Community Safety Partnerships by and with Indigenous Peoples

This 22-page "Trends and Practice" paper aims to summarise some key global trends and developments with a focus on indigenous populations, highlight some recent examples of indigenous communities in action towards crime prevention, including some of the challenges of implementing effective prevention, and present some key learning from the field to inform future action.

In her introduction, the author describes documentation of the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples in the criminal justice systems of many countries as offenders and in social service systems as economically and socially disadvantaged. However, she suggests, "A focus on solutions through partnerships in prevention is inspired by a larger shift and spirit which seems to be taking place in the last decade in relation to indigenous people and more broadly in the development field." In attempting to summarise global trends and developments, the author discusses the lack of reliable data and absence of research, the lack of constitutional recognition of indigenous peoples in certain countries, and a the lack of long-term social development approaches to building safe communities.

The paper focuses on the following trends and developments:

• The migration of indigenous peoples to urban areas is a trend supported by statistics from Australia - 30 percent living in major cities (2001 statistics), Canada - 49 percent living in major cities (2001), and Chile - 33 percent of the Mapuche population living in urban areas. A second trend is cross-border migration in Colombia, the Mekong region in Asia, and Africa. In response to a dearth of global research on the impact of migration, Canadian research suggests "the need to identify the specificities within the larger urban indigenous community such as geographic distribution, gender, the diversity of culture and language, links to rural and remote communities, and presence or lack of urban indigenous organizations and institutions within cities to provide assistance and support in examining the well-being of indigenous population in urban areas."
  
  
• The involvement of indigenous peoples as partners with government, the private sector and civil society in project and programme development is a recent development. This includes some bilateral collaboration on partnership formation, as well as a governmental partnership on developing indicators for well-being. The author states that "[p]artnership building with indigenous peoples is also a major focus of the Program of Action of the Second International Decade of the World’s indigenous People adopted by the General Assembly [PDF format]".
  
  
• A second development is a shift away from a deficit model, to one which focuses on building on and strengthening the capacities of indigenous communities. This model includes strengthening leadership, capacity and skills of community members to apply for funding, as well as to implement, manage, and evaluate projects.
  
  
• Finally, crime prevention strategies geared to the needs and perspectives of indigenous peoples are receiving recognition. Strategies which focus on social development and which recognise the cross-cutting nature of the causes of crime and victimisation are being acknowledged as having much potential for developing the capacities of individuals and communities to tackle those causes.

The paper includes a number of programmes, practices, and policies that represent a broad focus on health, community development and urban renewal that strengthen communities and have crime prevention outcomes. It then concludes with examples of good practices of institutions seeking a greater role in working with indigenous peoples. Among them are:

• language research, community education on health, law and economics, training and development initiatives;
• in the field of criminal justice: alternatives to incarceration, juvenile justice planning, and training on data collection and analysis to obtain community perspectives on delinquency, violence and victimisation;
• women's rights and micro enterprise workshops; and
• a virtual network of researchers and practitioners working on community safety in relation to indigenous peoples.

The author has these recommendations for governments and partners working to build more inclusive crime prevention policies and programmes to meet the needs of indigenous peoples:

• "Increasing the skills, knowledge and capabilities of all staff in actively engaging and working with indigenous communities and organizations.
• Ensuring that indigenous knowledge is respected, valued and recognized in governance practices.
• Involving indigenous peoples in the gathering of data and information, analysis of problems and solutions and the design, and implementation and evaluation of initiatives.
• Embedding their participation in ongoing decision-making in the city or neighbourhood level.
• Providing opportunities to share good practice within and across countries that help inspire and build momentum among indigenous and non indigenous policymakers, practitioners, and civil society."