The legitimacy of the Rotterdam integrated public safety program

In the last couple of years, public attention has shifted toward fighting crime and ensuring safety. A reason for this shift is an increasing feeling and/or awareness among citizens that they are not safe, especially in the larger cities of the Netherlands. Public safety policies have been on both the national and local political agendas for quite some time. In the mid-1980s, the Dutch government began thinking about a more integrated public safety policy; this resulted in the first integrated public safety policy with its main focus on public safety in the mid-1990s (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken 1999). During the government formation of 1994, the four largest cities in The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht) requested more attention for problems specific to large cities. Consequently, they were asked to set up workable plans that addressed employment, safety and livability. Together with the remaining fifteen largest cities, certain action programs were formulated (Haan 1997, 8-16). The action program contained three goals: ‘reduction of long-term unemployment in deprived areas, change the objective (measurable) and subjective (experienced) degree of safety on the street, and increase the livability of deprived areas and improve care for the most vulnerable.’ (Haan 1997, 15-16) This thinking about integrated public safety policy resulted in the first integrated safety program in 1999 (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken 1999).