Charting a course to safe living collection

Promoting safety and preventing crime through a setting-oriented approach requires a structured procedure for planning the various activities to be carried out. The procedure involves mobilizing the population and intersectoral partners, making safety diagnoses and drawing up action plans. The Safety Diagnosis Tool Kit for Local Communities was prepared to assist with this procedure. It comprises several tools, including the Safety Diagnosis Handbook and six methodology guides. The document Turning Safety Diagnoses Into Action Plans: A Guide for Local Communities was prepared in addition to the tool kit, to facilitate the process of translating diagnoses into effective action plans.

To make sound decisions as to what should be done to improve safety and prevent crime in a particular life setting, it is useful to have access to a safety diagnosis for the setting concerned. A rigorous safety diagnosis will enable you to identify the problems and the social and physical conditions that are likely to have an impact on the setting’s safety. This information will help the various stakeholders choose appropriate preventive action.

Outils:

• Sample safety topics
• Plan for implementing activities aimed at taking stock of safety in a life setting

Last update in French: January 7^th, 2022.

In recent years, several tools based on a setting-oriented approach have been developed to support safety promotion and crime prevention initiatives. This approach advocates the use of a structured procedure for planning and implementing prevention measures in life settings. The procedure involves mobilizing the population and intersectoral partners, making safety diagnoses and preparing action plans. The present document, Turning Safety Diagnoses Into Action Plans: A Guide for Local Communities, is one of the tools that follows this setting-oriented approach. It is designed to assist people who are working to develop coherent, integrated action plans that propose feasible, acceptable and effective actions based on safety diagnoses.

Outils:

• Turning safety diagnoses into action plans: activity checklist
• Gaining a good grasp of priority problems
• Model action plan

Last update in French: January 7^th, 2022.

This guide is designed to help you do an assessment of spousal violence within a region. It proposes a systematic procedure to 1) prepare a portrait of the scope of spousal violence within the study area on the basis of available data, 2) better understand the distribution of spousal violence in that area, 3) identify which groups are most affected, and 4) gain a better grasp of the factors potentially associated with the problem. The goal is to help communities obtain a more in-depth understanding of spousal violence as it is experienced in a particular area and plan effective preventive interventions. The guide also provides a list of interventions to prevent spousal violence before it occurs, which have been implemented in Québec and evaluated.

Basically, this guide is a decision-making tool that can be used on a voluntary basis depending on the situation in the area under study. It is intended for a range of individuals and groups working in the health and social services network, community settings, education, public safety, justice, and municipal affairs. It is also intended for local or regional consultative bodies.

Outils:

• Statistics request form
• Timetable and necessary ressources
• How the study area compares to Québec as a whole with regard to the factors associated with spousal violence

Promoting safety and preventing crime through a setting-oriented approach requires a structured procedure for planning the various activities to be carried out. The procedure involves mobilizing the population and intersectoral partners, making safety diagnoses and drawing up action plans. The Safety Diagnosis Tool Kit for Local Communities was prepared to assist with this procedure. It comprises several tools, including the Safety Diagnosis Handbook and six methodology guides. The document Turning Safety Diagnoses Into Action Plans: A Guide for Local Communities was prepared in addition to the tool kit, to facilitate the process of translating diagnoses into effective action plans.

The present document, Guide to Analyzing Crime Using Official Statistics – 2nd edition, is one of the methodology guides included in the Safety Diagnosis Tool Kit for Local Communities. The goal of this guide is to enable local communities to use official crime statistics for making safety diagnoses.

Generally speaking, surveys are used to obtain three main types of information:

• information on the characteristics of individuals, including their personal characteristics (age, marital status, level of education, etc.), behaviour (amount of time spent doing certain activities, etc.) and living environment (workplace, housing, etc.);
• information on the opinions of individuals (how safe or unsafe they feel, what they think about certain facts, ideas, programs or events, etc.);
• information on their past personal experiences (victimization, etc.).

The data gathered during a survey can be grouped and analyzed to detect trends or associations, such as whether certain groups within a population (e.g. the members of a particular age group, men or women) or people in certain areas share a particular opinion to a greater extent than other groups or people do.

Outils:

• Checklist for designing a survey method
• Checklist for planning surveys
• Checklist for conducting surveys
• Checklist for processing and analyzing the data
• Sample budget worksheet

To do a safety diagnosis for a particular life setting, you have to get to know the setting. You will thus obtain a good understanding of its specific characteristics, as well a frame of reference for data collection activities. The present guide describes the main steps involved in developing a life setting’s general portrait.

Although many parameters can be used to characterize a life setting, some warrant special attention in a process aimed at improving safety or preventing crime; for example, the setting’s geographic, human and economic characteristics and some of its physical characteristics pertaining to housing. Gaining insight into these characteristics will enable you to:

In making safety diagnoses, it is sometimes useful to estimate or quantify certain behaviours or environmental features through direct observation of life settings. This observation method makes it possible to gather and analyze information on a series of problem safety situations related to the characteristics or behaviour of individuals (incivility) or to certain characteristics of the physical environment (disorder). Generally speaking, it requires the use of an observation log for entering information on the safety situations under study.

Even though it is difficult to foresee all of the problem safety situations that can arise in life settings, we have singled out a certain number on the basis of the scientific literature. All of these situations10 are included in the observation log proposed in Appendix 4:

Outils:

• Sample observation log
• Sample observation summary sheet

A focus group is a group discussion led by a facilitator. Participants are asked to share their thoughts on a particular topic, based on their personal opinions and experience. They are also encouraged to react to the views expressed by other participants and to say where they stand in relation to those views.

Outils:

• Sample consent form
• Discussion plans – Focus groups: Assessment of public services
• Discussion plans – Focus groups: Disorder and incivility
• Discussion plans – Focus groups: Safety and the feeling of safety
• Sample safety topics

Like discussion groups, direct observation and literature reviews, semi-structured interviews can be used to gather qualitative information. Interviews of this type are suited to working with small samples and are effective for studying specific situations or for supplementing and validating information derived from other sources used for making safety diagnoses. In addition, since they provide access to perceptions and opinions, they are useful for gaining insight into problems that are not perceptible immediately or are more difficult to observe, but that nonetheless cause concern in certain areas or in certain segments of the population.

Outils:

• Sample consent form
• Key informant semi-structured interview plan
• Sample safety topics