Security Sector Reform: Lessons

Index:

• Citizen Security Policies at the Sub-national Level
• Departamentos y Municipios Seguros
• Crime Observatories

a) The role of sub-national authorities, in particular mayors and governors, is crucial in enhancing citizen security policies in the context of national Democratic Security objectives. As is the case with most public services, and in particular with Education and Health, the local level is crucial in providing Citizen Security services, but for a long time, the local dimension of citizen security was hardly recognized and badly understood.

b) Slowly but increasingly, local authorities are learning to define their specific needs as related to citizen security policies in their town and for their people, although currently still mainly focused on the urban part of towns. This has yet to be matched by a fluent process of offer and demand of corresponding technical assistance from specialized national or intermediate level institutions to help local authorities generate the best response. On the one hand, mayors of smaller towns in particular, have limited knowledge about needs and options for technical assistance. E.g. few mayors are aware that to design and implement policies towards juveniles at risk of delinquent careers, ICBF is the prime partner on the public side and the Salasian community on the NGO side; in stead, many times, independent consultants are hired who, mostly, deliver only reports and rather general suggestions. Also, mayors are many times not aware of lessons learned in other Colombian towns, and forced to reinvent the wheel. Finally, national agencies with responsibilities in the field of citizen security do still have limited experience and capacity in listening and adapting to needs on the local level. Centralized blue print style policies for countrywide implementation are the rule, without much attention for differences in scale and character of municipalities continues to be the rule.

c) Over the last years, scholarly attention for the local dimension of citizen security has increased, to which Georgetown/USAID has contributed under this cooperative agreement with seminars and publications. However, not enough is done to systemize lessons learned on successful programs and models of citizen security policies in specific towns or rural areas, in order to make these available to those who need them most, i.e. policy makers at the local level, and provide them with options for action. The book "La transformacion de Bogotá. Politicas de Seguridad Ciudadana 1995-2003" by Gerard Martin and Miguel Ceballos, and published by the City of Bogotá, Javeriana University and Georgetown University with support from USAID, has proved to be much appreciated by mayors and police commanders, among others, in particular in mid sized cities. It is also used for training at police academies and at university based public policy programs.

a) The DMS program, as launched by MIJ and PONAL in March 2004, is the first systematic GOC effort to train and inform local authorities in a systematic way on local government responsibilities and lessons learned in the field of citizen security. Georgetown/USAID helping MIJ and PONAL agree on methodologies and objectives for the program has been challenging, mainly because MIJ requests a leading role in the program, but does not have personal or resources to commit to the program, while the Police has made the DMS program an integral part of its police training, operation and qualification. Also, while PONAL can "order" its officers to attend workshops and training, the MIJ does not have the same leverage with mayors. This is repeated at the intermediate level: while Police Commanders at the Departmental level can order the Municipal Police Commanders to implement concrete DMS activities, governors can not oblige mayors to participate or implement DMS program activities. In addition, the Technical Secretariat of the DMS program has provided insufficient support to the MIJ in relation to DMS, and essentially chosen to coordinate DMS activities with PONAL. Given that the DMS Technical Secretariat is located inside PONAL, given that PONAL makes available office space and infrastructure, Georgetown has proposed that the DMS Technical Secretariat meetings will be held systematically inside MIJ offices, in an effort to balance mutual influence on DMS.

b) Promoting programs and activities of focalized horizontal cooperation and exchange of lessons learned among mayors, deputy mayors for security, police commanders and other public officers on citizen security issues has proven to be one of the most effective and cost-efficient methodologies to learn from each others' best practices and lessons learned. Horizontal exchange and learning on citizen security public policy challenges can best be stimulated, through the DMS program, by the intermediate level, in particular by a coordinated approach of governors and departmental level police commanders. The DMS program has precisely insisted on the role governors and departmental police commanders should play in appropriating the DMS program objectives to assist, at their turn, local authorities in the respective Department.

c) Identifying lessons learned, producing appropriate training modules, and applying appropriate training methodologies has proven to be a something MIJ has no human resources. This is clearly a job on which cooperation of DMS with Universities and independent experts is fundamental. PONAL has stronger capacity in this field, at least as related to training police personal, and has also been increasingly open to include outsiders (experts, universities, foundations) in training development and implementation. However, the standard police manner of training is not necessarily the most appropriate to replicate with mayors, given that the police is a hierarchical organization, where police officers receive "orders", contrary to mayors, who receive "advice".

d) Coordination between mayors and police commanders to coordinate implementation of citizen security policies is crucial, but in many municipalities, for a variety of reasons, these relations are not as constructive as they should be. The DMS workshops that bring mayors and police commissioners together for the same training (first time ever this is happening in Colombia!), have clearly been very much appreciated and has produced results in terms of better understanding of mutual roles and responsibilities. Prior to DMS, mayors and commissioners were trained in separate workshops, and until recently, mayors were not at all trained on citizen security policies.

e) The DMS program, led by PONAL and MIJ, should focus on citizen security policies strictu sensu, and, as a program, not pretend to cover the whole field of culture, social capital and social programs citizen at the local level. It is evident that other agencies than PONAL and MIJ, in particular the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture, ICBF, Fiscalia Delegada para la Familia y la Ninez, Universities, NGO's and a host of agencies at the intermediate level, among others, have a more important role to play in this field. The DMS should focus on its core business: to train and inform local authorities in a systematic way on local government responsibilities and lessons learned in the field of public safety and citizen security.

a) Various GOC institutions, in particular ML and PONAL (CIC), continuously produce crime data, and systemize them in more or less sophisticated data systems. Other agencies as DAS, Fiscalia, the Health sector, Comisarias de Familia, Centros de Convivencia, Casas de Justicia etc., also produce relevant crime data. However, for mayors, receiving data from different sources and under different forms can be challenging, and is indeed many times confusing. For example, for various reasons - e.g. different territorial jurisdictions between crime data gathering agencies at the local level - crime data from different institutions often do not seem to coincide, or to be inconsistent. As a result, and for additional reasons, many local governments do not make systematic use of these data. However, systematic gathering and systematic use of these data is fundamental for focalizing crime prevention interventions and citizen security policies in general.

b) Georgetown- Colombia Program has been partnering under this cooperative agreement, as well as under additional OIM/USAID support, with CISALVA (University del Valle) to help 22 intermediate cities make better use of all the data they receive, by helping them install a Crime Observatory that aggregates the crime data as produced by different agencies as PONAL (CIC) and ML, and consolidates them in a more user friendly manner. These Crime Observatories - which are always build in a common effort by ML, PONAL (CIC), DAS, Fiscalia, and the Health sector among others - have proven to be extremely well liked by Mayors, Deputy Mayors for Security, Health, and Education, given their usefulness to focalize policies, and monitor and evaluate policy impact. Mayors have systematically co-financed the (low cost) creation of the crime-observatory through their PAB (Plan de Atencion Basica). Once created, many mayors have requested further sophistication of the crime observatories, and financed these efforts directly through their PAB.

c) The crime observatories have permitted mayors to take the lead in explaining progress or lack of progress in relation to local crime and violence, both to the city council, the citizenry, and the media. Given that the crime observatories are always based on the data of PONAL (CIC), ML, and other agencies, the mayor can speak for all, neutralize rumors on "crime waves" etc., and present impact and results of his/her policies. Some towns with crime observatories (as Pasto, Popayan, Neiva, Apartado) have produced newsletters on progress with public safety, making good use of the crime observatory data.

d) Georgetown- Colombia Program and Cisalva have arrived at a model where essentially three forms of observatories can be promoted: for departments, for medium cities, and for smaller towns. The latter is done by having a medium sized city observatory, produce fact sheets for the smaller towns, given that the smaller towns themselves, for various reasons, are in general not capable of producing a similar fact sheet. Provincial observatories are currently operative (as pilots) in the Province of Ipiales and for the Santander de Quilichao subregion.

e) Georgetown- Colombia Program and Cisalva consider that Crime Observatories are particularly useful in towns with high volume of DDR or other specific challenges for citizen security, given that they permit baselines and constant monitoring, as shown under the work realized in Buenaventura, Cucuta, Ocana, Monteria, Turbo, Apartado, Chigoro and Carepa for OIM/USAID.

f) The Ministry of Health has shown interest in formulating a national policy on Crime and Violence Observatories, working in close coordination with the Cisalva institute, and following international WHO guidelines. The MIJ as well as OIM/USAID has requested Georgetown and CISALVA if data on Human Rights violations and DDR could be included.