From Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation

Senior government officials, as well as law enforcement experts from 10 Caribbean countries have begun a meeting here Tuesday to prioritise citizen security data management and evidence policy based making for youth crime reduction and prevention.

The meeting here is being held under the strengthening evidence based decision for citizenship in the Caribbean (CariSECURE), a component of the United States Youth Empowerment Services project.

Addressing the conference United Nations Development Programme resident coordinator Stephen O’Malley said that Caribbean people deserve to live free from crime and violence.

“In our capacity as decision makers and leaders in society and But how do we do that. How can we work together to ensure that public policy and state interventions are effective and responsive to the needs of citizens.

“UNDP, we believe that citizens and community security can be strengthened through a multi-dimensional approach focused on addressing the potential causes of crime and violence. But this can only be done if valid, reliable and comparable citizens security data are readily available and accessible,” he added.

The goal of the CariSECURE project is to improve youth crime and violence policy-making and programming in the Southern and Eastern Caribbean through the use of quality, comparable and reliable national citizen security information.

The theory of change being pursued is that CariSECURE will improve the decision-making process in Caribbean public institutions by providing quantitative and qualitative tools for analysis and supporting their incorporation into national citizen security policies and actions.

The project aims to transform quantitative data into useful qualitative information, enabling public servants to make data-informed decisions and to use this information to develop policies and programmes that address key crime and violence problems identified in the data.

For more on this story go to: http://www.cbc.bb/index.php/news/item/1759-caribbean-security-officials-discussing-data-on-youth-violence