Paris, January 2017 – The town of Brno, Czech Republic, a member of Efus, won the European Crime Prevention Award, whose theme this year was “organised crime against elderly people”, for its Senior Academy scheme. The award ceremony was held on 15 December 2016 in Bratislava, Slovakia, together with the European Crime Prevention Network’s (EUCPN) Best Practice Conference (Read here).
The second prize went to the city of Stuttgart (Germany), also member of Efus, for its scheme “Hello granny, I need money” aimed at protecting senior citizens from fraudsters passing as relatives in need of help. Croatia was runner-up with their original prevention scheme addressed at both elderly and disabled people and titled “Dan Kao San”.
Created in 2005, Brno’s Senior Academy seeks to teach the over-60 to protect themselves from fraudsters and other criminals and to take actively part in the life of their community. This scheme, which is run in partnership with the local police and a number of local institutions and associations, received a prize from the Czech Ministry of the Interior. According to statistics from the Brno’s City Council, the number of seniors among the population is particularly high compared to the average rate of Czech municipalities.
The Senior Academy offers conferences and practical courses, sightseeing tours and educational activities proposed by the City Council and partner associations during the academic year. The local police offer workshops in fitness, self defense, first aid and outdoors sports, which are delivered by police staff and funded on the force’s budget.
This initiative is part of a global policy on senior citizens concerted with local partners, which also includes a health programme titled “Plan for Ageing Actively”.
Brno is part of the working group on senior citizens set up in 2014 by Efus upon a proposal by the Generalitat of Catalonia. The group enables member cities to exchange experiences and reflect together on how to respond locally to problems affecting this category of the population in areas such as preventing violence and abuse, improving the feeling of security and developing inter-generational relations.
As part of this working group, the Romanian city of Brasov decided to emulate Brno and create its own Senior Academy. In order to support this initiative, a delegation from Brno went to Brasov in early 2016 to explain to their Romanian counterparts how the Senior Academy operates and how the experience could be transferred. (Read here)
The European Crime Prevention Award and Best Practice conference, created in 1997, are organised each year simultaneously by the European Crime Prevention Network. The award is devoted to a specific issue each year and is open to all EU Member States.
France presents each year as its candidate the winner of the French Crime Prevention Award (Prix Prévention de la Délinquance, PPD), created in 2008 and organised by the French Forum (FFSU) and the French Inter-ministerial Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Radicalisation (Comité interministériel de prévention de la délinquance et de la radicalisation, CIPD-R). For the 2016 award, France’s candidate was the city of Valenciennes for its integrated prevention policy for senior citizens (Read here in French).
