Espantacacos
?Espantacacos? is an app that was designed and implemented by the Youth Association Against Violence (Span. Asociación Jóvenes Contra la Violencia) with the aim of fostering a culture of citizen reporting of criminal offences among people from Guatemala. The app can be downloaded in mobile phones and it allows citizens to inform and report on any criminal-related act. Users can give details such as the address and hour in which they were victims or witnesses of any criminal act. The information collected through the citizen reports in the app is sent to the National Civilian Police to be used in the elaboration of prevention plans and strategies. Additionally, the Youth Association Against Violence prepares reports and develops a crime incident map using the data gathered through the app. Once the map is published, members of the association place ?espantacacos? (scarecrows dressed as police officers) in the areas that registered the highest criminal rates. They do this with the aim of preventing and warning regular citizens that transit the area, and to draw attention to the authorities to increase patrol activities and security measures in the zone. Between April 2015 and March 2016, the app accumulated a total of 836 citizen reports.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- regular
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields no decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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