Assessment of safety in the local community

The research environment CAPS (Center for Criminological and Psychosocial Research) in the Criminology Department at Örebro University has in collaboration with and on behalf of the County Board Örebro developed a methodological support for municipalities carry through feelings of safety surveys within the local community.

The aim with the methodological support is to inspire to and give concrete help to both large, middle sized, and small municipalities to carry through valid feelings of safety surveys within the local community. The methodological support serves to guide municipalities in how they can plan and realize the surveys.

Many of the actors within the municipality have a responsibility to increase the feelings of safety for the inhabitants with in the municipality. To be able to work efficiently with the goal to increase the feelings of safety within the municipality, feelings of safety and fear of crime needs to be measured in such a way that the results become valid and reliable. Collecting reliable knowledge about the level of feelings of safety is an important prerequisite in order to make a correct analysis of the situation and subsequently implement relevant actions to reach the goal of increasing feelings safety within the municipality.