Together For Safer Living

RYS, the private trading company initiated a project “TOGETHER FOR SAFER LIVING” based on the public private partnership with main focus on fighting the urban crime in large housing estate and prefab apartment buildings (burglaries, physical attacks and robberies, drug related crimes, vandalism, rent dodging, etc.). The project uses forms of situation and social prevention with accent put on the implementation of new technologies including surveillance systems as a part of the technical security of apartment buildings. The project is originally located in Municipality Petrzalka, one of the large compact residential area in Europe and a largest district of Slovak capital Bratislava.

The project is built upon the use of communication, access, barrier and surveillance systems in order to eliminate the vandalism and crimes. The technical solutions are supported by new organisational measures with direct involvements of residents of apartment building and housing estates and the persons responsible for building management. Within the project, trainings, workshops and meetings with public are held, methodical instructions were prepared as well as a number of informative brochures and the project is promoted in electronic and print media.

The project includes:

• new technical and organisational crime preventing measures, new methods of building management and safety policies for multi-apartment buildings in order to eliminate unauthorised entries, to keep the potential offender as far from the residents apartments as possible and to reduce the anonymity and to increase the safety of residents;
• activities directed towards creating more cultural and socially acceptable environment inside the apartment building and its close neighbourhood;
• effective co-operation of citizens with Police Force, signposting the buildings with registered sticker that has informative and preventive character;
• establishing the advisory body – “Expert team for prevention and safe living“;
• improvement of fire protection facilities in apartment buildings;
• increase of public knowledge regarding the drug related crimes committed in inside the apartment building and residential areas.

The whole project was entirely funding from private sources - the apartment owners and tenants and RYS company.

At the present time 749 apartment buildings have taken part in the project in two Bratislava districts and the project spread to other Slovak cities as well. The crime rate level has been minimized inside the apartment buildings and reduced by 40% in their close neighbourhood. We were able to join the state and the citizen objectives naturally and in a mutually acceptable way, this involves the professional co-operation with entities affecting the life in the housing estate: Police Force, Fire Departments, Secretariat of the State Council on Crime Prevention, The Office for Personal Data Protection of Slovak Republic, state authorities coordinating the anti-drug activities, The Slovak Post and e.g. also company providing disposal of domestic waste. 441 secured apartment buildings has agreed on a co-operation with local police department, regular meetings with citizens and above mentioned authorities are organized to exchange the information and experiences. The citizens are involved directly and actively into preventive actions, they assist in criminal investigations and are motivated to change the cultural character of the apartment buildings and behaviour of people in the neighbourhood. Special web site informing residents about the recent activities has been establish, the owners committees of participating apartment buildings are contacted as necessary, and few times a year we publish articles in periodicals specialized in housing and crime prevention.

The project started in 2008 and is still running.
Last review: September 2015.