The national strategy on community safety and crime prevention is a fairly recent initiative. Phase II of the national strategy, launched in June 1998 at $32 million per year, built on the recommendations and the four years of consultation and policy work of the former National Crime Prevention Council. The objectives of the national strategy are:
(a) to promote the integrated action of key governmental and non-governmental partners to reduce crime and victimization;
(b) to assist communities in developing and implementing community-based solutions to problems that contribute to crime and victimization, particularly as they affect children, youth, women, and Aboriginal people; and
(c) to increase public awareness of, and support for, effective approaches to crime prevention.
In approving resources for phase II of the national strategy, the Treasury Board Secretariat required that a mid-term evaluation be completed by March 2001 and a summative evaluation be completed by November 2002. The mid-term evaluation focused on the organizational structures that have been built in support of the national strategy and made a number of recommendations for improvement. The upcoming summative evaluation will focus more on the results that are attributable to the work of the National Crime Prevention Centre, NCPC, in its support of the national strategy. In short, the evaluation will assess the extent to which the NCPC has moved toward the achievement of its objectives.
In the summer of 2000, a mid-term process evaluation of phase II of the national strategy was conducted to determine whether the design and implementation of the national strategy would support the attainment of its objectives and its five long term impacts. Key stakeholders and the mid-term process evaluation of phase II identified the need for a gradual, strategic expansion component to the national strategy. The findings of the evaluation specifically stressed the need for improvement in the following five areas if the national strategy is to be successful in reaching high risk groups and vulnerable communities: more comprehensive support structure; stronger policy, research and evaluation capacity; expanded and strategic use of partnerships; greater focus on sustainability; and effective public education and promotion.
As a result of recommendations made in the mid-term evaluation, the NCPC underwent an organizational review during the summer of 2001.
All projects funded under the crime prevention investment fund, one of the strategy’s five funding programs, undergo rigorous, third party evaluations. Through this research and development crime prevention fund, we will learn what is promising, what works, what does not and in what context. Evaluators are required to conduct process evaluations, outcome evaluations and collect costing data to be used by the NCPC to carry out a benefit-cost analysis of selected crime prevention projects. It should be noted that virtually all of the third-party evaluations are still on-going today as they typically last four years in duration; notwithstanding, the NCPC has received promising interim results for many of the project evaluations.
In June 2000 a study entitled an Evaluation of Crime Prevention Community Mobilization Projects in Selected Communities Across Canada was completed. Although the sample size of projects reviewed and analyzed was small and the focus of the study was on process evaluation, several key findings emerged. It was found that project evaluations tended to report on activities, client satisfaction with these activities, e.g., services, workshops, or communication information, and future program or service needs. In some regions, such as Nova Scotia, representatives of the Department of Justice realized that community groups varied in their level of expertise in carrying out evaluations and produced a hand-out providing guidance on how to identify project outcomes, in particular impacts on client groups and partnerships established. To attempt to address these and other issues associated with evaluation, the research and evaluation section of the NCPC will be releasing a publication this spring pertaining to the development of logic models and theories of change. It is hoped that this document will assist community groups and organizations in developing their projects and logically linking up proposed crime prevention activities to anticipated short, intermediate and long term outcomes.
Crime prevention through social development, CPSD, is a community based, long term approach to preventing crime and victimization that recognizes the complex social, economic and cultural processes that contribute to crime and victimization. Because CPSD focuses on the social development end of the crime prevention equation, it can take time, i.e. years, for the crime prevention benefits to accrue. Notwithstanding, we are very confident that projects and interventions, which have resulted in measurable reductions in levels of crime and victimization and in improvements to community safety, can be identified.
Many problems of crime and victimization are common worldwide. As a result, it should be noted that Canada can also learn from the promising, model and best practices of other countries. Scientific evidence to date already shows that some prevention programs work, some do not, some are promising, and some have not been tested adequately. NCPC works hard to keep abreast of this information and to subsequently share what is learned for the purpose of guiding our policy frameworks and project funding decisions.