Crime and community safety

Speech presented at the National Neighbourhood Watch Conference, "Neighbourhood: making a safer community", Canberra, 26-28 September 2001, by Adam Graycar, Director, Australian Institute of Criminology. This speech is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Responsibility for putting into place the necessary means to prevent crime is usually beyond the scope of any one agency or sector, and least of all, the criminal justice system. Successful crime prevention requires a fundamental change in the way government do things. Crime is an issue that involves the whole community. Crime is the result of complex changes in economic, social and cultural factors such as unemployment, child abuse, poor education, community breakdown, economic inequality and substance abuse. The broader community must be encouraged to accept ownership of, and show leadership in, community safety and crime prevention