Riitta Koivisto - Rikoksentorjuntaneuvosto

Violence prevention program
Street violence
Generic approach
(all violence)
Workplace violence
Domestic violence
During 2003 and 2004 the Justice Department developed an integrated violence prevention program. The
new program seeks to integrate all current activities of the Justice Department to prevent violent crime, to
prevent the recurrence of violent crime by the same offender, and to expand the activities against violence.
The program pays attention to violence in 3 domains:
• the public domain; this includes street violence, also referred to as ‘senseless violence’. This also
includes the involvement of the department in rating film, tv and other media;
• the semi-public domain; this includes all violence taking place in the workplace, between colleagues, but
also between customers and service providers;
• the private domain; domestic violence. This includes spousal abuse, child abuse, but also forced
marriages, genital mutilation and honour killings.
Of course the Justice department has been active to reduce violent crime for a long time. This includes
policies to against domestic violence, among others.
What is new about this program was the idea that there may be something linking these three domains
together. To investigate this and maybe implement something like a generic anti-violence approach, a fourth,
generic domain was defined. So this includes measures that can be applied to all forms of violence.
An example of this would be to develop and maintain codes of conduct. Such codes can be useful to make
clear which types of behaviour is tolerated in a certain place at a certain time (in the swimming pool, down
town in the evening, at work, etc.). They seem to be reducing aggression.
My instinct tells me something more can be done with bystanders. In all three domains there are bystanders,
witnesses. I think we can learn a lot and do a lot if we focus on these people.
The campaign I am telling you about today is part of the street violence policy.
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