Making Australian communities safer requires something more than the current policies on offer. The ever-increasing amount of money poured into prisons is not making us safer and could be put to much better use. Overlapping lessons drawn from place-based approaches to addressing disadvantage, justice reinvestment and social cohesion strategies reveal the ‘better use’ to which we could put that money.
In our paper – Flourishing Communities: Taking lessons from place-based approaches, justice reinvestment and social cohesion – we call for solutions that:
· are preventative
· are targeted at geographically-defined communities
· engage with and build capacity in local communities
· are long-term
· are data-driven
· facilitate multi-sector involvement
· build local social cohesion.