Citizen safety is one of the big challenges for Danilo
Diario Libre
SANTO DOMINGO. In the principle polls that were carried out during the campaign, the issue of the lack of citizen safety popped out among the three problems that most worried Dominicans. And so, in the last edition of the Greenberg-Diario Libre poll, published on 15 May, safety was the number one issue of worry among those surveyed with 57%.
In the Gallup-Hoy poll of 28 April, those interviewed considered that it was the third problem that the next administration should face in order of priority, after unemployment, and the high cost of living.
An interesting piece of data that was shows in the 13 May survey taken by the same firm, is the lack of confidence by the people that the situation will improve, since 40% see public safety in the country getting worse.
If the perception of the people were measured now--when there is an explosion of criminal violence-for sure these numbers would be greater. Over the past few days, some 15 persons have lost their lives in violent incidents, threatening to increase the crime rate, which ended last year at 22 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the official numbers. The population that is legally armed increased in these first months of 2012 by 400, with a total of 207,107 persons armed, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior and the Police. The illegally armed civilian population is thought to number about 300,000.
With this panorama of fear that the population has and with these numbers of murders, the new administration which will be headed by Danilo Medina and Margarita Cedeño, beginning on 16 August, will have to work hard in order to return to Dominicans the perception that this is a safe country where going out into the streets or simply being in your house, does not imply a risk of dying.
In his last appearance as a candidate on the program of Dialogo Libre, sponsored by the Omnimedia Group, which publishes this newspaper, Medina touched on the issue of insecurity, which was often mentioned in his campaign speeches.
He said that the problem has several sides, but in his judgment, it grows from two fundamental problems: "As a consequence of the activities of organized crime, with is one side that is present in all the societies of the world.... And on the other, we have social crime, which is the result of societies that have excluded an important amount of its citizens."
What Medina suggests
In order to solve this serious problem, in his administration's program, specifically the forth theme, the President-elect touches on the issue of public safety. He suggests the design and implementations of a policy of citizen safety that supposedly will rest on prevention, in the transparency of the agencies committed to this work and a solid coordination for putting into practice the policies for citizen safety.
As part of these improvements, he orders a gradual and substantial increase in the salaries of the police, subject to their academic and technical advancement in the police career, create and strengthen a community police provided with ethical values that promote the vocation of service to the community and establishing citizen watch groups all over the country that will permit the government to know the social behavior relating to criminal patterns and social violence (domestic, gender, sexual and child abuse violence).
"In this way-they think-the citizens will be empowered in the fight against crime."
Medina wants to create-also-the Intelligence Table, an idea that he apparently brought from Colombia, a country that he visited in order to learn about their efforts to fight internal crime and also to improve the conditions of the young people to education and employment in order to keep them from being conquered by criminal elements. He proposes at the same time to continue the positive aspects and correct the mistakes in the Plan for Democratic Security, begun in 2005 and whose results have been questioned by national experts.
What should he do to achieve these goals?
The expert is citizen safety and political scientist, Daniel Pou, feels that for these policies to have any results he first has to have the political will and a real commitment from all of the institutions involved. At first glance, Medina appears to have it. But he will have to await the signals that he sends from the Presidency.
As Pou sees things, public safety presents a great challenge for the Medina administration, first because it is an important point in his agenda for government, and second, because it is something that everyone is calling for, no matter the social class.
"I believe that within the mainstays which the new government should establish in order to take command is the issue of citizen safety, of course it is not an issue that is easy because there are elements of institutional reform that are going to take more time, above all in order to assure the professionalization, training of the principle actors, and above all the transparency and the absolute control of the Dominican Republic security agencies and of the Justice Department which is a fundamental element in that part that has to do with the prosecution of criminals," said Pou.
He estimates that the first thing that the government that will be installed in August should do is a diagnostic of the situation, in order that from there, they can create their proposals in the formulation of the policies of citizen safety. "The safety policies cannot be designed on speculation, the security has two dimensions that are very important: One is the reality and the other is the perception," he insists. The specialist, with 30 years of experience in strategies of citizen safety, feels that Medina should step away from the Plan for Democratic Safety and lay out his own project, directed from a policy of state security. In his judgment, the Plan for Democratic Safety was a good contingency attempt but it expanded too much in time without ever having all of its proposals tried out.
What he does see as positive is the installation of the Intelligence Table which Medina proposes, for which, he said, there have been attempts.
In the Gallup-Hoy poll of 28 April, those interviewed considered that it was the third problem that the next administration should face in order of priority, after unemployment, and the high cost of living.
An interesting piece of data that was shows in the 13 May survey taken by the same firm, is the lack of confidence by the people that the situation will improve, since 40% see public safety in the country getting worse.
If the perception of the people were measured now--when there is an explosion of criminal violence-for sure these numbers would be greater. Over the past few days, some 15 persons have lost their lives in violent incidents, threatening to increase the crime rate, which ended last year at 22 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the official numbers. The population that is legally armed increased in these first months of 2012 by 400, with a total of 207,107 persons armed, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior and the Police. The illegally armed civilian population is thought to number about 300,000.
With this panorama of fear that the population has and with these numbers of murders, the new administration which will be headed by Danilo Medina and Margarita Cedeño, beginning on 16 August, will have to work hard in order to return to Dominicans the perception that this is a safe country where going out into the streets or simply being in your house, does not imply a risk of dying.
In his last appearance as a candidate on the program of Dialogo Libre, sponsored by the Omnimedia Group, which publishes this newspaper, Medina touched on the issue of insecurity, which was often mentioned in his campaign speeches.
He said that the problem has several sides, but in his judgment, it grows from two fundamental problems: "As a consequence of the activities of organized crime, with is one side that is present in all the societies of the world.... And on the other, we have social crime, which is the result of societies that have excluded an important amount of its citizens."
What Medina suggests
In order to solve this serious problem, in his administration's program, specifically the forth theme, the President-elect touches on the issue of public safety. He suggests the design and implementations of a policy of citizen safety that supposedly will rest on prevention, in the transparency of the agencies committed to this work and a solid coordination for putting into practice the policies for citizen safety.
As part of these improvements, he orders a gradual and substantial increase in the salaries of the police, subject to their academic and technical advancement in the police career, create and strengthen a community police provided with ethical values that promote the vocation of service to the community and establishing citizen watch groups all over the country that will permit the government to know the social behavior relating to criminal patterns and social violence (domestic, gender, sexual and child abuse violence).
"In this way-they think-the citizens will be empowered in the fight against crime."
Medina wants to create-also-the Intelligence Table, an idea that he apparently brought from Colombia, a country that he visited in order to learn about their efforts to fight internal crime and also to improve the conditions of the young people to education and employment in order to keep them from being conquered by criminal elements. He proposes at the same time to continue the positive aspects and correct the mistakes in the Plan for Democratic Security, begun in 2005 and whose results have been questioned by national experts.
What should he do to achieve these goals?
The expert is citizen safety and political scientist, Daniel Pou, feels that for these policies to have any results he first has to have the political will and a real commitment from all of the institutions involved. At first glance, Medina appears to have it. But he will have to await the signals that he sends from the Presidency.
As Pou sees things, public safety presents a great challenge for the Medina administration, first because it is an important point in his agenda for government, and second, because it is something that everyone is calling for, no matter the social class.
"I believe that within the mainstays which the new government should establish in order to take command is the issue of citizen safety, of course it is not an issue that is easy because there are elements of institutional reform that are going to take more time, above all in order to assure the professionalization, training of the principle actors, and above all the transparency and the absolute control of the Dominican Republic security agencies and of the Justice Department which is a fundamental element in that part that has to do with the prosecution of criminals," said Pou.
He estimates that the first thing that the government that will be installed in August should do is a diagnostic of the situation, in order that from there, they can create their proposals in the formulation of the policies of citizen safety. "The safety policies cannot be designed on speculation, the security has two dimensions that are very important: One is the reality and the other is the perception," he insists. The specialist, with 30 years of experience in strategies of citizen safety, feels that Medina should step away from the Plan for Democratic Safety and lay out his own project, directed from a policy of state security. In his judgment, the Plan for Democratic Safety was a good contingency attempt but it expanded too much in time without ever having all of its proposals tried out.
What he does see as positive is the installation of the Intelligence Table which Medina proposes, for which, he said, there have been attempts.
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