Simsi serves clients around the globe and recognizes that local terminology could mean that “state” is interchangeable with “country” in some places or “province” in others. This article primarily covers equivalents of states or provinces in countries like the United States of America or Canada, but may also apply to smaller nations or government subdivisions.
Municipal leaders and their residents and visitors are on the front lines of these problems which often require resources and other supports from state officials. So how can state leaders act in support of crime reduction and prevention programming within local contexts? Money helps, but merely pouring money into programs is not the answer.
Resources to address crime problems must be deployed to specific places with data-informed precision that meets both local needs and expectations. A process like DICE can coordinate existing resources and address local problems. DICE is a data-informed process for collaborative community-engaged crime prevention programming and place management. It can be set-up quickly to drive actions immediately by utilizing resources already in operation, but optimizing their services to be delivered at priority places. Municipal departments and non-governmental organization (NGO) partners with funding for their own individual mission-oriented services bring various expertise and capacities for problem-solving, allowing each group to stay within their wheelhouse while providing a necessary piece to the larger initiative.
The DICE process makes public safety programming iterative and dynamic. That is, responsive to new priorities over time with activities tailored to address the local problems in-line with local contexts. Place-based analytics like Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) drive DICE and help to highlight which departments or NGOs align with priority problems at geographic places that each stakeholder could directly impact, influence, maintain, or deploy to.
State policies and resources should establish public safety collaborative (PSC) processes and train local leaders in DICE. As the saying goes, “to teach is to change a life forever”. State officials can incentivize new opportunities and processes for public safety programming. They can change the way crime prevention gets done. States can simultaneously empower multiple local stakeholders to do what they do best at the places needing them most, while reducing inaction caused by tensions over the competition that just one program or service could be selected as the sole response to crime problems. The process becomes the solution. Multiple best-practices can be adopted at-once, and a legacy for co-production remains when the state shifts its direct focus to a new jurisdiction.
We need to think differently about crime prevention. State officials can effect this mindset change by incentivizing DICE via the PSC model. With political expertise and policy-rich coffers, you can act as a catalyst for implementing new ways of thinking about place-based problems, new ways of talking about them, and new ways of addressing them at the local levels. You can either foster and perpetuate the failing status quo, or disrupt and replace it with a more desirable new normal. DICE builds trust and delivers better public safety and meaningful prevention that is community-focused and evidence-based. Enabling more DICE throughout your state will maximize resources and strengthen public relations.