The debate on options for city policing and crime prevention in South Africa have gathered pace since 1994. The Institute for Security Studies – believing that the key to crime prevention lies at local level – has concentrated on developing workable solutions to growing levels of crime in South Africa's urban centres. The contents of this monograph constitute a collection of policy documents, in the formulation of which the Institute has been active, and covering key issues in the debate. These are as follows:

the concept document on metropolitan and municipal policing produced for the Gauteng Ministry of Safety and Security;



a study of the possibilities for establishing city policing services in Gauteng completed for the Standing Committee on Safety and Security of the Gauteng Legislature;



a discussion document on the possibility of establishing a Safer Cities and Towns Programme for South Africa; and



draft legislation produced by the South African Police Service on metropolitan and municipal policing. The draft legislation is likely to change considerably in the future and much debate is still required on its contents.

The documents represent the degree to which the debate has swung from one which concentrates purely on the establishment of metropolitan and municipal policing to a realisation that achieving safer cities and towns requires a focus on a range of local government focus areas. There is much for South African cities to learn from the experiences of municipal initiatives elsewhere. The key lesson is that city and town authorities have an important responsibility in regard to crime prevention and can play a critical co-ordinating role. Indeed, international experience of crime prevention suggests that the active participation of local authorities in steering crime prevention projects is a critical factor in their success.

The debate on local involvement in policing and crime prevention has some way to progress and is increasingly difficult to separate (as has been the tendency to date) from more general issues relating to the transformation of the SAPS. It would be unfortunate, for example, if current developments around the decentralisation of policing functions in the SAPS were not co-ordinated with developments in the city policing and crime prevention debate. Also, there is much to be said for investigating the linking of democratically elected local authorities with local SAPS commanders to improve levels of accountability at local level. Finally, national guidelines on issues such as environmental design for crime prevention are urgently required at local government level.

While the monograph does not aim to specifically raise these issues, it provides a useful background to an understanding of the roots of the debate on local authority participation in crime prevention. As has been emphasised above, the debate is far from over. While it has, to some extent, developed in an ad hoc manner (concentrating initially too heavily on metropolitan and municipal policing) there is now a critical need to cite further developments more firmly within government policy initiatives such as the National Crime Prevention Strategy. The debate around safer cities and towns must not be seen as an add-on to current initiatives – it is in fact the key to local delivery.