This year, the Balearic Islands’ police tutor service is incorporating a new didactic guide for the 2022-2023 academic year with new training content and preventive sessions, beyond the usual workshops on bullying prevention, drug prevention and responsible use of the Internet.

The Councillor for the Presidency, Public Function and Equality, Mercedes Garrido, announced that this year’s new guide will also include a workshop on the prevention of discriminatory behaviour. The aim of the Government is to prevent hate attacks and to ensure that children grow up with an education based on tolerance, respect, coexistence, and diversity and against xenophobia and LGTBI-phobia. “That is why we are incorporating this new subject into the training given by police tutors because it is the best way to eradicate certain attitudes from our society,” Garrido said.

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In fact, the councillor recalled that last June a protocol was approved for local police to attend to the victims of hate crimes, with which the agents have a guide so that the police forces have tools to prevent aggressions for reasons of sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as to act in the cases that occur and to know how to attend to the victims and how to detect the motivation of these crimes.

Secondly, new workshops on male violence and sexual violence have been added, which will be organised through the Balearic Women’s Institute and will be given by police tutors.

The training will be aimed at the prevention of stinging, as well as other forms of male and sexual violence. “This summer we have talked about the fashion for pricking, not so much because it has led to cases of chemical submission, but because a young man decides to frighten a woman by making a joke with any object he pricks because the real aim of pricking is the same as always: to frighten women and make us afraid to go about our lives in a normal way”, explained Garrido.

In addition, and coinciding with the entry into force of the “yes is yes” law, the talks given by the police tutors will also focus on consent and affective and sexual education, given that this new regulation places consent at the centre of any sexual relationship and eliminates the concept of abuse to speak always of sexual aggression, with the criminal consequences that this has.

Finally, a third workshop called “112 in schools” has been incorporated, with the aim of raising awareness of the emergency telephone number and good practices in the event of danger among students, which will be presented very soon.

Garrido highlighted the police tutor service as “a programme that was born in the Balearic Islands and exported to other parts of Spain”, and remarked that “with the expansion of the content offered in schools, we promote a critical, informed, free, respectful, tolerant and diverse society”.

As for the road safety education service, she announced a new teaching guide for road safety education officers aimed at the elderly in the Balearic Islands. This training, which will be provided through associations for the elderly, will teach good practices to avoid accidents as pedestrians, strategies for safe driving, good practices as users of public transport and private vehicles, good practices to avoid accidents in the home, and the prevention of crimes that make the elderly particularly vulnerable.

Two successful programmes

The coordinator of the police tutor service, Rafel Covas, and the coordinator of the road safety education programme, Llucia Pons, explained the successful implementation of these workshops in schools in the Balearic Islands.

As for the police tutors programme, this year it is being carried out in 57 municipalities in the Balearic Islands with a total of 82 agents. By islands, in Mallorca there are 43 municipalities and 61 agents, 8 municipalities and 11 agents in Menorca, 5 municipalities and 10 agents in Eivissa and 1 agent in Formentera.

The road safety education service has 58 municipalities and 90 agents offering it. By islands, there are 44 municipalities and 66 agents in Mallorca, 8 municipalities and 9 agents in Menorca, 5 municipalities and 14 agents in Eivissa and 1 agent in Formentera.