City of Malmö

Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden, located at the far south of the country, and with 330.000 inhabitants.

Malmö is full of contrasts with Scandinavia’s highest building, the Turning Torso, looking down on 16th century architecture. Geographically the city is small and compact without any suburbs. Malmö is truly a multi-ethnic and multicultural city, home to a population with roots in around 180 different countries. This diversity is seen as a positive development, and Malmö is excited to house representatives from all the world’s nations. The vast diversity, however, also includes divides in several socio-economic aspects.

The city of Malmö focuses on tackling socio-economic disparities and social injustices – real and perceived – as these have shown to fuel “us and them” narratives, create prejudices, increase polarisation, and have led to spikes in criminal activity, violence and shootings. Societal inequalities additionally put vulnerable groups at greater risk to extremist and other harmful influences, hate and disinformation, off-as well as online. Crime rates have been declining for years in Malmö but despite the positive developments, inhabitants’ perceptions and feelings of safety have stayed almost the same. This might partly be due to challenges communicating these developments publicly, as messages from city officials on (for example) social media are met by narratives of actual violent acts on the streets of Malmö, as well as perceived threats and misinformation. This stands in the way of the city projecting a nuanced description that recognises the real challenges while factually and credibly communicating the declining crime rates.

The city of Malmö works on all levels of prevention (universal, selective/group, indicative level) simultaneously. Depending on the prevention level and particular challenge, Malmö works frequently and closely with civil society as well as law enforcement. The police are an important partner in the municipality’s efforts to safeguard democracy against violent extremism, while civil society is a close collaborator in the prevention of antisocial behaviour among young people.

City of Mechelen

Mechelen has about 90.000 inhabitants. In Flanders we are one of the bigger cities, but compared to other partners in the network, and on a European level, Mechelen is a small city. The so called Mechelen-model, for which Mr. Bart Somers (ex-Mayor, now  since beginning of this month Minister for integration and equal opportunities in the Flemish government) got a worldwide recognition is in its core a story about equal rights and equal obligations for everyone. The model combines a strict security policy and law enforcement strategy with the embracing of diversity as a richness and, very importantly, a positive narrative about all minorities. Everybody is from Mechelen. We are all diverse but there is no us versus them narrative. This concept creates connection between all Mechelaars (the Flemish term used for the inhabitants of Mechelen). We believe in a holistic but hands-on approach and since 2001 we invested a lot in the local police force, crime prevention initiatives, participative community actions and inclusion policy, the maintenance of the public domain, urban renewal and a modern attractive infrastructure.  This strategy ensured that Mechelen has gone through a major transformation the past 20 years.

Region of Emilia-Romagna

Emilia-Romagna is an Italian region. It has an area of 22,446 km2 (8,666 sq mi), and about 4.4 million inhabitants. Emilia-Romagna is one of the wealthiest and most developed regions in Europe, with the third highest gross domestic product per capita in Italy. Bologna, its capital, has one of Italy’s highest quality of life indices and advanced social services. Emilia-Romagna is also a cultural, economic and tourist center: being the home of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the world; containing Romanesque and Renaissance cities (such as Modena, Parma and Ferrara) and the former Roman Empire capital of Ravenna; encompassing eleven UNESCO heritage sites; being a center for food and automobile production (home of automotive companies such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Pagani, De Tomaso, Dallara, and Ducati); and having popular coastal resorts such as Cervia, Cesenatico, Rimini and Riccione. In 2018, the Lonely Planet guide named Emilia-Romagna as the best place to see in Europe.

The Region as an administrative entity was officially established in 1970, and has, through its Council, responsibilities for administrative and technical matters. The Emilia-Romagna Region has moreover created in 1994, for the first time in Italy, a specific Department dealing with the issue of urban security and elaborating political-cultural themes in the field of urban security, the planning and realization of research-action activities and targeted projects of new prevention methods.

City of Gdansk

Gdansk is a city on the Baltic coast of northern Poland. With a population of 470,907, Gdańsk is the capital and largest city of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and the most prominent city in the vicinity of the cultural and geographical region of Kashubia. It is Poland’s principal seaport and the centre of the country’s fourth-largest metropolitan area.

The city is situated on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay on the Baltic Sea, in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, the resort town of Sopot, and suburban communities; these form a metropolitan area called the Tricity with a population of approximately 1.5 million.^[4] Gdańsk lies at the mouth of the Motlawa River, connected to the Leniwka, a branch in the delta of the nearby Vistula River, which drains 60 percent of Poland and connects Gdansk with the Polish capital, Warsaw. Together with the nearby port of Gdynia, Gdańsk is also a notable industrial centre.

The city’s history is complex, with periods of Polish, Prussian and German rule, and periods of autonomy or self-rule as a free city state. In the early-modern age, Gdańsk was a royal city of Poland. It was considered the wealthiest and the largest city of Poland, before the 18th century rapid growth of Warsaw. In the late Middle Ages it was an important seaport and shipbuilding town and, in the 14th and 15th centuries, a member of the Hanseatic League.

During the interwar period Gdańsk lay in a disputed region between Poland and Germany, which became known as the Polish Corridor. The city’s ambiguous political status was exploited by Germany, furthering tension between the two countries, which would ultimately culminate in the Invasion of Poland and the first clash of the Second World War just outside the city limits, followed by the ethnic cleansing and executions of Polish-speaking minority population and ultimately flight and expulsion of the German-speaking majority of the city’s population in 1945.

In the 1980s, Gdańsk was the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, which played a major role in bringing an end to communist rule in Poland and helped precipitate the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

Gdańsk is home to the University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk University of Technology, the National Museum, the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, the Museum of the Second World War, the Polish Baltic Philharmonic and the European Solidarity Centre. The city also hosts St. Dominic’s Fair, which dates back to 1260,^[5] and is regarded as one of the biggest trade and cultural events in Europe. Gdańsk has also topped rankings for the quality of life, safety and living standards worldwide.

Departament d’Interior -Generalitat Catalunya

The Department of Interior of the Government of Catalonia (the Generalitat de Catalunya) is divided into a General Secretariat, four directions generals and two autonomous organizations.

The Department of Interior of the Generalitat of Catalonia is responsible for:

• The Generalitat Police – Mossos d’Esquadra, the ordinary and integral police of Catalonia with competence in public safety within the territory of Catalonia. This police service depends on the Government of Catalonia through the Department of Interior’s Direction General of Police –DGP.
• The coordination of the local (municipal) police services in Catalonia. This police services depend on every municipality but under some common regulations drafted by the Generalitat in order to make them homogeneous and efficient (as for instance common training that is provided by the Government). This coordination is provided by the Direction General of Security Administration –DGAS.
• The construction of a coherent system that integrates the previous two levels of police in what is called the ‘Police of Catalonia’, which includes Generalitat Police – Mossos d’Esquadra and the current 217 municipal police services.
• The inspection of private security companies that carry out activities in Catalonia, the authorisation of those, that only work within the Catalan Territory and the supervision of any private security training centre in Catalonia; the authorization and supervision of public video surveillance used by police services; and the authorization and supervision of public spectacles.
• The elaboration of the Yearly Report on Public Safety of Catalonia, the Crime Victimization Survey, as well as other surveys on the security at schools, sexist violence or on mistreatment of elderly people, and the Public Safety Plan of Catalonia by the Cabinet of Security and Transversal Policies.
• Civil Protection and Emergencies (included fire brigades,  now depending on the Generalitat with the exception of the Barcelona city one).