Santo Domingo.- One of the objectives in the Interior and Police Ministry’s strategic plan for 2012-2015 is to reduce the public perception of insecurity by 20%, bringing it down from the 2011 level of 59% to 39% in 2015.

The plan, which is aimed at improving citizen safety in the country, has three main strategic aims: consolidation of policy and citizen safety management, development of the substantive areas and strengthening institutional management. The document sets out the main problems faced by the institution and establishes the lines of action that need to be followed in order to achieve concrete results.

According to article 255 of the Constitution, violence and crime prevention in the main function of the National Police.

“This, however, has been the weakest area of the institution’s work, partly due to the lack of modern transport and communication methods, and the continuing uses, practices and customs that respond to a repressive scheme rather than to the needs of a democratic society,” says the document.

Other goals for 2012-2015 include: to reduce the murder rate by 25%, for the civil population to have valid weapons licenses, to reduce the number of weapons licenses by 40% among the civilian population so that only 106,748 individuals will have them, to increase the number of safe neighborhoods by 25%, and for all the services provided to be available via the Internet.