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. 1
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. 2
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. 3
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 . 4
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. 5
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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. 7
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. 8
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. 9
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 or 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%. 10
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. 11
Friends took intensive learning from the class room settings to the porch. These opportunities are free – facilitated by the community for the community – and they tackle hard topic in a safe setting. 12
Porch chats are locally focused events. Neighbors and community members are greeted with some cookies and lemonade on the porch late afternoon….. 13
….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. 14
They included: The experience of Trauma Islamophobia The criminalization of mental health History of social development in Waterloo Region 15
The over-incarnation of Indigenous populations 16
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. 17
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 18
And sometimes friends host events such as book readings that are simply meant to stimulate thinking about hard topics in safe settings. 19
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. 20
On February 28 course participants will host a "winter chat" to share what they learned and how they are using that knowledge. 21
The deepening of the Friends initiative was just one of many objectives of the current smart on crime plan. 22
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 23
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 our 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 24
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. 25
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. 26
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