**5. Discussion**

### *5.1. Reduction of Crime at a Moderate Level*

The Safe City Program is capable of reducing street crime at a moderate level and is less sensitive in predicting the outcome of all the good e fforts made by various agencies. Amongst the 27 initiatives in the Safe City Program, only "access control","full council meeting", and "city status website" could predict the outcome of reducing street crime significantly. However, the impacts of these three initiatives were not powerful enough in reducing street crime with β coe fficient values 0.109, −0.091, and 0.021, indicating low sensitivity. In detail, "access control" is an important concept emphasized in CPTED [18]. Controlling the accessibility of a road or an area contributes to a sense of territoriality, resulting in e ffective crime prevention [19]. This result is in line with [76], which tested the relative effects and found the strongest direct e ffect of territorial variables on crime prediction. Humans are used to establishing hierarchies or territories that range from private to semi-private to public space by marking their turf using fences, signs, and plain border definition. The most common are fencing and walling for separating physical space to create safety as well as a sense of safety [19].

For "full council meeting", the authors note that it is crucial to hold the meetings to sustain the Safe City Program because important decisions are usually made during council meetings. Out of the 27 initiatives, most of the respondents were unaware of the "fixed agenda on Safe City Program at full council meeting" at the local authority level as a platform for inter-agency discussions and collaboration planning. The Federal Government has defined the Safe City Program in Malaysia as city-based, involving cross-ministry and agency partnerships, being led by the mayor of each local authority with a fixed agenda for the monthly council meetings, and having the aim of reducing street crime through target hardening, physical initiatives, and public involvement [7]. For the "set up city status websites at local level", the result a ffirming its significant contribution to crime prevention suggests that this initiative should be included in future safe city programs, as this initiative was ignored in the second version of the Safe City Program 2009 in Malaysia. Besides, it can create online awareness by providing a long-term reference with favorable impacts.

### *5.2. Reduction of Fear of Crime at a Weak Level*

None of the elements in the Safe City Program was able to predict the outcome of reducing the fear of crime significantly in multiple regression modelling. Hence, the study concludes that the Safe City Program is acceptable at a weak level in increasing perceived pedestrian safety and reducing the fear of crime, particularly among city users in the Kuala Lumpur CBD area.

The purpose of the study was to identify e ffective general factors concerning fear and crime prevention within a Safe City Program. Thus, demographic variables like gender were not set as control variables in the regression analysis, even though female respondents revealed higher levels of fear and tended to be actual victims of street crime.

Based on the holistic safe city program thesis formed in Figure 2, the authors sugges<sup>t</sup> that the Safe City strategies should be well integrated since separate implementations of each initiative will not be able to reduce crime or the community's perception of disorder.

### *5.3. O*ff*enders' Perspectives of Curbing Crimes and Fear of Crime*

Among the three significant factors, i.e., "access control", "full council meeting", and "city status website", all of these are from the e fforts of the guardians such as the local authorities, and police forces. In terms of e fforts from the potential victims from communities, none of the strategies is significantly found in this study. Thus, a question arises to what other contributing factors that will be able to fill in the gap of sustaining safe city program. Since the factors in reducing fear and crime may not be lying under the factors of "capable guardians" (authorities), and "suitable victims" (community), but possible strategies could be view/search from the factors of "likely o ffenders". This suggestion is derived from [2] who mentioned that guardians, victims, and o ffenders are three important actors in everyday crime prevention theories. Thus, from the o ffenders' perspective, it could be divided into two groups, namely those are potential, and those already an o ffender. Education to the former group is essential, such as cultivating ideas of living in a harmonious life, family, and society, and understanding of the punishment to o ffenders and wrong social impression on those criminals. If lesser people do not/potentially perform crimes, then it will not/be less likely to impose fear to the community, or deeply commit any crimes. As for the already-o ffenders, support and rebuild after-criminal life is essential such as counselling support in jail, social support, acceptance, and opportunity in having decent jobs for everyday expenses and living [13].

### *5.4. Victims*/*Communities Perspective Needed to Be Enhanced*

The authors posited that indicators for victims and communities might be under-explored in the limited literature covering CPSD [29–31,77]. The authors sugges<sup>t</sup> that for those "already victims", society needs to study the social problems that lead to crime, build more robust psychological health, heal from fear, accept fear reality, positively face life after the crime, and help them back to a safe society. Since the deeper issue facing is although statistics showed that crime rate decrease, but fear is deepening. In other words, the real quantity of crimes happening might be low, but other none "real" crime or non-police reported cases such as harassment, threatening will "impact" on third parties. Meaning, a direct victim might be one single person, but the people around that victim, such as those family members, and the victims' communities, may face "fear in the heart", as though they will be mentally more cautious and preventing themselves from becoming a real victim. Thus, the topic of "fear of crime" should be highlighted more in a safe city program and solutions from responsible communities should be explored further than the existing superficial engagemen<sup>t</sup> of communities in sustaining a safe city environment.
