Everyone’s contribution and cooperation

Efficient preventive work helps prevent accidents, risk behaviour and offences. Cooperation between different organisations must be smooth, and preventive work needs to be boosted at school and in the workplace, as well as in the community, at home and in the family. Every fifth person in Estonia is prepared to contribute to internal security with voluntary work.

Prevention of offences

In the area of law enforcement, the Ministry of the Interior mainly focuses on the use of narcotics, domestic violence and traffic offences. The respective preventive activities are mainly implemented by the Police and Border Guard Board, including supporting partners in the public sector. Various citizens’ associations are also engaged in these activities.

In recent years, the Ministry of the Interior has paid increasing attention to and invested considerable resources in the prevention of offences.

It is the task of the Ministry of the Interior to launch, coordinate and finance preventive programmes. In cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Research, we make efforts to ensure that the prevention of offences functions in all the areas, not just across individual activities. Unfortunately, problems that lead to the commission of offences, including addiction problems, cannot be solved overnight.

The preventive activities of the Ministry of the Interior are therefore primarily aimed at social preventive measures in order to reduce the conditions that facilitate crime and to prevent risk behaviour.

The use of narcotics has become a serious and draining problem for Estonia. The excessive use and abuse of narcotics is an essential factor in the high indicators of premature illness and death. People under the influence of narcotics often cause damage to themselves and others on the street and elsewhere in the public, in traffic and in the domestic environment. A large share of drownings and fire-related fatalities are related to the excessive use of alcohol and tobacco. In order to reduce the devastating and addictive effect of narcotics, we must strive to reduce the use of both legal (alcoholic beverages, tobacco products) and illegal substances (narcotics) in society. Reducing the supply of and demand for narcotics is therefore an important priority of the area of government of the Ministry of the Interior.

The use of narcotics is a negative social phenomenon which entails disproportionately large social and personal setbacks. The constant use of narcotics leads to addiction, unfinished education, passivity in the labour market, burdens on the healthcare and welfare system, which then cause great damage to society and in turn create new social problems. In the area of internal security, the damage brought on by the use of addictive substances is visible particularly through consequences, i.e. through responding to various events.

The prevention and reduction of the use of alcohol and tobacco products and substance use disorders in society requires a comprehensive approach and the involvement of several sectors of society. The Government of the Republic has approved the principles of creating an environment that reduces the use of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products in 2014 in the Green Paper on alcohol and tobacco policy.

The Ministry of the Interior has led the government committee shaping and coordinating the drug policy since 2012. As a result of the work of the government committee, the White Paper on Drug Prevention Policy was completed at the beginning of 2014.

In order to shape an understanding of the efficient prevention of addictive behaviour, the preventive activities implemented with the support of the Ministry of the Interior are aimed at parents. We also support programmes that develop the social skills of children and offer them recreational activities.

The prevention and reduction of violence is one of the main objectives of our state. One fifth of the people living in Estonia have encountered domestic violence during their life. Although the police receives about 40 reports of violence a day, a large number of incidents remain hidden. Violence between family members, intimate partners or relatives, both towards adults and children is no longer merely their personal concern, but a problem that seriously damages society as a whole. In addition to physical injuries, domestic violence causes severe consequences in terms of mental and social health.

Studies have shown that attitudes that support violence are rather common among people. For instance, every tenth person considers the physical disciplining of a partner permissible; 22% of adults consider domestic violence to be an internal matter of the family, and 54% consider the victim partly guilty of the violence.

Today’s violence prevention activities are fragmented, and target group coverage is limited. In order to achieve a long-standing reduction of violence in close relationships and in the family, we must primarily focus on young people.

Other countries offer programmes that include all school students and their effect in the prevention of partnership violence has been proven. Estonia also needs to pay more attention to systematic and large-scale prevention of violence among young people, as the prevention of violence is always more efficient and less costly than dealing with the consequences.

Prevention of traffic risks

The Ministry of the Interior and the institutions in our area of government pay attention to shaping the attitudes and behaviour patterns of road users in order to prevent and reduce the occurrence of violations related to the safety of non-motorised road users and the main causes of fatal traffic accidents, which include exceeding the allowed speed limit, driving a vehicle while exceeding the alcohol limit, and failure to use safety equipment.

In order to prevent traffic accidents and reduce the number of casualties and fatalities due to traffic accidents, the area of government of the Ministry of the Interior has three main lines of activity: increasing the efficiency of preventive activities, strengthening traffic supervision, and influencing traffic violators.

Under the leadership of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, a traffic safety programme has been developed for use as the basis in shaping traffic safety in the country in the coming decade. The Government of the Republic has approved the Road Safety Programme 2016−2025, which takes a comprehensive approach to ensuring traffic safety and aims to reduce the number of traffic deaths and serious injuries.

Prevention of fire and water accidents

Most fire and water accidents stem from negligent behaviour. In order to draw attention to risks and achieve more informed conduct, we carry out various preventive activities.

In 2014, all 72 professional rescue crews were for the first time engaged in carrying out home visits. They managed to visit more than 7,800 dwellings. Since 2016, both state and volunteer rescue workers have been conducting about 20,000 home visits every year. The aim of this activity is to assess the fire safety and risk level of homes and to try and find solutions and give advice to reduce the risk of fire. 

The project ‘Fire Safety at Home’ was launched in 2018, when the government allocated 1.5 million euro to the Rescue Board for two years, to be supplemented by local governments as much as they can. The project continued after that period because according to estimates there are at least another 5,000 to 6,000 high-risk homes still left in Estonia. In four years, nearly 1,800 households have been supported by the programme. Of these, nearly 1,200 have received support in the form of construction activities (fireplaces and electricity) and 600 homes have received various equipment and tools for ensuring fire safety. In 2021, the installation of special solutions and equipment was added to the programme – reconstruction works were carried out in 276 homes and equipment/tools were installed in 477 homes.

We reach the largest part of the population via various campaigns the messages, which according to study results may reach about 94% of the population. But we also focus on particular risk groups. Water safety campaigns are therefore aimed at different target groups – young men, parents, fisherfolk. The universal message ‘Life Jackets Save!’ is suitable for everyone.

Fire safety supervision

Fire accidents are almost always preventable. State supervision works on a daily basis towards explaining, eliminating and preventing risks, saving lives and preventing damage to property.

Supervisors check that workplaces and public buildings are as safe as possible, any risk to human life is as small as possible, and people can escape buildings quickly and safely in the case of a fire. Fire safety supervisors are engaged in the approval of building and usage permits (including the inspection of designs and sites), fire safety control and the investigation of the causes of fires, as well as checking products and services.

We wish to make fire safety supervision as time-efficient as possible so that supervising officials can dedicate more time to more complex tasks. Additional sets of eyes from the private sector also allow the supervision officials to focus more on socially more sensitive buildings such as hospitals, care homes and childcare institutions. Our fire safety specialists and fire safety experts are aways willing to contribute to shaping a more fire safe environment. 

Cross-sector prevention

We work towards preventive work being well coordinated between individual institutions.

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Drug prevention

Reducing the supply of and demand for illegal substances is our priority.

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Violence prevention

In cooperation with other institutions, we contribute to combating violence via various preventive activities as well as by shaping attitudes and values.

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Campaigns and programmes

We carry out various prevention projects in order to promote positive behaviour and deepen social responsibility.

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Last updated: 28.03.2023