Community groups in Saskatoon are hopeful a new centre will help prevent crime before it happens.
The province announced $475,000 in funding Friday morning for the Centre of Responsibility.
The funding will go toward hiring an executive director, an executive assistant and two analysts.
The centre will bring police and social services agencies together to share information in an effort to head off potential crime situations before they happen.
The facility will work in conjunction with the Saskatoon Hub.
Saskatoon Police Chief Clive Weighill says police will work with various social services agencies in the city to share information as part of an overall long-term strategy of crime prevention.
“The whole beauty of the COR is to look at the gaps we are seeing in services, analyze those gaps and try to come up with some long-term solutions and strategies to help fill those gaps in,” he says.
Weighill also says a standard protocol has been developed in order to avoid breaches of individual privacy and confidentiality.
“There’s a methodology that’s been used with the Hub in Prince Albert, we use it here, it’s called a four-level filtering system. So when they first discuss the issue they don’t have any names, they just talk about the issue.”
He adds with tighter budgets across the board, it now makes more sense than ever for various agencies involved in crime prevention to work more closely together.
A similar model has reduced violent crime in the City of Prince Albert by almost 30 per cent.