Lecture at the occasion of the presentation of the Hungarian National Strategy for Social Crime Prevention
at the Hungarian Embassy in Vienna on February 25, 2004
Jan Van Dijk
|Officer-in-Charge
Human Security Branch
Division for Operations
The United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme is among the oldest of the United Nations programmes. Its foundations were laid in the fifties of the 20th century. From the outset the programme has sought to replace retributive criminal justice by policies which are both more effective and more humane. Experts working with the programme in the fifties and sixties typically belonged to the New Movement of Social Defence, advocating sentencing aimed at reintegration of the offender. Respect for human rights of offenders and prisoners was a key consideration behind the standards and norms for crime prevention and criminal justice elaborated in those years. In the eighties, the Crime Commission widened its focus to include a better treatment of victims of domestic violence and of crime in general a Declaration on Victims Rights was adopted in 1985 by the General Assembly. And, finally, after almost ten years of debate, the Crime Commission, and subsequently ECOSOC, adopted in 2002 the United Nations Guidelines on the Prevention of Crime.
The overarching normative aim of the Prevention Guidelines is expressed in its first article : Crime prevention offers opportunities for a humane and more cost-effective approach to the problems of crime. The United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Crime stand in a fifty year old tradition of efforts of the United Nations to rationalize and humanize criminal justice.
At the Millennium Summit of the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan invited the world to stand up for fundamental human freedoms, including the right to live free of fear and free of want. The concept of Human Security, increasingly used in analyses of UN- based action, refers to policies which protect ordinary people from threats to the very cores of their existence. Fundamental realms of human security are economic security, health security and personal security. Personal security in most countries is mainly threatened by crime and interpersonal violence. In 2002 UNDP conducted a survey on human security among the general public in Latvia. Crime, together with the spread of narcotics and HIV/Aids, were listed as the most important threats to human security.
Everywhere in the large cities of the world and this is where nowadays half of the world population lives- people are fearful of violence and of theft of property. Fear of crime is an overriding, everyday concern of citizens in both developed and developing countries. Ordinary citizens carry the burden of common criminality. Collectively citizens also bear the costs of organized crime and high level corruption. The criminal- political - nexus existing in many countries impoverishes local communities and impedes peace-building, post-conflict reconstruction and sustainable development. It locks many populations in a double bind of poverty and lawlessness. The negative impact of crime on human security can hardly be overestimated.
Policies which effectively reduce the extent of criminal victimization while respecting the rule of law yield direct benefits for the citizens of the world. Against this background, the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme represents a vitally important framework for the promotion of human security. This seems especially true for the recently adopted UN standards and actions for the promotion of victim rights and prevention of crime, just mentioned. These documents provide guidance how criminal threats to human security can be tackled with methods yielding maximum impact at minimum human costs.
The UN Guidelines on the Prevention of Crime offer, first of all an introduction into the key theoretical concepts of modern crime prevention. Crime prevention is defined as comprising all measures that seek to reduce the risk of crimes occurring by intervening in its multiple causes. Criminal justice type interventions can also perform preventive functions but these fall outside the scope of the Guidelines. To underline this difference the Hungarian National Strategy for Crime Prevention is called a Strategy for Social Crime Prevention. The document outlining the strategy specifically makes the important point that criminal justice should not be seen as subordinated to social crime prevention. Social crime prevention is supplementary to the administration of criminal justice. The crime reduction impact of criminal justice can be greatly reinforced if adequate crime prevention mechanisms are in place. Crime prevention cannot replace criminal justice.
In the literature several typologies of crime prevention have been proposed. The UN Guidelines distinguish four main categories of crime prevention :
Prevention through social development or social crime prevention, including early intervention;
Community-based crime prevention ;
Situational and victim-oriented crime prevention and ;
Reintegration of offenders.
The Hungarian National Strategy for Social Crime Prevention follows the same conceptual frame with some adjustments. In the UN Guideline as well as in other UN documents community-based crime prevention is distinguished as a special form of crime prevention. The Hungarian authors of the strategy document regard community-based crime prevention as a special way to organize the implementation of crime prevention rather than as a separate substantive category. The Hungarian document furthermore points out that general employment and health policies have important crime preventive side-effects but cannot be regarded as crime prevention. These are social policies in their own right. Three main types of crime prevention, then, remain: early intervention; situational crime prevention, including victim support and reintegration of offenders.
Early intervention in the development of socially problematic lifestyles is key to effective crime prevention. Techniques of early intervention resemble those advocated as demand reduction in drug control policies. Crime prevention as defined in the UN Guidelines seeks, first of all, to reduce known risk factors of criminality and enhance protective factors. International best practice offers several examples of effective, non-discriminatory support programmes for vulnerable families and children. Programmes offering support to single-parent families and other types of targeted intervention promoting the social integration of children at risk have consistently been found to yield the best returns on investment of all known responses to crime ( Sherman et al, 1997). As calculated by American evaluators of such programmes , every dollar spent on support for vulnerable families eventually yields ten dollars in savings by preventing the development of delinquent lifestyles of the children concerned. From the perspective of human security, investments in support for at risk families with small children show highly favorable returns. The Hungarian strategy pays due attention to early intervention while showing awareness of the need to prevent negative labelling of the target groups.
An internationally known saying learns us that opportunity makes the thief. In Spanish the same criminological insight is elegantly formulated : an open door turns even a saint into a thief. A huge body of knowledge has over the years been developed on the effectiveness of various types of situational crime prevention. Special mention should be made in this connection of combining support to crime victims with advice how to prevent repeat victimization. Since recent victims run a much increased risk of being victimized such advice has not only proven to be highly cost-effective but seems also to be a moral duty of the state. Those who the state has failed to protect against crime should be given all possible assistance to avoid revictimization. Finally, the Guidelines advocate innovative approaches to reintegrate offenders, especially also ex-prisoners.
The Hungarian strategy document applies international best practices in crime prevention as codified in the UN Guidelines in all these domains. The implementation of the strategy offers a welcome opportunity to test out these best practices in a country belonging to a regional group of countries where crime prevention is a relatively new concept. We look forward to the results of the Hungarian experiences with early intervention, situational crime prevention, victim support and social reintegration of offenders.
Equally important as substantive best practices are lessons learned concerning implementation of crime prevention. The international experience of implementing national crime prevention strategies is in many respects a Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Crime prevention in the eighties enjoyed wide political support in several countries. These new policies have resulted in an impressive body of knowledge on what works and what not, based on well designed pilot studies. However, the full scale implementation of these proven practices has often been much less successful. Institutional structures for crime prevention implementation have tended to be under-funded , in a state of constant flux and incapable of developing and maintaining specialised expertise.
Countries as Hungary which introduce these policies in the current era can avoid the mistakes made elsewhere over the past two decades. They can incorporate in their planning international lessons learned on how to implement crime prevention. It is perhaps in this respect that the Hungarian strategy document merits the highest praise.
The UN Guidelines render extensive attention to the organization and planning of crime prevention. The Guidelines do not shy away from addressing the sensitive issue of funding: Crime prevention, reads article ten, requires adequate resources, including funding for structures and activities. Noteworthy in this recommendation is the reference to funding for structures. All too often in the past governments have launched crime prevention strategies without due regard for the need to fund core structures for sustainable implementation. The universally proclaimed need for a multi-agency approach, involving both central and local government as well as civil society and the business sector seems to have generated the mistaken belief that crime prevention can be implemented without clear political leadership and adequate funding for both activities and fully-fledged administrative structures. Past experiences have taught that without such funding crime prevention cannot deliver sustainable results.
The United Kingdom has probably invested more resources in crime prevention than any other country, including in local directors of crime prevention as well as in several specialized NGOs implementing different forms of crime prevention. A recent evaluation report, titled, Investing to Deliver (2004), nevertheless critiques the lack of a sufficiently strong, multi-levelled administrative structure ensuring accountable and sustainable implementation. Independent evaluation of crime prevention implementation in other countries would probably arrive at even more negative conclusions.
The UN Guidelines recommend well funded structures for implementation including the establishment of clear responsibility centres for crime prevention within central government. Such centres must be empowered to offer clear guidance to other ministries, local government, civil society and the business sector. For obvious reasons the Guideline does not provide a one- size- fits- all organizational structure for crime prevention. Each country will have to design its own best fit institutional arrangement.
In Hungary the existing Crime Prevention Council will be transformed into a Crime Prevention Board, chaired by an independent expert , appointed by the Prime Minister. Both the Ministers of the Interior and of Justice are members of the Board. The Board will coordinate crime prevention contributions of all relevant other ministries. The secretariat of the Board is integrated in the Ministry of Justice. A Centre of Expertise on Crime Prevention will be established in the Ministry of Interior. The latter Ministry will also be responsible for the funding of specialized NGOs and for liaising with the business sector. An annual budget of 550 million Hungarian florins has been earmarked for the funding of the strategy within the budget of the Ministry of Justice.
This institutional arrangement clearly places responsibility for the implementation of crime prevention with relevant authorities at the central level. The Board, chaired by an independent Chair is mandated to assure the involvement of other ministries as well as of local authorities, NGOs and the business sector. The Hungarian proposals, as adopted by Parliament, seem to reflect international best practice in crime prevention implementation. The organizational set up seems carefully crafted and offers good prospects of success. The appointment of an independent chair by the prime minister may help to control institutional rivalries between Justice and Interior. It may also help to secure the support of some of the other concerned spending departments such as education and health. The budget may still fall short of what ideally should be made available for full scale implementation of the strategy, but seems to allow for a serious start. Integration of resources into the annual budget of a ministry is certainly to be preferred to the establishment of an ad hoc fund for experimental projects as has been the model elsewhere. The Hungarian Government can be congratulated with laying the institutional foundations for a successful implementation of its social crime prevention strategy.
Crime Assessments and The International Crime Victims Survey
The principle of knowledge-based crime prevention/ reduction requires thorough assessments of the crime problems at issue. Traditionally governments rely for such assessments on data concerning police-recorded crimes. Such police figures do not cover crimes which remain hidden from the police: so-called dark numbers. UNODC collects police figures through questionnaires which are distributed among member states every four years. Although the questionnaires provide important information on the resources and outputs of criminal justice systems the data cannot be used to compare levels of crime. The now widely used instrument of victimization surveys- surveys among samples of the public asking about recent experiences with victimization by crime- provides better and more complete data on the level and nature of crime.
The importance of such surveys for better information on the true level of crime can be illustrated by comparing the Hungarian police figures with results from the International Crime Victims Survey carried out by the United Nations in Budapest in 2000. According to official crime statistics the level of crime in Hungary is below the average level in the Europe ( in Hungary 450 crimes are annually recorded by the police per 10.000 population, while the average in Western Europe lies around 800). However, a different picture emerges from the results of the ICVS : the percentage of the general public victimised by crime in the course of last year was 30,5 % in Budapest against 27 % in all industrialised countries taken together. The true level of crime is above the European-North American average. This finding confirms the general rule that the proportion of hidden crimes is larger in developing countries and countries with economies in transition, due to a variety of reasons including lower rates of reporting by the public and more limited recording practices.
In countries where dark numbers are relatively large, the use of victimization surveys for crime problem assessments is even more imperative than elsewhere. Not only the volume but also trends of police-recorded crime will often be strongly influenced by fluctuations in reporting and recording patterns. Police data can be very misleading if used as benchmarks. If crime prevention/reduction policies are successful, confidence in the police will go up and this will result in more crimes recorded, even if the level of crime remains stable or declines. Reliance on police figures for the evaluation of the impact of newly introduced policies could lead to quite erroneous conclusions about the policys impact.
The United Nations Interregional Criminal Justice Research Institute in Turin, Italy has been involved in the conduct of previous rounds of the International Crime Victims Survey. The ICVS was for example carried out in 16 Central and Eastern European capitals in 2000. For this year UNODC/UNICRI plans a fifth round of the ICVS. Funding for the existing fifteen members of the EU has been secured from the European Commission. Twenty or more other countries have indicated their willingness to participate in the survey on the basis of cost sharing. It would seem important to also repeat the survey in Hungary and in as many other countries in the region as possible.
Standard setting and collecting best practices
As mentioned above, the Economic and Social Council of the General Assembly adopted in 2002 the UN Guidelines for the Prevention of Crime, previously called Elements of Responsible Crime Prevention. In 2003 the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice followed up with a resolution requesting the secretariat to develop a practical manual on the use of the Crime Prevention Guidelines. In a joint venture with UN Habitat a first meeting was convened in Durban, South Africa of a group of experts to discuss the outline of the manual. Since several databases with best practices in crime prevention from developed countries are available, the development of a UN manual could lead to a duplication of efforts. More added value would come from collecting experiences with crime prevention from developing countries and countries with economies in transition. UNODC will continue to collaborate with UN Habitat in the development of the manual which will take the form of a web-based resource facility. Possibly the Hungarian Academy of Crime Prevention established in 2003 could also contribute to this effort.
Technical assistance and advice
The integration of the crime and drugs control programmes of UNODC has led to the establishment within the Division for Operations of a Branch responsible for the substantive back-stopping of all projects on crime prevention and drugs control. The Branch has been labelled the Human Security Branch. The Branch will contribute to the design and backstopping of crime prevention projects. The prevention and treatment unit, currently exclusively engaged in drugs-related demand reduction activities, will in the future widen its scope to also cover prevention of delinquency. The criminal justice reform unit will expand its work in the areas of juvenile justice reform, victim support and domestic violence.
At this juncture the ongoing UNODC projects in the field of crime prevention can be classified in four main groups :
Urban security
Juvenile justice/ early intervention
Domestic violence
Victim Support
Under the rubric of urban security, a project is under preparation on Inter-agency partnerships for safer favelas in the city of Rio, Brazil. The Project will strengthen the strategies for actions of the Rio de Janeiro City Hall, involving partnerships with non-governmental organizations and including the systematized collection of data and use of victimization survey methodologies, the launching of awareness raising campaigns and the training of staff involved in community crime prevention interventions. Another, ongoing, project promotes urban crime prevention in the Dakar Region through the establishment of local Houses of Justice and the setting-up of community policing structures in difficult neighbourhoods.
As far as juvenile justice/early prevention is concerned, UNODC implements several projects on Juvenile Justice Reform and Delinquency Prevention in the Middle East Region (Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan) and Afghanistan. Governments in these countries are faced with increasing levels of juvenile delinquency, often related to drug trafficking and consumption, as well as with large numbers of street children. These projects aim to formulate a strategy directed towards the improvement of detention conditions for young offender, the protection directed towards the improvement of detention conditions for young offenders, the protection of young people in difficult circumstances and the prevention of delinquency and recidivism. Juveniles receive educational and vocational training during the time they are in closed institutions as well as after their release, which allows them to develop their skills, mental and physical abilities and which facilitates their social reinsertion.
Based on lessons learned from pilot testing in South Africa, a number of projects are envisaged for Southern African countries to counteract and prevent violence against women. One Stop Centres are created, which provide a range of services to victims of violence, including counselling, support groups, provisional shelter and fast referral for medical and legal assistance. The projects also include prevention and rehabilitation programmes for male perpetrators.
The Office is also involved in the promotion of support structures for crime victims in several developing countries. Through the internet NGOs were invited to submit proposals for the establishment of support structures of victims of violent crime, including victims of human trafficking. The Office received over two hundred well-prepared submissions. In March 2004 the Office will announce which 15 projects have been selected by the international jury to receive grants and become subject of a special monitoring mechanism.
Noteworthy is further a new UNODC project, entitled South-South Cooperation for Determining Good Practices for Crime Prevention in the Developing World , approved by the United Nations General Assembly as part of its programme to strengthen South-South cooperation under the Development Account. The first planning meeting took place in February 2004 in Jamaica. The general objective of the project is to assist in building up a systematic process of information exchange on crime prevention in the developing world. Specifically, this will be carried out by establishing a network of information exchange between the Caribbean and Southern Africa, two regions in the developing world with high levels of violent crime, caused by similar factors, including high levels of unemployment and income inequality, a significant involvement of juveniles in criminal activity, the proliferation of unlicensed firearms and a critical need for police reform. UNODCs project will assist countries to build up their own capacity to share and implement knowledge and expertise on crime prevention. This should in the longer run, lead to crime prevention activities in the countries of the sub-regions, which are more comprehensive, better adjusted to local needs, more professional and - what counts most - more effective, in terms of successful crime reduction.
These projects are prime examples of the special mission of the Human Security Branch, to promote human security through cost-effective and humane crime prevention and drugs control policies. The Human Security Branch therefore attaches great importance to the successful implementation of these projects.