Recommendations on Provincial Law of Public Security Nº 12154 in the Province of Buenos Aires

General Recommendations:

To the Executive Power, Security Ministry, Legislative Power, Judicial Power, Municipalities, constituted Neighbors’ Forums, Neighborhood Security Forums.
Articulate joint efforts, where all actors of the system are involved in promoting citizens participation through vicinal security Forums created by law 12154.
Implement massive information and diffusion campaigns in order to get the community involved as individuals of public security, supporting and encouraging their genuine participation in the neighborhood’s security Forums.

Specific Recommendations:

To the Provincial Executive Power, to the Security Ministry, to the Relations with the Community Office of said Ministry:

Assume responsibility as application authority, guaranteeing compliance with law 12154.
Be responsible viewer at the meetings for the constitution of the Forums, through the following actions: improve summons, draw a map with positioning of stakeholders, supervise the calling, divulge the summons, update the registry of intermediate institutions in order to guarantee an open and pluralized meeting.
Supervise as application authority, the necessary requirements for the confirmation of the municipal and neighborhood security Forums.
Legitimate the constituted municipal and neighborhood security Forums, through ministerial resolution preparing and maintaining a registry.
Share among neighbors information concerning the functioning of the Forums and on the public security law.
Improve inter-institutional relations, through the research of social plans (promoting them, disseminating them and combining them with the municipalities in order to make them operative).
Implement training to forum members and public functionaries on mediation, facilitation, and collaborative planning as preventative activities in the neighborhood conflicts.
As application authority, the legislature should request the budget for the functioning of the security vicinal Forums.
Obtain infrastructure for the functioning of the Forums.
Conduct joint prevention actions with the police in the neighborhood.
Create a community police program to articulate with the Forums the prevention task.
Monitor generated changes on security matters, in the jurisdictions where the vicinal security Forums are constituted.

To the Provincial Legislative Power:

Promote political consensus to support Forums activities.
Invite Forums to consult them on proposals to reform law 12154.
Include common citizens, even if they do not participate (or belong) to an organization, in the constitution of the vicinal Forums. Provide a voice and voting power to citizens.
Delegate to the municipality the faculty to summon in the constitution of the security vicinal forum.
Create a juvenile forum.
Incorporate to the budget law the necessary funds for the functioning of the security Forums.
Promote the issuance of the criminal mediation law for minor offenses.
Based on flexibility and operative criteria (article 14 of the law ut supra) create operating norms in accordance with each zone requirements in order to facilitate community participation, simplifying legal and political administrative bureaucracy in the articulation of participation.
The geographical delimitation of the Forums by police stations, obstructs participation (e.g. Extensive zones), for which we recommend reformulation of the geographic distribution of the Forums, taking into account the zonal characteristics and requirements.

To the Municipalities:

That the constitution of the municipal Forums be adapted and consulted in compliance with law 12154.
That the vicinal Forums within the municipal forum carry representation through their vote.
Include the Forums in the design and implementation of domestic security policies.
Articulate policies for dispute prevention (initiated through citizen participation) with social prevention strategies.
Coordinate joint actions with health, education, and social affairs with non-governmental organizations in order to implement policies and prevention projects elaborated from the zonal diagnosis conducted by the vicinal security Forums.
Promote instances that intensify the relations between vicinal Forums-local police.

To the Judicial Power:

Decentralize fiscal and defender offices so that citizens have easy access to justice (e.g. constitute denouncements)
Legitimate security vicinal Forums to constitute denouncements.
Create within the criminal policy area, offense-preventing policies, and articulating work with execution judges, non-governmental organizations, Forums.
Promote criminal “mediation” as a tool, in minor offenses.
Request unification of cases in coinciding denouncements that respect the accused.
Divulge the citizens’ commitment to declare (in case of danger there exist protective measures).
Connect police, fiscal agents, public defenders and Forums to work in offense prevention.

To the Neighborhood Security Forums:

Organize informal meeting with institutions and citizens in each neighborhood to review security matters and other subjects, of local interest, in order to accompany dissemination campaigns with concrete actions.
Complete zonal analysis by neighborhoods including needs and resources, based on crime maps in order to design prevention projects in conjunction with the authorities and NGOs.
Promote the responsible participation, granting transparency through audits and performance control.
Ensure the genuine participation of the community in their claims leaving aside political opportunism and self-promotion.
Facilitate citizens’ access to denouncements informing them of their rights and guarantees and accompanying the denouncing neighbor in the claim
Strengthen relations between NGOs, minority organizations, justice and penitentiary service, to create a web of assistance to prisoners.
Consolidate mutual cooperation with municipal governments and local police, in order to secure credibility on institutions to promote community participation.
Collaborate with police stations in order to activate operational actions and speed in responses to prisoners on their social requirements, causals and jurisdictional.
Control and cooperate in maintaining satisfactory prisons for the social recovery of prisoners.

Proposal Of Prevention Programs Emerged From The Forums

Promote and facilitate the opening at each neighborhood of AA (alcoholics anonymous) and center for AA families.
Initiate prevention campaigns on alcohol consumption in the family.
Open centers for the treatment of behavioral alterations that result in violence, crime and substance abuse.
Implement efficient and competent services for vulnerable youths, fundamentally as of 11 and 12 years old, in needed and poor neighborhoods.
Implement assistance programs starting with pregnancy and during the first childhood to reduce the vulnerability factors in poor neighborhoods
Create fostering and social development centers for young adult volunteers at local and national level.
Offer formation of community referents to trainers and other people involved in recreation activities and/or sports in order to recycle the social action of the neighborhood club.
Promote in all jails the experience of jail Nº 8, which accepts prisoners with babies, where children from 9 till 5 pm assist with the care of children of the agents of the penitentiary service.
Implement programs that work with families inside and outside of prison.
Offer service of interdisciplinary jurisdiction to prisoners.

Conclusions

More than conclusions of this project I believe that we could more humbly comment on “lessons learned.”

Consequently we believe that we have understood that working with social actors that acknowledge such different significance to the already complex security concepts, violence, delinquency, etc, deserve a deep treatment very difficult to articulate within the frame of current policies, where focus is placed on the short term impacts, which could measure some result at the time of evaluation the political gain.

Such a political irresponsibility does not yet have an appropriate punishment for those participating in it. From the logic of politics, the information is sometimes handled in the most useful way at the time of elections and the substantial matters have a relative importance.

But the public actors were not the only responsible parties for certain failures evidenced in the implementation of this law. Many citizens without participatory experience, encouraged this confrontation logic without thinking that any right involves an obligation, and thus they came near to participation expecting only to find benefits for themselves. Citizens and authorities truly committed found many difficulties in finding support for their expectations.

However the process was very educational in itself and the recommendations prove this. The most important lesson of this experience was to verify that the changes generated from below upwards, for which reason the local level and its articulation with higher authorities should have a relevant priority at the time of designing public policies involving citizenship participation.

The experience and enriching exchanges with the social actors illustrated to us that in order to have positive impacts on a field such as public security, it was necessary to socialize a vision of the conflict as a progressive process from which it is impossible to intervene with the intention of resolving or controlling it, but that the appropriate approach should be to transform it towards consequences less destructive that help to peacefully go through social changes.

Hence the design of that “transformation process” should go through steps that include the conscientiousness of the problem from the perspectives of all those involved. The process should be able to provide spaces for dialogue, workshops and training contributing to the understanding and to the generation of new meaning in the social actors, while the same are articulated with adequate behaviors to obtain the transformation.

Although at the time of promoting solutions the financial resources are indispensable, the new approaches prioritize the development of new thinking about the responsibilities and strategic commitment that are based on the quality of relations and in new collaborative leadership concepts that involve an enormous challenge to the traditional way of governing and of influencing others, to which our society is accustomed.

Around the whole world, professionals with long experience in formal power structures, work today convinced of the need to commit members of the community to sustained constructive dialogues, from which instead of concentrating on the problem, as done by the deliberative dialogue process, more attention is given to the subjacent relations understanding that changes occur in that level.

Assuming social change as a personal and systematic transformation we expect to permanently adapt our methodology to these new approaches, articulating practices such as intervention in strategic subsystems that may connect with the wider dynamic on which the conflicts develop.

We cannot ignore that, as mediators, we are not neutral, we advocate for a positive change beyond other options such as repression, but our intervention requires balanced power contexts that we have the responsibility to help generate.

Graciela Tapia
Executive Director
Fundación Cambio Democrático