Status Report 2002-2003

Implementation of Section 41 of the
Official Languages Act

Annex C - National - List of National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) Funded Projects for 2002/03

FILE #

TITLE

Organization name

3540-C63
(303736)

Action on Crime Prevention: A Multimedia Profile of NCPC Pilot Projects

Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc. (CPRN)

The project will use television and the Web to reach out to people at risk of committing crimes or of becoming victims of crime. This undertaking will communicate the objectives of the National Strategy, create resources for organizations that deal with people at risk, and provide tools to help track best practices. A written analysis of the profiled projects will be published by CPRN in English and French, and widely promoted to policy and decision-makers across Canada.

The Family Network of CPRN and Learning and Skills Television Alberta through its channel CourtTV Canada will collaborate to produce the following:

• Video profiles of six NCPC projects will be broadcast in English (a French version will also be produced) over a two-month period and direct viewers to a web site created for the project;
• A half-hour documentary highlighting the six profiled NCPC projects;
• A web site profiling the projects with descriptions in English and French;
• A "chat event" scheduled to coincide with the initial release of each televised video feature;
• An interactive web survey;
• A detailed analysis of the web survey results which will be summarized twice and provided to NCPC for planning and evaluation purposes; and
• A Discussion Paper that describes and analyzes the projects that are profiled.

CPRN will work with designated staff of the NCPC to select a maximum of 10 representative projects from across the country that could be profiled. The selection will require diverse projects that apply innovative approaches to crime prevention through social development. CourtTV Canada will make the final selection of six projects to profile from the agreed upon short list. The six videos will be shot in locations across Canada in popular documentary style and be broadcast in a series over a two-month period.

Multiple plays of the videos will be scheduled on CourtTV Canada to follow popular programs such as "The Practice." CourtTV Canada's affiliated channel, Canadian Learning Television will also broadcast the videos with multiple plays. Each new video will be played twice a day on each channel (one during prime time) for at least one week. Learning and Skills Television Alberta will also negotiate broadcast of the videos or short promos of them as appropriate for audiences of related CHUM/City broadcast channels.

Each video will have a related web presence, formatted as a series of templates and containing key information about each project (description of the project, methods used, project costs, partners and project results). In addition, contact information for project coordinators and links to related resources will also be provided. Viewers will be directed to the project web site at the beginning and end of each broadcast. The web portal will provide valuable information to organizations that may want to adapt one of the projects profiled to their own community.

The Discussion Paper will describe and analyze the six projects that are featured. The analysis will be policy relevant and framed in the context of crime prevention through social development

Commitment Type

Fiscal Year

Commitment Amount

Committed

2001/02

$200,000.00

Committed

2002/03

$125,831.00

FILE #

TITLE

Organization name

3340-A09
(304878)

Protection de la Jeunesse Contre la Criminalité

ARC du Canada

The project involves using the airwaves to inform Francophone and Acadian communities of different ways in which they can reduce the risk factors to which children and young people are exposed with respect to crime, especially at school and in the street.

The resources used to inform the community and young people about criminal behaviour and ways to respond to it are often limited in the Francophone and Acadian communities. For Francophones in some communities, access to services in their language is often difficult.

ARC and its service – the Réseau francophone d'Amérique (RFA) – is strategically placed to contribute to the effort to make people more aware of these behaviours. They play a role in preparing the community for the major social and cultural debates and young people often take part on the radio as presenters, volunteers or listeners.

The project proposes the following actions and products:

• Production and broadcasting of bulletins on the initiatives put in place in various communities to counter various forms of criminal behaviour and violent and/or undesirable behaviour of which young people are the victims;
• Production and broadcasting of backgrounder bulletins that enable parents to:

1. Easily identify and recognize risk factors that can lead to various forms of criminal and/or violent behaviour;
2. Easily recognize a young person who is the victim of criminal, violent and/or undesirable behaviour;

• Production and broadcasting of backgrounder bulletins that enable young people easily to recognize criminal and/or violent forms of behaviour and to learn the best way to deal with them;
• A classroom discussion session between students and decision-makers in the community designed to make young people more aware of the issue of criminal, violent and/or undesirable behaviour and to promote a debate on community solutions.

The objectives of the project are to:

1. provide decision-makers in the community with ideas by giving them examples of actions initiated in other communities to reduce the consequences of criminal and/or violent behaviour;
2. make parents aware of the importance of positive reinforcement in the home;
3. help young people react appropriately to criminal and/or violent behaviour; and
4. ensure that community leaders and young people identify solutions together to counter criminal and/or violent behaviour.

With respect to the content of the messages, ARC will rely on community organizations specializing in youth protection that have taken initiatives in this direction. ARC plans to create partnerships with: community health centres and workers in the social services sector, the Fédération de la jeunesse canadienne-française; Direction-Jeunesse; and the Fédération des juristes d'expression française.

The consciousness-raising stage of the project will include the broadcasting of three kinds of reports:

• five reports on model initiatives taken in other communities across the country to be broadcast twice a day over four weeks;
• five capsule sketches to make the general public more aware of criminal and/or violent forms of behaviour, risk factors and their effects, to be broadcast three times a day over four weeks; and finally
• ten capsule sketches to enable young people to better identify ways to react to undesirable forms of behaviour by their peers, to be broadcast twice a day over four weeks.

After the broadcasts, discussion sessions between community and school directors and young people will be held in classrooms to discuss the problem of criminal, violent or undesirable forms of behaviour and their effects.

Commitment Type

Fiscal Year

Commitment Amount

Committed

2002/03

$84,749.00

FILE #

TITLE

Organization name

3340-C68
(304896)

Young People's Press Crime Prevention Public Awareness

Communitas Canada/Young People's Press

The goal of this project is to proactively assist in preventing crime and to reduce the likelihood of people, particularly ‘at-risk' youth, becoming offenders or victims. The project is a multi-faceted 28-month initiative focusing on community safety and crime prevention issues. Young people will be trained to write and edit newspaper and Internet articles by participating in a "Writers' Circle." Most of the articles will profile successful youth crime prevention initiatives across Canada, and many of them will be submitted to newspapers across Canada for publication. An informal Partners' Advisory Committee will also be created to provide guidance on all aspects of the initiative.

13 Writers' Circles will be held over the course of the project (6 in the Greater Toronto Area, 6 in Northern Ontario and 1 on the Internet), training approximately 360 youth. Each will have 10 to 50 participants and range from 1-day to 10-week sessions (in the latter, 5 two-hour sessions are held over a 10-week period), where youth will learn the basic tenets of writing a newspaper or Internet article and develop at least one story that focuses on crime prevention. One of the circles will be conducted in French and at least one will target Aboriginal youth. These Writers' Circles make up a unique training component of the project and they will build self-esteem in circle participants.

Articles will be written by young people aged 12 to 21 concerning the success of crime prevention initiatives across Canada, as well as efforts in "high-risk" neighbourhoods that reduce poverty, provide opportunities for young people and foster cooperation among community members. The project will also seek out multi-systemic youth crime prevention initiatives to profile, and some articles will highlight the planning and implementation steps necessary to develop community-based, risk-focused delinquency prevention programs.

85 articles will be submitted to newspapers for publication (8 in French), but as many as 300 additional articles will be written. Many of the articles will be published on the Internet at www.nocrimetime.net in 6 special editions of an e-magazine focused on crime prevention. This electronic publication will be registered with more than 900 search engines, promoted weekly in The Toronto Star and The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and also promoted on SchoolNet, which is available to almost all Canadian schools.

The informal Partners' Advisory Committee will consist of stakeholders involved with law enforcement, crime prevention, domestic violence, multicultural and Aboriginal issues, the media, education and other matters pertaining to youth.
  

Commitment Type

Fiscal Year

Commitment Amount

Committed

2002/03

$100,000.00

Committed

2003/04

$96,350.00