For decades, ICMA has fostered a community-oriented approach to crime prevention and public safety—an approach that is facilitated by effective professional management. October is National Crime Prevention Month, an opportunity for your community to recognize the efforts of your law enforcement officials to prevent crime and explore new initiatives.

Our publications, training initiatives, and Knowledge Network provide local government managers with a wide array of tools for addressing crime by mobilizing community resources to address the conditions that foster it.

Our Center for Public Safety Management  has worked with more than one hundred local governments nationwide to improve efficiency, maximize human and capital resources, and streamline processes to help them reduce crime through proactive measures. The Center’s efforts were critical to successfully addressing crime in Annapolis, Maryland, and other cities.

In the international arena, ICMA has extended the reach of its crime prevention programs to Central America, thanks to two USAID-funded projects.  In 2009, ICMA signed an agreement to help Central American municipalities develop innovative violence prevention programs, starting in El Salvador and Panama. The program, Municipal Partnerships for Violence Prevention in Central America, seeks to promote comprehensive local-level violence prevention strategies and programs with stakeholders, foster development of regional peer knowledge networks that will be self-sustaining in the future, and provide training and technical assistance to local governments and community groups in coordination with police and other local-level programs.

Earlier this year, ICMA and Creative Associates International, Inc., were awarded the Community Youth-at-Risk Program, whose goal is to reduce youth crime and violence in Panama.  ICMA will work with the Child and Adolescent Unit of the Panamanian National Police to help it deliver more effective youth crime and gang prevention initiatives at the national and local levels.

To learn more about crime prevention, and to discuss ideas and initiatives, visit the Crime Prevention page on the ICMA Knowledge Network at http://icma.org/crimeprevention.