Violence and fear of violence result in significant social and economic costs to Australians. Federal and state governments have supported ‘community crime prevention’ initiatives at the local government level as a way to prevent crime, violence, and fear of violence. The question of how these local initiatives evaluate their effectiveness, and the effectiveness of programs they initiate or fund, is the topic of this paper.

Specifically, the paper focuses on community safety indicators as an evaluation tool for local government policies and programs.

The paper will cover three questions:

• How can previous experience with environmental indicators inform the development of community safety indicators?

• Are there Australian and international good practice examples of community safety indicators?

• What sort of community safety indicators remain to be developed, and what is the potential for this work?