distinguishes itself by a community approach that positions itself attentively towards certain population groups. In its partnership work arrangement, the city of Hackney provides for a permanent citizen commission that works regularly with the players of the Hackney Safer Community Service in the implementation of the prevention strategy. This citizen commission does not meet exclusively for exchanging questions and information; it also has a technical role and represents a proposal force. It is for this reason that it brings together technicians and inhabitants rather than elected officials. Here, the consulting of inhabitants falls within a more complex strategy of joint work that disregards the official’s political desire.

Evaluating and accounting for work carried out is an integral part of the working method in the United Kingdom. Elected officials and services are expected to carry out internal evaluations during the realisation of the project (quarterly evaluation or, for projects spanning several years, annually) and final evaluations available to all partners and citizens.

Consultation for specific projects or important events In Mons, the idea of giving accounts and having the citizens participate is an integral part of the strategy of the prevention and security service but takes concrete form only on the occasion of specific actions, for example, the ‘respect of one’s neighbour’ charter84 project. This project was submitted to a vast public consultation, in particular via the city’s website. Numerous opinions (some 700) were collected and integrated into the overall thinking on the revision of the project. In November 2002, a pilot study targeting the fight against incivilities was presented to and approved by the town council. This was an overhaul of the General Police Regulations and different complementary regulations, through the creation of chapters that integrate the three themes customarily present: security, order and public cleanliness. The college of burgomasters and deputy burgomasters held five citizens’ meetings (in October 2003) in order to present the project and exchange new opinions; the definitive project was approved by the town council in December 2004.

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The complete version is available on the city’s website: www.mons.be

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Every year, the Province of Arezzo, on the occasion of the annual jazz festival, ‘Arezzo Wave’, which sees the population double for a week, organises meetings with the inhabitants, in particular the shopkeepers, in order to plan the organisation of the event with them and define common objectives.

In these cases of important events85, and in consideration of the primordial involvement of the inhabitants, the consultation becomes a fundamental strategic instrument for the elected officials who decide to favour the citizens’ role and call them to work concretely on the initiative.

It is the same thing in particular situations, such as an accident (like the explosion of the fireworks factory in Enschede), which generally oblige the mayor to give a rapid and clear response and make an accounting to the inhabitants on the way the municipality decides to intervene. This situation exposes the officials to the immediate judgements of the inhabitants who, finding themselves in a position of insecurity, demand solutions. In these particular situations, the pressure of the inhabitants, combined with the fear of committing errors, often pushes officials to rapidly organise a consultation.

Mail addressed to the mayor Beyond the differences that motivate its use, the consultation of inhabitants is one of the primary concerns of elected officials. In addition to specific tools such as citizen commissions and theme meetings, the first instrument by which officials become aware of inhabitants’ demands still remains letters to the mayor. For communicating their demands and requests to the administration, the first reflex of citizens of small or large cities is to question the mayor by mail and also, nowadays, by e-mail, or even, in the case of small towns, in person. As concerns security, demands are sent to the mayor even if he has a deputy in charge of security. Indeed, regardless of the internal dividing up of competences, in the eyes of his constituents, it is the mayor who is considered responsible for maintaining order and resolving problems. In our sample, Slovenia is the only country—probably owing to its history and culture—where the inhabitants do not really recognise this role in the mayor and exclusively identify the police as the player capable of responding to security problems.

Regardless, all the country’s elected officials studied devote major attention to the development of their communication, especially through the classic instrument that is the local newspaper and, increasingly, now with the new technologies such as Internet. The official websites of cities, provinces, regions or 85

For the Tuscan region, the G8 in Florence in 2002; for the city of Mons, the ‘Ducasse’ event

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Länder often bring together detailed information on the composition of the town’s administration, activities carried out and to be carried out, as well as interviews and agendas of activities and events.

The city of Hackney also uses its Internet website for diffusing its evaluation report and strategy proposal for the coming years, available in several languages upon request.

Other cities, like Mons, have in their prevention service an office that takes care exclusively of information and which prints presentation brochures for every activity carried out by the service.

Finally, in spite of all the efforts made to improve communication with the inhabitants and the other players, there remain numerous partners who assert that the weak point of their policy remains communication86.

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During the city visits, co-ordinators of the Tuscan region and the city of Saint-Denis asserted: ‘even though there were remarkable efforts the past few years, communication is a sector in which it will be necessary to invest in the future.’

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Chapter 4 THE LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIAL AND PREVENTION POLICIES AS ELECTORAL STAKES

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THE LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIAL AND PREVENTION POLICIES AS ELECTORAL STAKES At different moments, and with variable intensities, the issue of security becomes, a bit everywhere in Europe, an electoral stake, as much on the national scene as at the local level. In France, for example, this phenomenon had emerged in the early 1980s, and prevention policy—local and joint—initiated by the mayors’ commission, had the objective of reconciling the right and the left, repression and prevention87. With moderate success88. It was seen recently, during the presidential election in 2002, how security made a powerful return in national debate. In Italy, it was as of the late-1990s that the policies used the theme of security in their electoral campaign89.

Beyond the classic opposition between prevention, which would be ‘leftwing’, and repression, which would be ‘right-wing’, an opposition brought up to date with, on the one hand, social mediation and, on the other, video surveillance, the question remains: is there one urban security policy of the left and another that would be of the right? Or, in a more nuanced way: does political persuasion play a role in the definition and implementation of local security policies?

In the framework of this programme, it is therefore at the local level that elements of response were sought90. What was found? In daily life, locally, two seemingly contradictory tendencies were observed: on the one hand, the concern for ‘de-politicising’ the issue of security in favour of simply being effective; on the other hand, either a politically-tinged discourse or a ‘return of this repressed policy’ that takes diverse forms. The stakes are double, and navigation is not always easy between ‘defending ideas’ and ‘handling things, being close to people’. a) In praise of pragmatism The partners who participated in the project all stressed the importance, at the local level, of getting away from political debate and de-politicising security 87

Ref. Bonnemaison report.

Unfortunately, in early 1986, public security stopped being treated, to be exploited politically. The financial means, already derisory, were given sparingly. Repressive and carceral means were developed, in return for which, one does not hesitate to pretend that it is prevention that failed… Gilbert Bonnemaison 20th anniversary of the Report. ‘Face à la délinquance prévention répression solidarité’.

French Forum for Urban Security, 2003.

89 Claudo Martini ’…Starting in the ‘90s, security policies became the centre of electoral campaigns in Italy’ Conference ‘Role and competences of supra-local authorities in urban security’. Florence (Italy), 22-23 February 2004.

90 On this question, see the research in progress of D. Katane and A. Toulgoat.

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policies. For them, security as a priority is above all a preoccupation centred on the improvement in the quality of life of their citizens.

This observation can first be put in relation—in certain countries, in any case—with an element of legal order, the competences granted to the mayor, that are more a matter of the administrative police and of prevention than of ‘security’ in the strict sense, which often remains a state prerogative. In Italy and Luxembourg in particular, the mayor has a direct competence as concerns the municipal or administrative police but not in terms of public order. That differs from the Belgian example where the burgomaster is also the chef of police.

But the observation applies especially in the practice. Pragmatism is then the key word. It is a matter of being effective. Thus, a city of the left, like Fidenza, applies itself to ‘getting away from a culture of charity, to doing a bit of sanction’.

Moreover, it practices, without qualms, video surveillance—for a very precise problem: bicycle theft. The communist city of Saint-Denis acknowledges having had ‘the ingenuousness of a city that did a lot in the social, prevention and solidarity sectors, believing that this would suffice’. It also practices video surveillance. The chief of police justifies video surveillance by asserting that ‘the city is currently in a phase of reconstruction and transformation and, for that reason, it is important to try different arrangements. The city centre of Saint-Denis, which is “quite compact”, will be developed in a perspective of situational reassuring (integrating security preoccupations into urban-renewal thinking).’ Or again, in Italy the province of Arezzo, is focuses its security policy on social cohesion, and the City of Arezzo uses cameras to prevent the degradation of historical monuments by acts of vandalism. In the United Kingdom, video surveillance is a priority in State directives and is perceived as a simple technological tool.

In this regard, the municipal employee in charge of the sector plays an essential role: as one of them emphasised, he can, unlike the official, not undergo the pressure of crime statistics and, more generally, act where the official is, to a certain degree, held to toe a ‘line’.

b) A question of words?

Indeed, politics does not disappear for all that. Might we say that it takes refuge in words, in the way of presenting the actions more than in their nature? A certain number of elements go in this direction, at least in the French and Italian approaches, which seem to go more in this direction than the Dutch, English or Germans, for example, who seem to be much less sensitive to these ideological aspects.

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Is the word ‘security’ going to be included in the heading of the service?

Some leftist cities hesitate in doing so. The city of Saint-Denis as well as the Province of Arezzo preferred calling their security department the ‘service for public peace’ and underscore an inspiration closer to the social aspect than maintaining law and order. Similarly, the city of Saint-Denis admits to not having straightaway adopted the approach of local security contracts ‘in order not to make security a business or money-maker, not to make a political display’.

The way of presenting the actions carried out also shows that the discourse of pragmatism—an action is said to be chosen for its supposed effectiveness—has its limits: a spade is not always called a spade. Thus, in SaintDenis, there will be no municipal police but urban guards… Certain, largely equivalent, actions can be ‘said’ in highly different formulations. Another example: during an exchange that occurred in the course of the second seminar, a partner went into detail on a neighbourhood project, falling within the crime-prevention programme, where it was a matter, in particular, of acting in terms of housing regarding buildings harbouring illicit activities. The official from another city was initially indignant about the link between population type and crime, then the exchange brought out that analogous operations were also mounted in his country but as actions carried out by the ‘social housing’ service and not by the ‘crime prevention’ service.

The importance of labelling is perhaps more pronounced in certain countries, in particular Italy or France. In southern countries, does the mayor perhaps have a more political role, whereas in the North would it be more managerial? Do these differences have a real impact on the actions implemented or are they exclusively a problem of political display? And if that is the case, does the organisation as concerns security depend more on the mayor’s personality and career than on his political persuasion?

At this stage in the discussions, the answers to these questions cannot yet reach a single direction but would be worth going into more deeply and discussed at a later time.

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CONCLUSION: LEADS AND COMMON DEBATES

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CONCLUSION At the end of the programme, the results of the work carried out jointly can be assessed in two categories. The first is that of knowledge, the second, that of the paths on which to continue thinking. The problem of the place occupied by local elected officials in security policies was a new occasion to assess the role that the Forum plays as a place of exchange—and the importance of exchange in the elaboration of a common crime-prevention philosophy at the European level. For although, at the moment of concluding the group work, all the participants were in agreement in considering that the time had not yet come for producing any joint recommendation, we see more clearly both why this is the case and how to continue to make progress.

The comparison of everyone’s experiences, which always constitutes a special moment in this kind of encounter, first permitted, of course, each participant to make his situation known to the others, to bring out its inventiveness and successes, or even share his worries. For the partners, there is unquestionably strong interest in the approach. Its usefulness does not stop there. The experience of some is then a reservoir of ideas for the others. What is called the spread of ‘good practices’ is, in fact, another stake of these seminars. But the most decisive result, even though the least spectacular, doubtless lies in what the comparison permits in terms of elaborating a common language. >Although the words ‘local’ and ‘partnership’ are on everyone’s lips, it is significant to observe to what point, first, the respective national situations differ from one another, then the relative lack of knowledge that the participants have of them, and therefore the absolute necessity, even before imagining the production of municipal recommendations, of building a language, taking into account these differences, can become truly common. To the exchange of good practices is then added a comparatist approach in the complex sense of the term: overlooking convergences and divergences to make sense of them and thereby help the practices to evolve whilst respecting the framework in which they lie.

The importance of the local level for the elaboration of prevention policies is the object of a broad consensus. Partnership is developing at this level in most countries. Beyond this observation, we were able to make, or rather, remake, the one—known—of variety in the intensity and the forms of relations between the various partners, between the institutional levels, and according to political cultures and legal structures. A newer observation is that of the still-restrained character— in diversity, too—of the role of the official as such. Speaking of municipal level initially refers to the action of the municipal services and functionaries, and the competences structurally attributed to this echelon. Detailed examination of what is happening in this register can be dissociated from that of the political role only with difficulty. A large share of the thinking was therefore devoted to this. What

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might be called the following step—that consisting of asking oneself what position the official himself could, should, or would like to occupy in the elaboration and running of security policies—has only been lightly touched on. Visibly, this place is not frequently invested in strong fashion. Nor is it in an institutionalised way— beyond the classic competences of the local elected officials concerning administrative police, more or less common to all countries. In addition, despite the heading of the programme, only a minority of the persons participating in it were elected officials. From this point of view, the lessons are therefore relatively slim.

The apparently ‘natural’ place of local elected officials at the centre of the partnership regarding security remains to occupy and define. It is perhaps to be relativised: it suffices to think of the example of the Netherlands, one of the countries where the local ‘level’ is the most active, and where the mayor… is not elected...

To pursue the thinking in greater depth, it seems to us that there are two paths that could be taken. Both are, each in its own fashion, a way of approaching the centre of the problem: the issue of politics. The first consists of examining the relations existing between the official and the person(s) who, on the municipal team, is in charge of security issues: ‘prevention / security co-ordinator’, ‘head of the public order department’, or any other denomination. The very existence of this type of position is significant. The differences of positioning and activity are likely to enlighten what is suitable to the official’s place. The second path to follow is that of relations existing between the official and the populace, i.e., between the official and his electors, those who make him what he is. What line does he take?

How does he associate—or not—this with the production of security? What type of relation—vertical, horizontal—does he have with them? What place do security issues occupy in these relations?

In other words, to be continued.

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