1 You have in front of you a brief summary overview of our efforts - - PDF document

Good Evening Chair Seiling and Members of Regional Council Thank you for this opportunity to provide you with an update about the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council. It has been a while since we presented to you - although we brought several issue specific reports to Community Services Committee meetings. Tonight we want to reflect briefly on our actions during the last two years in meeting our strategic objectives and in responding to the community, as well as provide you with some reflections about our role more generally.

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You have in front of you a brief summary overview of our efforts to implement the current community plan called Smart on Crime in Waterloo Region . I will restrict myself to highlights from that summary and build in some reminders about the Crime Prevention Council's mandate.

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Our vision has been more or less consistent since Regional Council first established the Crime Prevention Council in 1994 under the leadership of then Chief of Police Larry Gravill.

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The goal was and remains to animate our community and its key decision makers to play an active role in creating a safe community by paying attention to the those conditions that we know from research and experience to increase crime.

When we started our work over two decades ago the concept of root causes of crime was not well understood. As you know from our evaluation of the previous Smart on Crime Plan (2010-2014) that has significantly changed over time. The notion of upstream prevention is becoming more widely known and accepted. It remains our aspiration to further advance that knowledge through our sector leadership approach that has become a model for other municipalities across the country. In order to do so we have to often take complex concepts and convey them in a way that is accessible to a broad audience. We recently created a short video to do just that. Take a look.

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Upstream prevention requires an "all-hands-on-deck" mentality. This is why our sector leadership has been growing over time into a rather large community round table that meets every month to network, learn, share, and dialogue about possible community

• actions. As you look at this image you will note that we don’t name organizations per se

but rather we name sectors or areas of expertise and influence that members of Council bring to the issue. What matters most are not the monthly meetings but what these leaders do in their own places of work, neighborhood, faith groups and other areas where they can influence decisions and actions. I understand you have in your package tonight the most current slate as proposed by the Crime Prevention Council and we hope it will meet with your approval.

The resources provided by you as our core budget allow our staff to facilitate this round table and put into action its directions. These resources leverage significant grass roots activities and make the collective approach comprehensive and more integrated. Here you can see some members of Council at our annual planning retreat. It has been said that collaboration is not for the faint hearted. It means putting relationships first – as was the topic our our most recent justice dinner. This means also to agree on some core values.

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Part of staying relevant means knowing what you are about, knowing what you value and saying out loud: this is what you can expect from working with us. WRCPC redeveloped some key organizational tools. We have a newly researched root causes statement , a fully revamped website, and an updates policy document. Towards the end of last year we also surveyed members of Council about their satisfaction with how we function and the overall feedback showed that members of Council remain engaged and inspired.

A snapshot of in-kind resources in 2017 shows that at a minimum community contributions towards the Crime Prevention Council were formidable and amounted to the equivalent of 3.2 FTEs in hours. This does not include corporate supports and grants. Please note that 2017 was a staff transition year for us and we worked at reduced staff complement. Despite that as an organization of 6.2 FTE staff we leveraged an additional equivalent of 3.2 FTE. Most significantly it does not include the ripple effect of what people and organizations do as it relates crime prevention after engaging or working with the Crime Prevention Council

• r having participated in one of our community initiatives.

Examples of this are too numerous to mention but we know form research that crime prevention can have a return on investment from $4 to $82 for every dollar spent and/or lead to reductions in crime of up to 75%.

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The work of crime prevention is not accomplished by Members of Council and staff alone. In response to increased requests from members of the community to become part of the Council the Friends of Crime Prevention imitative was born. This is an engagement method not a numbers game. We want those who become friends to own the mission of reducing the root causes of crime and doing their part in increasing well-being. We are getting closer to reaching our strategic target of over 400 engaged friends. But more significantly friends now have their own website and newsletter and they direct the work and take actions in ways that we could not have conceived of. Here are some quick examples.

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Friends took intensive learning from the class room settings to the porch. These

• pportunities are free – facilitated by the community for the community – and they tackle

hard topic in a safe setting.

Porch chats are locally focused events. Neighbors and community members are greeted with some cookies and lemonade on the porch late afternoon…..

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….and then gather in the millennium garden for a dialogue about issues that were identified by the community as challenges to community safety. These challenges either featured in our strategic plan or were emergent issue.

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They included: The experience of Trauma Islamophobia The criminalization of mental health History of social development in Waterloo Region

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The over-incarnation of Indigenous populations

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and how to get beyond the bystander effect in gendered violence These are just some of the topic that have been tackled during those community conversations. But we don’t stop at talking. The goal is to animate those who attend to take that next step. Sometimes we know about these efforts because we continue to support them. Other times the community takes leadership and our role becomes peripheral. We are responsible for the process. We are not always able to control the outcome. For example: The prevention of the bystander effect is being developed into a community training. A policy paper on NCR (not criminally responsible) has been written and dispels some of the myth related to mental health and crime.

As much as possible friends initiatives feature local work and local efforts. Here Judah Oudshoolm is signing his book: Trauma Informed Youth Justice at a Friends' event

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And sometimes friends host events such as book readings that are simply meant to stimulate thinking about hard topics in safe settings.

This past Fall we developed an intensive course in crime prevention through social

• development. Over seven weeks a small group of local leaders met to dive deep into what

prevention is about, how to distinguish it from interventions, and how to meaningfully engage the community in taking actions that advance the wellbeing of future generations. Because that is what prevention is all about. A first evaluation showed that the course was successful and a Master Thesis evaluation will help us to further refine this knowledge exchange approach.

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On February 28 course participants will host a "winter chat" to share what they learned and how they are using that knowledge.

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The deepening of the Friends initiative was just one of many objectives of the current smart on crime plan.

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You will recall the plan has three key areas in which we committed to do work. Youth Neighbourhods and Advancing the smart on crime momentum

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Crime Prevention Councils are often referred to as Centers of Responsibility. In essence this means that we don’t provide a service per se or implement programs but rather we utilize

• ur core resources to broaden the community engagement in prevention and influence

existing services and policies. The methods for doing so have not significantly changed over time. In our current plan they are identified as falling into four broad types of action:

• Research
• Engagement
• Partnerships
• Advocacy

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Some of our commitments are longstanding such as the 40 year Violence Prevention Plan that has led to several research reports and community actions over time.

Recently the Domestic Assault Response Team adopted this model of the impact of intimate partner violence. The model was developed in part based on our research and received ongoing support from us and it is now owned by the community.

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The model led to training of health care professionals who have a significant capacity to contribute to reducing repeat incidents of family violence. This is one example of how we at times create, at times support, at times influence or simply partake in efforts that enhance community safety. I want to give a shout out here to

• ur colleagues form Public Health who also have been instrumental in this effort.

WRCPC is a catalyst and facilitator of community actions. The credit for the outcomes always belongs to the community.

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WRCPC over time has not only monitored crime and insecurity but also perceptions and

• fears. Research shows that fear of crime and public perceptions that places are "unsafe"

have as detrimental an impact on the quality of life in communities as crime itself.

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The most recent report generated a lot of media and community interest and we will continue to share the results – especially the fact that trust in Waterloo Region has significantly increased since the last survey was implemented.

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Breaking the silence regarding violence against the LGBTQ community is a great example of how we operate. Hate crime data showed that violence against LGBTQ persons was significant in our

• community. A member of council from the LGBTQ community kept the conversation about

this issue alive. We completed some research about the extent of the issues and then facilitated a broad community forum with experts and persons with lived experiences. The forum led to a community action report that has been widely circulated and adopted including by some area municipalities. The implementation is now owned by the rainbow community and our role is to provide background support in events such as "a place to call safe".

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Similarly the THINK campaign was born out of the experience of our educational representatives that bullying had moved into the cyber world. We investigated the extent

• f the issue and researched some best practices and a committee developed the THINK

campaign which was rolled out in all schools across the Region. Since both school boards are part of the Crime Prevention Council they ensured that the campaign was included as part of the curriculum and their responsible digital citizenship efforts. Anecdotally we learned that bullying decreased in the weeks after the campaign. This is an example of system level change that started with us and continues without us.

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Working with the congress of black women, the City of Kitchener and our local black community we have an opportunity to highlight what it means to be black in our community and the impact of anti-black racism. This is an example of advancing equity and belonging which is one of our strategic approaches. While this was not initiated by us - the community identified it as something that we needed to support and staff have been able to do soon our behalf.

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While many emergent issues can be anticipated to some extent - the impact on resources can at times be unforeseeable and unsustainable. The opioid crisis that is playing itself out across the country falls squarely into that category. When the Integrated Drugs Strategy moved into the community from us after funding was secured we anticipated that our role would diminish significantly over time. That has not been the case. With well over 200 media appearances and continued requests for consultation on policies and strategies from across the Province as well as demands locally for sharing information - it is fair to say that our involvement was not anticipated to this extend and yet demanded by the community and beyond. We know that these demands are shared by many community partners. If nothing else this experience has strengthened our resolve to champion upstream prevention.

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One clear successful policy change that came out of our research on barriers to calling 911 in over dose situations has been the Good Samaritan law. I understand Council received a full report about our work in this regard previously. But for us it showed that committed citizens do in fact have the capacity to create transformative change.

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Evaluating the impact of upstream prevention poses significant challenges. How do we demonstrate that something has NOT happened? Nonetheless we have engaged two post secondary institutions. The first to look at the collective impact of our work as our accountability to you and our community. As the longest standing crime prevention council of its kind in Canada after two decades we have a Waterloo Region story that needs to be told. That is the historical narrative evaluation. We are often asked from across the country about our developmental efforts and as members of Council and staff change we know that it is important to not lose the collective knowledge that we have gained.

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This is part of building the momentum for crime prevention across the country. You will recall that in 2003 the Agenda for a Safer Canada was written here in Waterloo Region. We now have a federally funded national network of which we are the founding co-chair. We are close to our target of having 30 municipalities as active members of this network capturing over 40% of the total population of Canada including in the territories. The overall goal is to ensure that local voices for crime prevention are heard and inform federal and provincial decisions.

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The network has increased the capacity for cross municipal learning. At times other municipalities visit to learn about our unique arms length office to local government.

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In March 2017 we hosted the national meeting back at the Walper where the original agenda for a safer Canada was written.

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report was just one of many topics of discussion affecting communities across the country.

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We featured local innovation that we know contributes to making our communities safer.

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And we were able to celebrate our accomplishments to date.

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As always Regional Chair Seiling has been a stellar ally for our grass roots work.

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The network and more specifically Waterloo Region has caught the attention of the UN habitat for safer cities movement.

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More recently we represented the national network in Guadalajara at a gathering that ended with the signing of a North America declaration which features the importance of local voice for prevention as well as the commitment to improve measurements for prevention through what is called safe city laboratories .

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While our focus is local it is important to recognize that the work is and continues to be also spearheaded by reputable international organizations such as the World Health

• Organization. In a meeting in Ottawa this past October the WHO reiterated the

commitment to eliminating violence against children among other actions as key to accomplishing the sustainable development goals.

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Sometimes we trail blaze and sometimes we get to build on legacies that came before us. The annual justice dinner falls into the latter category. I would suggest that not many communities can bring an event in a partnership between local government, restorative agencies and women from a federal correctional facility as we did last year. We DO have a jail in our community and our commitment throughout the years has been and remains to include efforts for successful reintegration in our prevention plans. During the dinner we featured the #togetherwerock campaign and next week women from GVI will hand a cheque to a local agency with the money they raised form painting the rocks

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If you were not able to join us here are some quick glimpses form the night

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Sometimes opportunities to build community come along that are just too good to turn

• down. We have been very pleased to participate in many facets of Wellbeing Waterloo

Region because of it is clear connection to prevention goals. Wellbeing Waterloo Region in

• ur thinking has already deepened collaboration and commitment to no-one being left

behind in our community which is a key goal of our work too.

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Youth have since the beginning been a key focus of our work as exampled by Look Deeper campaign, policy work during the implementation of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, Safe and Sound, inReach, Say hi, Youth Navigators project, etc. While youth crime has steadily declined in the last decade we know that the majority of crimes are committed by a very small group of young people who are largely vulnerable and marginalized. In March we hope to return to community Services Committee with a more fulsome report

• n our research in this regard.

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Meanwhile we sincerely hope you attend our upcoming event on the Iceland national success story. As a country with a populations similar to that of Waterloo Region Iceland has achieved double digit reductions in problematic substance use and the link between that and crime by now is well documented. We believe that the model has applicability to Waterloo Region and WRCPC is committed to exploring that.

As always this event too comes in partnership with others and if you are unable to attend the evening presentation at KPL on February 15 you may wish to avail yourself to a more academic focus earlier that day at the University of Waterloo.

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Finally, our re-location to the Governor's house has afforded us many new community

• pportunities. Inside the house we developed a display that speaks to how the house has

been transformed from originally being the home of the wardens for the local jail to being the backbone office for crime prevention. This transformation - as well as the model of government-community partnership - frequently catches the attention and accolades from communities across the country.

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