A new way of dealing with social issues that affect communities, issues that often hinge around drugs, can help people feel safer and the programme can be "easily adopted" in other parts of the country, according to a report being launched today.
The report, 'Safety in Numbers — An Evaluation of Community Crime Impact Assessment (CCIA) Pilot Projects', was carried out by legal consultant Jane Mulcahy and is being launched on Monday by Citywide, Drugs Crisis Campaign, with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris in attendance.
It tracks the implementation of the CCIA — an initiative in the National Drug Strategy 2017-2025 — in two pilot areas, in Dublin 8 and Dublin 15. The programme looks at ways in which those communities could find solutions to issues that often go unreported and unaddressed (such as joyriding, litter, or drug paraphernalia), but which can corrode the quality of life in an area.
According to the report: "The evaluation concludes that CCIAs can, and should, play a key role in advancing community safety in Ireland, as part of a wider package of rights-based and reparative measures to build individual and community resilience. The CCIA approach can be easily adopted by community activists across Ireland to measure perceptions of safety in their areas, and to develop collaborative, problem-solving responses to the problem(s) identified."
The approach pulls together different groups and community police to address issues as they arise, using reliable data "for planning how to tackle such issues and which parties are needed to implement such strategies".
It also tracks community safety over time. One member of a steering group said: "I think part of what this exercise is, it's not creating a lynch mob, but it’s actually trying to hear. Hear it and then go back to the powers that be and say, 'This is what people are saying. So what are we going to do?'"
In the report foreword, Johnny Connolly, Centre for Crime, Justice and Victim Studies, School of Law, University of Limerick, said the CCIA, "in a novel approach, sought to find a way to give a voice to the negative collective community experience associated with drugs misuse".
