IcARUS Consultative Committee of Cities (CCC) interviews

Welcome to the IcARUS Consultative Committee of Cities (CCC) interviews!

The CCC supports and disseminates the implementation of the project by providing practitioners’ perspectives and feedback. As such, it plays a key role in strengthening multi-level governance and local partnerships.

We’re starting this series of interviews with Gian Guido Nobili, Head of the Urban Security and Crime Prevention Unit of the Emilia-Romagna Region and national coordinator of the Italian Forum for Urban Security FISU.

“Local crime prevention needs more resources and professionalism”

What does the Region of Emilia Romagna hope to bring to the IcARUS project?

Gian Guido Nobili: The Emilia-Romagna Region set up its Urban Security and Crime Prevention Unit in 1994. It was the first time that a department was created in an Italian region specifically to deal with issues of urban safety. One of its first projects was Città Sicure (“safe cities”), which was groundbreaking at the time for its originality and the depth of the scientific and theoretic debate it generated. Through Città Sicure, we explored urban security through the prism of politics and culture. We also planned and conducted  research-action activities, as well as projects based on innovative crime prevention methods, training programmes and opportunities to exchange experiences. Furthermore, the project published a periodic journal featuring critical analyses of the activities that were carried out and in-depth coverage of scientific debates on crime prevention. This publication also contributed to disseminating a common terminology on urban security issues. Both Città Sicure and IcARUS were/are broad, in-depth projects that explore a wide range of urban security problems. We thus hope to bring the experience we gained through Città Sicure to our IcARUS partners with a view to provide recommendations to local governments and disseminate information and best practices on innovative approaches to urban security.

What results do you expect from the IcARUS project?

We hope to better understand the social phenomena that are being targeted by local urban security strategies and how crime prevention programmes and other types of interventions and schemes have impacted local communities in different European contexts. Moreover, we are keen to gain more information on phenomena of criminality and on the most suitable strategies to prevent urban violence and decay. In particular, we seek to better understand how urban security strategies affect citizens’ fear of crime and feelings of insecurity, how they can effectively prevent crime, and how they can transform relationships between citizens and public institutions.

What is the added value for the Emilia Romagna Region in being part of the Consultative Committee of Cities (CCC)?

The added value resides in being able to compare practices and exchange expertise between international experts, with the aim of formulating recommendations that will be applicable in our regional context.

What other cooperation opportunities can arise from your involvement in this project?

This project could also facilitate inter-institutional co-ordination and exchanges of information and best practices in order to identify elements that are similar in different cultural or local contexts and can be translated into innovative urban security policies here in the Emilia-Romagna Region.

What inspiration have you gained through the project’s results to date and network events?

The role of local authorities and community actors, including the private sector, in urban security policies is more frequently recognised now than in the past by international and national organisations. Yet, actual progress does not appear to match the stated goals. While local authorities are best placed to identify the needs and potential of the local population, their legal status and financial resources remain limited. The participation and involvement of residents and community groups is still often restricted to a more or less informal consultation and is hindered by instability and a lack of sustainable resources.

What are the main drawbacks that hinder local crime prevention, in your view?

Local governments too rarely employ  real experts, i.e. professional security managers, and safety and security remain by and large an added function given to one or more local civil servants, who thus only deal with these issues a few times a year or only manage the meetings of the local safety and security council. Consequently, the management of safety/security, disorder and crime prevention remains in too many cases a matter for the local police only, as the only professional organisation which is involved in local efforts to strengthen the safety and security of local communities.

We need to provide capable professionals who can successfully deal with local safety/security and crime problems. It is one of the main problems that must be overcome in order to have really innovative urban security policies in Europe.

Multi-agency partnerships to locally fight organised crime

October 2022 – Cities must lead multi-agency partnerships to counter trafficking and organised crime at the local level. This is the main takeaway from the session that Efus organised at the 24-hour online conference of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (#OC24 2022), on 14 October.

Four speakers representing the University of Leeds and the cities of Rotterdam, Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Berlin (Germany)* shared their knowledge and experience of such partnerships. 

Effective partnerships are key

Dr Susan Donkin from the University of Leeds summarised the main findings of the review it conducted for IcARUS on 35 years of European urban policies and practices. “Effective partnerships are key, but five conditions must be met,” she said. Each partner must ‘own’ the partnership, i.e., really engage in it. What is expected from each partner must be clearly defined and stated. The differences in terms of power and competences between each partner must be acknowledged. There has to be trust, and information must be shared. The partnership must engage with end-users and beneficiaries, such as local communities and businesses. 

Three main approaches

The research showed that three approaches are mainly used to tackle organised crime. The criminal justice approach is based on detecting, prosecuting and convicting criminals. The administrative approach consists in using all the means available to local, regional and national governments to prevent and tackle the misuse of the legal infrastructure such as laundering money through real estate or local businesses. The victim-focused approach relies on international protocols to protect individuals caught up in the web of organised crime. 

Identifying what works best locally

“The challenge is to identify which approach is the most effective locally. This requires good coordination between the national and local levels of governance and often the involvement of other stakeholders,” she said. It also requires a precise view of each local context to understand which organised groups are operating where, whether the Mafia or motorcycle gangs, for example. 

Implementation matters

The review conducted for IcARUS showed that implementation matters and should be properly evaluated. “Multi-agency partnerships and cooperation among the different agencies play a vital part in ensuring efficient implementation.” However, one of the most common issues is precisely the difficulty of making such multi-agency partnerships work. 

Rotterdam: a ‘huge’ cocaine problem

Rotterdam is Europe’s largest container port. “We have a huge problem with the importation of cocaine. Defending ourselves against this is essential to the integrity of the port, and of the city as a whole because it has a huge impact on local communities,” said Marty Staničić, from the City of Rotterdam. 

The amount of drug seized in the Port of Rotterdam jumped from 13 tonnes in 2016 to 70 tonnes in 2019, according to a study by Erasmus University Rotterdam. This trade caters to markets in Europe, where consumers have purchasing power and transport networks are well-connected and efficient. What are the effects on the City of Rotterdam? “Drug-related incidents are increasing and often violent. Young locals are being recruited into drug trafficking. Large amounts of drug money find their way into the local economy,” she added. 

Public-private partnership in Rotterdam

The main challenge for the Port of Rotterdam is that it is jointly operated. Private companies deal with the swift movement of goods, whereas police and the Justice department are primarily concerned with the integrity of the port. The municipality itself also has a role in managing the port. 

This is why authorities in Rotterdam have established a wide public-private partnership involving the municipality, the harbour authority, police, the Public Prosecutor, customs, tax authorities, the port company and the trade association for port companies. The municipality coordinates and facilitates the partnership. “The IcARUS project has provided helpful guidelines for the coordination of the partnership,” explained Marty Staničić. 

Amsterdam: underground banking capital 

“International and local criminals know that Amsterdam is one of the best connected cities in Europe, close to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp. The city has become a key location for the cocaine trade. It is the base of three quarters of the criminal networks operating in the Netherlands. It also has become the capital of underground banking. Organised crime has been chipping away at the rule of law and the very fabric of society,” explained Karin Wilschut from the City of Amsterdam.

She added that the experience on the ground confirms the findings presented by Dr Donkin of the University of Leeds, especially on the importance of wide partnerships involving all the relevant actors.  City Hall has “a considerable budget” earmarked for the fight against organised crime. The national government for its part dedicates about €4 billion to this issue. 

Joint Strategy Against Drug Crime

Amsterdam pursues a Joint Strategy Against Drug Crime that is signed by the mayor, the chief of police and the chief prosecutor. It comprises five strands: 1) raising awareness on drug trafficking; 2) clearly separating the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ drug markets; 3) offering perspectives to vulnerable young people; 4) combatting corruption and undermining subversive crime; 5) countering corruption and excessive violence.

The strategy is being implemented with a combination of three approaches: measures against violence; the administrative approach, and a more victim-oriented, preventive approach. 

Resilient City

Karin Wilschut gave the example of the Resilient City programme launched in 2019. It is a wide-ranging programme that seeks, among other things, to better detect crime throughout the city, including underground money flows. Some 1,800 municipal staff have been trained. The municipality also works in partnership with experts such as lawyers, real estate professionals and accountants. One recent success has been the dismantling of an underground banking network and the seizure of 3,000 kilos of cocaïne and €11 million in a clandestine facility. 

Berlin: business-like structures

The third city example was Berlin, with Sybille Wilfer from the Berlin Police Department. She explained that “organised crime in Berlin is largely characterised by business-like structures. They try to influence the media, the judicial system and private businesses, which is very challenging to detect.” 

The Berlin police cooperates with internal and external agencies and other stakeholders to detect and counter local organised crime groups. “Our strategic focus is on a flexible, holistic, and offender-oriented approach,” she said.  

The hacking in 2020 of the (now defunct) Encrochat communication network enabled it to “learn about criminal groups and strategies that had not previously attracted attention but make up a significant proportion of organised crime.” 

Efus’ working group on organised crime Set up in December 2019, Efus’ working group on the local roots and impacts of organised crime is led by two member cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam (Netherlands). Its objectives are to exchange knowledge and practices; promote the development of multi-agency approaches involving  the private sector, civil society organisations and academia, and stimulate cooperation between local/regional and European policy making. Follow the working group on Efus Network (reserved for Efus members)

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime The Global Initiative was established after a series of high-level, off the record discussions between (mainly but not exclusively) law-enforcement officials from developed and developing countries in New York, in 2011–2012. Based in Geneva (Switzerland), it is an independent civil-society organisation gathering law-enforcement, governance and development practitioners who seek new and innovative strategies and responses to organised crime. Website of the Global Initiative

• Watch the replay of the panel session
• The full report on the panel session (minutes and slides) is available (members only) here. 

* Dr Susan Donkin, Research Fellow in European Urban Security, University of Leeds; Marty Staničić, Senior Policy Advisor, City of Rotterdam; Karin Wilschut, Strategic Advisor and Deputy Team Manager, City of Amsterdam; and Sybille Wilfer, Detective Chief Inspector and Head of Intelligence Unit, Berlin Police Department. 

Key Lessons in Urban Security

Introduction 

Building upon the State of the Art Review of the research evidence and accumulated knowledge-base in urban security, the IcARUS project has now co-produced and published a Roadmap for the improvement and definition of novel urban security tools. It sets out strategic principles and broad design requirements to be taken into consideration in defining, designing and implementing new strategies and technologies in urban security. The aim of the Roadmap is to provide a framework to guide the development of new innovative tools to enhance urban security. The primary purpose is to inform the tools developed in the six partner cities within the IcARUS consortium. More broadly, it is intended that the Roadmap will provide a helpful guide to security practitioners and programme designers across Europe. It seeks to complement a human-centred design approach to problem-solving and provides the parameters to guide those decisions in a way that ensures the accumulated knowledge from research and practice informs resultant tools and practices.

A Guiding Framework

The Roadmap draws directly on the key lessons and findings from the State-of-the-Art Review of the accumulated research knowledge base and the Inventory of Tools and Practices. In addition, the Roadmap draws upon established guidance produced by the European Forum for Urban Security and its 2017 Manifesto Security, Democracy and Cities: Co-producing Urban Security Policies. It seeks to consolidate the accumulated learning and to present this in ways that can guide future innovative developments. 

The Roadmap is intended to provide a framework that underpins and informs the subsequent IcARUS project activities, notably the design, development and implementation of the tools and practices in the six partner cities – Lisbon, Nice, Riga, Rotterdam, Stuttgart and Turin. The intention is that the tools and strategies will be fashioned and co-designed with relevant stakeholders and representatives of end-users in the targeted city locations where they will be implemented, guided by the principles set out in the Roadmap. 

A central finding from the State-of-the-Art Review is that the processes of problem identification, design, context, implementation and evaluation matter greatly. Much of the research evidence base has focused on the questions of ‘what works’ and the effects on outcome patterns detached from the contexts that shape them and the processes through which they are given life and expression.

Beyond informing the IcARUS project, the Roadmap is also designed to provide an accessible resource to guide and assist urban security practitioners and policy-makers across Europe in fashioning research-informed, innovative strategies. It seeks to provide actionable knowledge with wide-ranging application. However, it comes with the important caveat that all urban security interventions are shaped and their effectiveness influenced by the contexts that sustain them and the implementation processes through which they are enacted and delivered.

The guiding principles and learning set out in the Roadmap are clustered around seven broad thematic pillars. These include: (1) problem identification; (2) partnerships; (3) design and innovation; (4) implementation; (5) outcomes; (6) evaluation; and (7) communication. These have implications across diverse fields of urban security. The Roadmap also provides some parameters for designing tools and practices in relation to the four IcARUS focus areas: preventing juvenile delinquency; preventing radicalisation leading to violent extremism; preventing and reducing trafficking and organised crime; and designing and managing safe public spaces. It concludes with some recommendations specifically for the IcARUS project in implementing and supporting the Roadmap within the consortium. 

Ultimately, realising the blend of past learning with future provision and the combination of social and technological innovation in ways that address the safety needs of diverse communities across European cities is the challenge that the IcARUS project is seeking to address. It is intended that as the project develops reflections and feedback the utility and coverage of the Roadmap will be solicited and will inform any subsequent revisions to the Roadmap as a living document. 

‘Any feedback on the Roadmap in the first instance can be submitted to: adam.crawford@york.ac.uk  and will be gratefully received.’

IcARUS – Safer Public Spaces with Rotterdam

D2.4 Roadmap for the Improvement and Definition of Tools

Authors: Adam Crawford, Susan Donkin & Christine A. Weirich

The aim of this Roadmap is to provide a guiding analytic framework that highlights strategic principles, design constraints, programme requirements and the parameters to be taken into account in defining, as well as in designing and implementing, urban security tools and strategies.

It seeks to draw out from the descriptive findings of the two Reviews the key prescriptive principles, constraints and guidance that focus on the practical question of: what should be done? It is not intended to serve as a catalogue of ‘pick-and-mix’ practices or tools that might be appropriated, adopted or transferred to new contexts.

This Roadmap should also provide an accessible resource to guide and assist urban security practitioners and policy-makers across Europe in fashioning research-informed, innovative strategies. Hence, where possible, this Roadmap is written to guide practitioners keen to learn from the research knowledge and accumulated best practice experiences. It seeks to provide actionable knowledge with generalisable application. However, it comes with the important caveat, which echoes throughout the State-of-the-Art Review, that all urban security interventions are shaped and their effectiveness influenced by the contexts that sustain them and the implementation processes through which they are enacted and delivered.

It draws directly on the key lessons and insights from the State-of-the-Art Review of the accumulated research knowledge base (Task 2.1) and the Inventory of Tools and Practices (Task 2.2), as well as the Critical Review of ‘What Works’ arising from the IcARUS Consortium workshop held in Berlin on 12-13th April 2022 (Task 2.3).

Explore the Web-Interactive IcARUS Research Overview – 35 Years of Accumulated Knowledge in Urban Security policies just a few clicks away

Explore the Web-Interactive IcARUS Research Overview, 35 Years of Accumulated Knowledge in Urban Security policies, just a few clicks away

At the forefront of the research in urban security, IcARUS aims to learn from the experience gained over more than three decades in local urban security policies to rethink and adapt existing tools and methods and help local security actors to anticipate and better respond to security challenges.

The project uses the Design Thinking methodology as its main tool to co-ideate innovative solutions jointly with local communities, based on a review conducted by the project on the past 35 years of local urban security policies and initiatives.

This user-friendly web-interactive tool is designed to help you explore this research through four sections – Trends, Tensions, Lessons, and Knowledge Gaps – covered by the researchers through an analysis of academic literature and interviews with experts. Their research encompassed the project’s four work areas: preventing juvenile delinquency; preventing radicalisation leading to violent extremism; preventing and reducing trafficking and organised crime, and designing and managing safe public spaces.

Ready to explore?

Enter: https://www.icarus-innovation.eu/tools-insights/research-overview/

The overview is based on the report The Changing Face of Urban Security: A Review of Accumulated Learning compiled by the University of Leeds (IcARUS deliverable 2.1).