Community safety is about more than police

The science of community safety and crime and violence prevention shows investing in preventing violence before it happens is more effective and cost-effective than police and prisons.

It is said that it takes a whole village to raise a child, not just the family and the school. Similarly, the most important message in the decades-old global Healthy Communities movement that I helped to create is that it takes efforts at all levels and across all sectors to create a healthier community. So while the health-care sector is obviously needed, it is not the most important contributor to the health of a community.

These lessons apply equally to community safety. While a good police force is necessary, it is not sufficient to create safety; it takes the whole community to do that. And what is true of a healthy community – that it is built one home at a time, one street at a time, one block at a time and one neighbourhood at a time – is equally true for creating a safer community.

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