Excellent.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today.
I understand this committee is looking at how social finance can be related to crime prevention in Canada. I will begin by providing some background information on the larger context of sustainable crime prevention efforts and practices.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in its compendium on the standards and norms in crime prevention, states the following:
There is clear evidence that well-planned crime prevention strategies not only prevent crime and victimization, but also promote community safety and contribute to the sustainable development of countries. Effective, responsible crime prevention enhances the quality of life of all citizens.
Many countries look to this compendium as being foundational to their own national strategy. As this committee knows, Canada is a signatory to the guidelines for the prevention of crime.
In 2007 Public Safety Canada’s publication, A Blueprint for Effective Crime Prevention, stated this:
There is no single approach to crime prevention. A wide array of interventions is needed to maximize effectiveness. Accordingly, the NCPC adopts the position reflected in the United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Crime....
The UN guidelines go on to state this.
Cooperation/partnerships should be an integral part of effective crime prevention, given the wide-ranging nature of the causes of crime and the skills and responsibilities required to address them. This includes partnerships working across ministries and between authorities, community organizations, non-governmental organizations, the business sector and private citizens.
However, these guidelines are short on “how to’s”. For example, there is no information on how wide collaboration with the community in the form of partnerships would be carried out or maintained, or how to conduct initial diagnostic analysis to identify and frame community concerns.
Researchers have drawn attention to the many obstacles involved. As Professor Hastings has stated, the first difficulty involves the lack of agreement regarding the causes of crime and the targets of prevention; the second difficulty involves the level of confidence people have in the solutions proposed for crime problems; and the third difficulty arises from differences in emphasis on the importance of the community.
Lack of such detail encourages a search for where these guidelines are currently being played out. The British experience is often heralded as a successful model. The tenants of the British experience with crime prevention can be found in numerous reports that span several decades, including the Cornish, the Gladstone, and the Morgan reports.
The Morgan report, in particular, “explored ways in which inter-agency crime prevention could be made normal business” and under what administrative arrangements. The key recommendations of that report were that crime prevention would be the responsibility of local area authorities and that this would be made a statutory responsibility.
The pinnacle of the British experience was the Crime and Disorder Act, and this is when the Morgan recommendations were finally realized. This statutory authority moved crime prevention past the natural threats inherent to such an endeavour by providing an obligatory and accountability structure foundational to the sustainability of the effort. Crime prevention moved beyond lip service and the good faith intentions of individuals to a more secure sustainable platform.
Canada is without similar legislation.
The Horner report is a good place to review substantive report recommendations in the Canadian context that are akin to the Morgan report in the British context. Although emphasis on statutory responsibility is limited, most of the foundational pillars from which the national strategy is derived can be found in the report’s recommendations. It should be noted that not all of the report’s recommendations have come to fruition.
One of the recommendations was directly related to funding, and I quote,
The Committee recommends that a share of the monies forfeited as proceeds of crime be allocated to crime prevention activities and that the federal government allocate 1% a year of the current federal budget for police, courts, and corrections to crime prevention over a five year period. At the end of five years, Canada should spend 5% of the current federal criminal justice budget on crime prevention.
It is clear that the Horner report originally envisioned a much larger financial contribution to national crime prevention than what is currently being spent and allocated in this area. Therefore, it was not surprising when I reviewed prior testimony by Mr. Shawn Tupper before this committee when he stated this: “Governments do not have the level of financial resources required to fund these programs in a long-term, sustainable way.”
With a limited time remaining, and having this broader crime prevention context in mind, I would like to summarize by saying that whether we're talking about social innovation through social finance or some other progressive partnership program, in the absence of a statutory framework that encompasses obligation, accountability, and transparency, along with a substantially larger financial commitment by the federal government to municipalities, I would echo other colleagues in the field who state that for the moment it would be naive to assume that progress towards crime prevention is inevitable.
I would be happy to take any of your questions.