Police-Citizen Cooperation Works in Peru, UN Congress Told

BANGKOK—An experiment to bring Peru's police closer to the citizenry has led to reduced crime and an increased sense of public security in just over a year. These are the early results from a project launched by the Open Society Justice Initiative and its Peruvian partner, Instituto de Defensa Legal, presented at the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Bangkok this week.

Residents surveyed in the pilot district of Chilca were more likely to feel "more or less safe" than before the project began, up from 36 percent then to 49 percent today. The number feeling "very insecure" meanwhile dropped from 27 percent to 8 percent. Actual incidents of crime also fell, with street robbery, for example, affecting only 25 percent now as against 38 percent previously. Although the survey does not establish a direct link between the project and changing attitudes, this result is encouraging as street robbery was a particular target of the initiative.

The project, which began in November 2003, supports the development of the "National Citizen Security System" in Peru. In this new structure, national crime prevention policy is formulated by citizen security committees presided over by local district mayors. The committees include police, judicial, health, and education figures, organized by civil society groups.

In six pilot districts, local mayors and police were supported in establishing committees and carrying out their mandate to create, implement, and then evaluate a local security plan. Two local surveys were conducted to test the pilot project, both before (in late 2003) and afterwards (in March 2005).

Rachel Neild of the Justice Initiative presented the initial results of the most recent survey at a UN Congress workshop in Bangkok on "Strategies and Best Practices for Crime Prevention, in particular in relation to Urban Crime and Youth at Risk." She was joined by Dr. Salomon Hugo Aedo Mendoza, Mayor of San Juan Bautista, Ayacucho, Peru.

Participants at the UN Congress, which ran from April 18-25, included several heads of state and ministers from more than 100 countries. More than 2,000 delegates and representatives of various international and nongovernmental organizations also attended, together with criminal justice professionals from around the world.