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This is a platform for embracing the complexity of measuring safety at city level.

This platform contains the Urban Safety Monitor, a set of 15 indicators that take into account all the dimensions of safety that can and should be measured by cities.

The monitor includes 15 indicators under 3 themes: Crime, Community and Local Governance.

Crime
Community
Local Governance

Looking at the Bigger Picture

The Bigger Picture doesn’t propose that cities should immediately begin measuring all 15 indicators.

This platform offers tools to:

  • Advocate for a systems approach to safety knowledge in cities
  • Promote self-assessment and insight into the status of safety measurement in individual cities
  • Identify interim priorities and begin strengthening the integrated measurement of those indicators in a progressive process to move towards an integrated safety knowledge system over time
This is a long-term goal

HOW CAN THIS GOAL BE ACHIEVED?

The bigger picture approach suggests that cities should follow 2 steps.

Reflecting on the wide range of safety indicators, and on the status of knowledge and knowledge systems relating to these indicators in your city.

Identifying opportunities to intervene to strengthen your city’s safety knowledge systems:

  1. The things that are already working well that can be leveraged for ‘quick wins’.
  2. The areas where there is existing capacity in the municipality which can be harnessed to strengthen knowledge systems by collaborating and integrating.
  3. The areas where there is the greatest weakness undermining your knowledge systems, where preliminary steps can be taken to mitigate the low functionality.

An Ongoing Approach

The Bigger Picture is not complete and is not static. It offers a foundation for engagement and exchange and supports a progressive evidence-led approach to measuring safety. Every intervention by every practitioner around the world offers the opportunity for learning, and this platform embraces and supports ongoing learning.

PROGRESSIVE

EVIDENCE-LED

ONGOING LEARNING

The platform includes information on each of the 15 indicators

Their Meaning

Measures Associated With Them

Data Sources Used To Assess Measures

There are also links to further reading and resources on each of the indicators, as well as a brief assessment tool that cities can use to begin reflecting on their own knowledge practice in relation to each of the indicators.

Learn more about how we define what is an indicator, what is a measure, and what is a data source here’

Measuring Safety

In order to effectively intervene to deliver safety practices, practitioners must understand what challenges exist, and what practices could overcome those challenges. This understanding can only be gained through generating and analysing data and transforming this into knowledge about safety. Achieving safety is a broader project than just reducing crime, it anticipates what replaces crime. In order to understand the local barriers to safety and identify ways to intervene to promote safety, it is necessary to look at the social systems that influence and are influenced by safety. This must be considered at local community level, and in the institution responsible for delivering safety: the City.

City Level

Cities are the sites where citizens experience safety, and are the place where people and government meet. Cities are the appropriate insitutions to measure the impact of and intervene for safety, in partnership with criminal justice systems, civil society and others.

Measuring Safety

In order to effectively intervene to deliver safety practices, practitioners must understand what challenges exist, and what practices could overcome those challenges. This understanding can only be gained through generating and analysing data and transforming this into knowledge about safety. Achieving safety is a broader project than just reducing crime, it anticipates what replaces crime. In order to understand the local barriers to safety and identify ways to intervene to promote safety, it is necessary to look at the social systems that influence and are influenced by safety. This must be considered at local community level, and in the institution responsible for delivering safety: the City.

City Level

Cities are the sites where citizens experience safety, and are the place where people and government meet. Cities are the appropriate insitutions to measure the impact of and intervene for safety, in partnership with criminal justice systems, civil society and others.

The Bigger Picture advocates for a set of progressive principles that reflect contemporary good practice on safety

The Bigger Picture advocates for a set of progressive principles that reflect contemporary good practice on safety

Safety

Safety is experienced locally. It fluctuates in response to local factors and can only be understood and delivered through local interventions in response to local knowledge.

Lived Experience Data

Crime prevention has traditionally relied on crime statistics to measure its effectiveness. The Bigger Picture integrates qualitative and quantitative data, appreciating the significance of perceptions and experiences of safety as valuable indicators.

Evidence

Evidence is crucial to cities when designing safety interventions and the Bigger Picture advocates for sharing knowledge to support a better understanding of what has been proven to impact safety by other cities and projects striving to achieve similar goals. Data is crucial for designing safety interventions which are likely to have an impact.

Less Of / More Of

The Bigger Picture embraces an approach of measuring not only what we want less of, but also what we want more of Measuring vibrancy, cohesion and well-being allows cities to design and decide on interventions that will achieve more of this rather than interventions that only reduce social ills.

Knowledge

Knowledge is political and powerful. The Bigger Picture advocates for democratic use and distribution of knowledge generated through monitoring of safety. Communities called on to offer information about their experiences have the right to access knowledge which emerges when that information is analysed. Communities with access to more information have more agency to participate in delivering safety practices.

Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a complex set of objectives which cities around the world are striving to meet. The Bigger Picture offers a tool for seeing an integrated view of SDG 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 16 and 17 and how to measure the status of these dimensions at the local level.

Safety

Safety is experienced locally. It fluctuates in response to local factors and can only be understood and delivered through local interventions in response to local knowledge.

Lived Experienced Data

Crime prevention has traditionally relied on crime statistics to measure its effectiveness. The Bigger Picture integrates qualitative and quantitative data, appreciating the significance of perceptions and experiences of safety as valuable indicators.

Evidence

Evidence is crucial to cities when designing safety interventions and the Bigger Picture advocates for sharing knowledge to support a better understanding of what has been proven to impact safety by other cities and projects striving to achieve similar goals. Data is crucial for designing safety interventions which are likely to have an impact.

Less Of / More

The Bigger Picture embraces an approach of measuring not only what we want less of, but also what we want more of Measuring vibrancy, cohesion and well-being allows cities to design and decide on interventions that will achieve more of this rather than interventions that only reduce social ills.

Knowledge

Knowledge is political and powerful. The Bigger Picture advocates for democratic use and distribution of knowledge generated through monitoring of safety. Communities called on to offer information about their experiences have the right to access knowledge which emerges when that information is analysed. Communities with access to more information have more agency to participate in delivering safety practices.

Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a complex set of objectives which cities around the world are striving to meet. The Bigger Picture offers a tool for seeing an integrated view of SDG 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 16 and 17 and how to measure the status of these dimensions at the local level.

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Crime

Community

Local Governance

SELF ASSESSMENT

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Home

About

Crime

Community

Local Governance

Faqs

Contact