ABSTRACT
In 1992 a delegation of Dutch crime prevention practitioners, headed by the junior Minister of Justice, attended a major conference in Paris organised by the European Forum on Crime Prevention (later called European Forum for Urban Safety). At the end of the first day the anchorman of the conference announced a special presentation on a project to prevent bicycle theft in Groningen, the Netherlands. He added that this would be followed by a presentation from Aix en Provence on the prevention of theft of jeu de boules balls. His aside caused great merriment among the largely French audience but annoyed the Dutch delegates. They sensed that their carefully designed and proven project, where unemployed youngsters assisted bike owners in installing security locks and identification tags on their bikes, was out of place. This clearly was a high-level conference where mayors and other dignitaries spoke eloquently about social solidarity rather than a forum for practitioners to exchange success stories about reducing crime by mundane, non-punitive means.
