Visit from Norwegian Crime Prevention Forum
On October 18th we were delighted to welcome a delegation from Norway’s Crime Prevention Form, Kriminalitetsforebyggende, to our offices on James Joyce Street.
The forum is a national voluntary organization that consists of professionals who work with crime prevention in the Norwegian police force, within the municipal sector and other bodies who work directly in the area of crime prevention.
The delegation from the Norway Crime Prevention Forum included senior police officers and academics, including criminologists, while our Chair, Eddie Mullins and Co-ordinator Sonya Keniry were joined by our partner members Paul White (DCC Central Area Housing Manager) and Detective Inspector Alan McDevitt (An Garda Síochána).
Eddie talked through key recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Policing’s report, including that safety is the responsibility of all relevant state agencies and responses to safety concerns can be wider than that of the Gardaí, responses also include the local authority’s commitment to maintaining the public domain, the Health service Executive and TUSLA along with others.
Paul White and Detective Inspector Allan McDevitt spoke about their positive experiences of inter-agency work and of working with the North Inner City’s community, while Sonya spoke about valuable input of the LCSP’s community representative members both at working group and board level.
We then went on a short walk around the Talbot St area, discussing some of the local issues and also the up-grading work being carried out along Talbot Street.
The visit concluded with a group discussion, comparing some of the approaches to policing, agreeing commonalities and shared challenges. Concern for the experience of young people and their experience of policing was highlighted as a concern for both the LCSP and the delegates, which gave us the opportunity to highlight the success of the Community Action Network’s dialogue project between community Gardaí and youth workers, working towards building relationships between AGS and local youth workers with the shared goal of improving the engagement with young people across the community.
Before the day came to a close Detective Inspector Alan McDevitt invited the parties to tour Store Street Garda Station, including a presentation from the armed response unit, the community policing unit and a visit to the CCTV control room was included.
It was a brilliant opportunity to learn more about international approaches to community safety, and to share some of our own experiences and perspectives.
