"Owning Safety : A Profile of Community Initiatives"

2001 - 2002

The adoption of the National Crime Prevention Strategy by the South African Government in 1996 signalled a new approach to crime fighting in South Africa. The strategy emphasised the importance of community participation in crime prevention through several objectives, which included the promotion of a shared understanding and common vision of how South Africa was going to tackle crime.

Since the adoption of the strategy there has been no attempt to document the successes, challenges faced and scope of community based crime prevention initiatives that have been implemented in KwaZulu-Natal.

With this gap in mind, IPT, through funding from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, has documented the activities of such initiatives.

It is hoped that the documentation of the experiences of these initiatives will be a valuable resource to communities that decide to embark on crime prevention initiatives, as well as their partners in local government. The book also contains simple and user friendly guidelines that can be used by communities wanting to establish crime prevention initiatives, or those wanting to improve on initiatives set up previously.

The book can be ordered from Adams Bookstore.