SECURITY AND THE THIRD AGE
OPPOSITION AND PREVENTION OF CRIMES AGAINST OLDER PEOPLE
Description
The territory of Mantua presents a number of burglaries, purse snatchings and other forms of frauds. The real problem often people feel is the fear and the sense of insecurity that often characterised people more fragile, in particular older people. The last data about the city of Mantua underlined the presence of 102 residential burglaries, 165 skill burglaries, 6 purse-snatchings and 846 damages, 30 armed robberies, 91 frauds or informatics frauds (data from the Ministry of the Interior 2011). Data are not alarming but thanks to the importance gives by mass medias and politics, they become events vaguely ambiguous.
Objectives
The Direction UO Civil Protection Local Police and Security, approve the project presented in favour of the opposition to crimes against old people. The project – that it will developed thanks to the partnerships among the Association LIBRA of Mantova, Comune di Mantova – Polizia Locale , Soc. Coop. Alce Nero Onlus , Scuola di Alta Formazione in Scienze Criminologiche | CRINVE, FDE Institute of Mantova – want to be an initiative structured and scientifically addresses to the construction of a shared network on the territory of Mantua, with the aim to support the victims of crime in general and older people in particular, hoping for the participation of all the public and private Authorities, which in various ways, developed activities addressed to victims. The “real” aim is the sharing of procedures and best practices, for being more efficient and effective in the intervention to the person. In this case, the invitation to the local actors is concrete.
Methodology
The actions developed by the support centre offer a concrete and prompt support starting from the request of help by the older person, family or police officers that made the first intervention. In the specific case of older people, we elaborated different services, related to different typologies of problems noticed in the experiences of the last two years. The typologies of the crime, for which older people are mainly exposed, are the following: fraud, abandon (of assistance), residential burglary. Starting from an active initial evaluation of the presence of the crime, we take in consideration the service to offer. Thanks to our staff composed by different professional figures it is possible to give psychological assistance and, when it is possible, legal assistance in case of fraud. In cases of abandon on the assistance, the Istituto FDE (licensed by Regione Lombardia), that has courses of family carers, ASA and OSS, is able to connect older people with the new figure of trusted family caring. In addition, is ongoing, in collaboration with Local Police of Mantua a campaign of awareness about the problem of fraud by figures that make-believe to be operators of public or private services. This project started with the intention of giving instruments for evaluating alarm bells and other signals of fraud.
Targets
Older people victim of crime or looking for assistance
Working Group
Partners
Associazione LIBRA Onlus
Comune di Mantova
Polizia Locale
Soc. Coop. Alce Nero Onlus
FDE| Istituto di Criminologia di Mantova
