Category: Latest News

Activities offered in the fall of 2022 by the RÉSAL as part of its community of practice

As part of the development of the community of practice of the Réseau d’échange et de soutien aux actions locales (RÉSAL), of which the ICPC is a member and coordinator, two cycles of theme-based activities were held in the fall of 2022.

The RÉSAL community of practice includes practitioners, community organizations and institutions that work with youth in Montreal.

Two series of training sessions were held and reached nearly 70 participants.

Street harassment and ordinary violence prevention, conducted by Audrey Simard from the Centre d’éducation et d’action des femmes and Marie-Ève Desroches from the Table des groupes de femmes de Montréal.

The training and clinical supervision activities of this theme series helped define street harassment, its concrete manifestations, and its impacts, particularly on young cisgender and trans women. The presenters provided concrete tools and strategies for dealing with this violence as victims, active witnesses, or recipients of disclosure. On the other hand, they led the participants to reflect on the ways in which community organizations and institutions such as the City of Montreal, the Société de transport de Montréal or schools can play a proactive role in the fight against street harassment and support victims.

Some of the highlights:

  • Street harassment includes physical, sexual, verbal, and psychological violence. It is important not to rank acts of street harassment in order of importance, as their impact depends on the experiences and traumas of the victims.
  • Street harassment isn’t more frequent at night than during the day, on the contrary, it mostly occurs during rush hour. Therefore, there is a difference between the perception of safety and actual safety.

Violence prevention at school, conducted by Éric Morissette professor from the University of Montreal.

Some of the highlights: 

  • Violence in schools is common. According to studies, it is estimated that more than one-third of Quebec students experience at least one incident of verbal or physical violence at school or on the way to school.
  • In order to prevent violence, it is essential to conceive intervention in the school environment within an integrative model targeting various levels of intervention and the entire school environment.

New activities will be planned in the spring.

A Communications Assistant Intern joins the team

In January 2023, the ICPC welcomed a new employee to the team:  Mateo Minillo. 

Mateo is a triple master’s student in international political communication and democratic risks at the Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), UCLouvain (Belgium) and Sciences Po Aix (France). After completing a bachelor’s degree in public relations, he worked for five years at IBM as a professional development analyst in human resources. In 2018, he worked on an election campaign in Brazil, following two of his passions: politics and communication. Since returning to school in 2021, he has been studying different types of violent extremism around the world and joined the ICPC in January 2023 for his master’s degree internship.

Welcome to the team!  

ICPC participates in the fall PNI Coordination Meeting

On December 13, ICPC participated in the fall 2022 coordination meeting of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme (NCPJ) Network as part of its role in the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The members of the network presented their recent and ongoing activities, reviewed the “Kyoto Declaration on Advancing Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice and the Rule of Law” and to discuss the presence of the PNI at the 32nd session of the CCPCJ to be held in 2023.

ICPC has published a review of the literature and practices for the prevention of armed violence

Gun violence is on the rise in the Montreal metropolitan area, but also throughout Quebec (Larin 2022), and cold weapon violence is still common. However, several tragic events involving firearms have compelled the Quebec government to invest in the fight against this type of violence.

This review of literature and practice is part of these efforts to better understand the phenomenon of armed violence. It also seeks to share knowledge and experiences from measures put in place around the world to curb violence. However, armed violence is a complex phenomenon that involves more than one issue. Therefore, it is important to adopt the appropriate prevention strategies depending on the context in which armed violence is addressed in order to intervene in a comprehensive and targeted manner.

This report presents four issues that may result in weapon-related acts: 

  • Suicide and self-inflicted violence;
  • Armed violence among delinquent or criminalized youth groups;
  • Intimate partner violence;
  • Incidents related to violent extremism.

This report provides insight and understanding of crime data collected under the Quebec Department of Public Safety's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR 2.2) rules from 2015 to 2020.  

Read the report here (in French)

Presentation of two reports to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the City of Montreal has experienced a sharp increase in certain firearm-related crimes, most of which involve young people. This issue, which must be addressed through a multi-sectoral approach and which must benefit from a concerted vision, is of particular concern to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM). The SPVM, therefore, contacted the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime in order to develop its integrated plan to combat gun violence and improve its practices.

On October 27th, ICPC was invited to present highlights of two recently published reports addressing different issues related to gun violence, the first one focusing on the glorification of firearms on social media and the second one on the prevention of gun violence.

This meeting was an opportunity for the team to share best practices from the literature, but also to exchange with 14 members of the SPVM’s internal committee of experts on the issue of the rise of gun-related violence in Montreal, on the initiatives to be implemented at the community level as well as on social media in order to prevent such violence.  

Thank you to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal for the invitation.

ICPC participated in an episode of ”Cap sur 2030”

With the significant increase in armed violence in Montreal, which has been a major issue for several years, a question has been raised: How can we strengthen the social fabric in Montreal? Panelists invited to a special segment on the program Cap sur 2030, in which the ICPC was invited to participate, attempted to answer this question.

Michelle Côté, Director of Research at ICPC, discussed the topic with Ted Rutland, Associate Professor of Geography with a focus on municipal policy, urban planning, and urban safety in Canada, affiliated with Concordia University and a member of the Anti-Carceral Group; Louis Audet-Gosselin, Scientific and Strategic Director of the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence; and Malika Saher, lawyer and Senior Mediator at the Dr. Julien Foundation. Together, they suggested solutions to preserve and strengthen social ties in Montreal in the coming years.

Cap sur 2030 is a program on MATV that brings together a number of experts and professionals in the field to discuss inspiring and innovative ideas for building the future of Montreal for the benefit of the community and its citizens.

To watch the episode (in French): https://matv.ca/montreal/mes-emissions/cap-sur-2030/comment-solidifier-le-tissu-social-a-montreal

Participation of ICPC at the City of Montreal’s event “À présent, le grand rendez-vous montréalais sur la solidarité, l’équité et l’inclusion”

On October 18, 2022, ICPC had the pleasure of attending the event À présent, le grand rendez-vous montréalais sur la solidarité, l’équité et l’inclusion, organized by the City of Montreal, as part of the deployment of its Solidarity, Equity and Inclusion Action Plan 2021-2025. It was an opportunity for the city to present its five major action areas for the future, the successes of the participating organizations, and to look at the objectives to be reached in the coming years.   

Thank you to the City of Montreal for the invitation.   

The ICPC in France for its 7th international conference

On October 5 and 6, 2022, the 7th International Conference on Observation, Analysis and Prevention of Insecurity, organized by the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, in collaboration with the French Ministry of Transport, the International Union of Railways, the International Association of Public Transport, the Union of Public Transports, Safe.brussels, the Institute of Higher Studies of the Ministry of the Interior, the government of Quebec and the government of Canada, took place in Paris. The conference was held at the headquarters of the International Union of Railways.  

For this 7th edition, the theme of the conference was: Security in Mobility.

To mark the beginning of this 7th edition of the international conference, an opening cocktail was held at the residence of the Canadian Ambassador in Paris. Our partner, the Canadian Embassy in France, and Amy Baker, Deputy Head of Mission, welcomed partners and speakers, for the first meeting between all the participants of this conference. 

The event included plenary sessions, workshops, and field visits. The conference gathered many participants from all over the world (nearly ten nationalities were represented among more than fifty speakers) concerned by the observation, the analysis, and the good practices related to the improvement of security in mobility, such as political agents, researchers, representatives of transport operators, NGOs, and institutional representatives.

Nearly 180 participants attended the conference, coming from 138 different companies and representing more than 20 countries from 4 continents.  

The ICPC would like to thank the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada for their financial support in the development of this conference. We were pleased to have Omar Alghabra’ support, Minister of Transport of Canada, via a video contribution and to host Michelle Boisvert, Delegate General of Quebec in Paris, in person, taking part in the opening remarks.

The opening plenary of the conference was introduced by the ICPC. Michelle Côté, Director of Research, and Florilène Cornier, Analyst and Project Officer, presented the conceptual framework of the conference around the current issues of safety in mobilities that are spread across the world. It was the opportunity to share the organization’s different expertise on the topic as well as the importance of a differential analysis of these safety issues from one country to another.  

During these two days of conferences, workshops were dedicated to specific phenomena, such as the fight against fraud, harassment in transport, prevention against the terrorist threat and crisis management, analysis of crime in transport and aggression to staff. These topics, among many others, were addressed by various representatives of transport operators discussing key security issues and how to prevent them.   

Discussions about effective tools to measure, analyze and study the phenomenon, examples of strong pathways and platforms for knowledge transfer, presentations of crime and safety approaches specific to mobility, effective evaluation as well as dissemination of best practices, were also part of these exchanges. 

Participants were also able to select and participate in one of the five different visits and demonstrations to further their practical knowledge:  

  • Two dog team demonstrations, cyno-detection, and cyno-attack by the Société nationale des chemins de fer français est l’entreprise ferroviaire publique française (SNCF).  
  • A demonstration of intervention techniques by the SNCF.  
  • A training offered by the Régie autonome des transports parisiens (RATP) on awareness for victims of harassment. Presentation of the Stand UP project and the 5D method in order to learn how to react safely in a harassment situation in a public place, as a victim or a witness.   
  • A visit organized by the RATP of the security devices and the security headquarters at the Gare de Lyon metro station. This visit allowed experts to discover the operating methods of security interventions.   
  • Presentation of a social collection bus by the RATP. This presentation was an opportunity to discover an original prevention system for reaching out to homeless people and fighting social exclusion and ensuring the safety of its transport systems.    

Being at its seventh event, this international conference has truly become a meeting point for crime observation and crime analysis. 

It should be noted that the proceedings of the conference will soon be available online.  

For any questions or requests, please write to info@cipc-icpc.org. 

The ICPC met with its network in France, in Bordeaux and Lille

After its visit in May, the ICPC was back in Europe for a mission. During the month of October, Director General, Ann Champoux, met with several members, partners and new collaborators to discuss opportunities for collaboration in crime prevention. 

Meetings at Bordeaux City Hall

Following the visit of Amine Smihi, Deputy Mayor of Bordeaux, in September to the ICPC office in Montreal, it was the ICPC’s turn to visit Bordeaux. As part of her mission in France, Ann Champoux met with Amine Smihi to discuss opportunities for collaboration in crime prevention.

The ICPC was welcomed at the Bordeaux City Hall to meet with Mr. François Mesure, Director General of the Bordeaux City Hall and Ms. Eléonore Becat, Deputy Director and Head of the Bordeaux CLSPD.

In the afternoon, the Director General took part in a visit of the Urban Supervision Center (CSU) where she was able to talk with Mr. Laurent Lapegue, Director of the Municipal Police and Public Tranquillity. They were able to discuss issues related to urban security and the feeling of insecurity of citizens.

Participation in the ethical committee of video protection – Bordeaux City Hall

At the end of the day, ICPC had the chance to attend and take part in the ethical committee of video protection at the town hall, in the presence of the Mayor and Mr Smihi.

Assises de la sécurité des territoires, October 12-13, in Lille

The Director General of ICPC, Ann Champoux, attended the meeting of the security of the territories in Lille. The French Forum for Urban Security (FFSU) presented an updated version of the White Paper for territorial security integrating all the new recommendations and practices of local actors.

Also, a presentation of the prevention-security devices in Lille and a national meeting of prevention-security directors and coordinators were on the program.

We would like to thank all our collaborators for their welcome and these profitable exchanges. 

Police-population seminar organized in collaboration with Espoir 18 in Paris

On October 11th and 12th, a seminar on improving communication between police and the public took place in Paris. The event was organized through a partnership between ICPC and the Parisian organization Espoir 18.  The objective of this seminar was to present successful initiatives undertaken internationally on constructive dialogue between law enforcement and community members, through round tables, an audience of academics, police officers, and civil society stakeholders.

Since 2019, ICPC and Espoir 18 have been collaborating on a project on improving police-population dialogue, with a particular emphasis on the young public and minority groups in their relationship with the police institution. This partnership is therefore part of a research on ways to improve this type of dialogue, to document innovative experiences and practices at the international level and to promote knowledge transfer.  This year, several activities were carried out as part of this collaboration: a review of international good practices was co-authored, ICPC hosted the Espoir 18 team in Montreal as part of its North American theatre tour, and this seminar which took place in October.

The seminar included :

  • The presentation of the practice review “Improving Police-Population Dialogue: An Introduction to International Issues and Practices” produced by ICPC and Espoir 18, with the support of the Open Society Foundations;    
  • The presentation of successful national (in France) and international initiatives along with round table discussions; 
  • The screening and debate of a documentary made by the young of Espoir 18 on racial profiling; 
  • Stories of young people, families, and police officers on the relationship between the police and the population; 
  • An evening debate on possible solutions to improve the police-population dialogue and a future action plan to be put in place.  

The development of an action plan for the period 2023 to 2025 based on the exchanges and lessons learned from the seminar will be produced for the next phase of this collaboration.