Reducing fear of crime in addition to fighting it
A ‘neighbourhood watch’ pilot project by NGO Victim Support Malta is focusing on reducing the fear of crime and increasing the feeling of safety within communities around Malta.
“Nowadays, it’s much harder to get to know your neighbours than in the past,” PR and project Co-ordinator Isotta Rossoni told The Malta Independent. “There are communities where people do not really know each other, residents come and go, expats move in and out. So neighbourhood watch is not just about fighting crime. We want people within communities to get to know each other better, so it is more about reducing the fear of crime, which is also very important in terms of feelings of safety”.
The idea of the neighbourhood watch programme is to bring communities together, make them safer, raise awareness on what’s going on in their community, learn how to report, who to report to and what to report.
The community volunteers of the programme will learn how to report “real crime” as well as how to handle “small issues, which don’t require the intervention of police [..] such as help during a powercut, or people in the street being a bit loud,” Ms Rossoni said. “With community intervention, you won’t be criminalising the person. Also, the police have a lot of work on their hands and they are understaffed so they cannot always be out there. When they are called it should be for something that’s more serious.”
Victim Support Malta was unable to disclose which localities it wants to work with the most, however Ms Rossoni highlighted a few localities with high crime rates around Malta, referring to the Crime Malta Annual Crime Review of 2015.
Crime types and severity differ from one location to another, Ms Rossoni explained. “St. Julians, St Paul’s Bay, Valletta, Sliema, etc have a big issue with crime,” she said, “however it does depend on the type of crime for example Sliema has high rates of pick pocketing, specifically in the summer, whilst there may be car thefts in Valletta. Whilst in St Julian’s sexual assault happens quite a lot over the summer months.”
With reference to the recent initiative to install 22 CCTV cameras around Swieqi, Ms Rossoni said the locality is not among those with the highest crime rates and is, in fact fairly low compared to other localities, according to the report.
Victim Support Malta director Roberta Lepre said: “This project is providing us with the opportunity to develop strategic partnerships in a structured and committed manner. I believe that this is the only way forward for civil society and state stakeholders that want to make a real impact and leave lasting change.”
The Neighbourhood Watch initiative was one of the two projects which won funding from the Social Impact Awards which took place last year. At this stage, the project is in pilot stage, hoping to jumpstart a bigger project to set up neighbourhood watch in Malta. Victim Support Malta has received the training to go into localities and deliver the training to volunteers. “We will be focusing on some areas in a more in-depth manner, but for this pilot project we are starting to build the partnerships between volunteers, police, local councils, NGOs and other entities that want to create long-lasting neighbourhood watch schemes,” said the project co-ordinator.
For more information one may write to Ms Rossoni on: isotta@victimsupport.org.mt