Community safety, like any safety system, has three distinct roles. There is the policymaking role, to configure priorities, allocate means and coördinate stakeholders as required. There is the signalling role, which entails alerting partners and authorities to relevant threats. This role may entail some sensemaking of vague or multi interpretable signals. Finally, there is the enforcing role, which applies rules to end transgressions.
These roles are distinct but partners such as local governments and police taken on more than one. The dominant role of police is to enforce, but they also signal norm transgressions and assist in policy analysis. The dominant role of local governments is policymaking, but they also have sizeable enforcement organs and signalling capacity. The role of the community – the neighbors, let’s say – is generally defined as signalling, but they have a mind to influence policy and they may (within the bounds of law) react to norm transgressions.
It is important to keep in mind that there the above mentioned ‘dominant’ roles are synchronous with their powers, and the other roles should be enacted in a more supportive capacity.
In order to optimize the impact of the roles, they should be conducted in coordination, where the common activities fall within the common ground of the partners.
Justice in Practice supports the collaboration of citizens, police and local government to achieve maximum impact by using this framework to lay out valuable contributions by partners.