crime prevention essay pdf

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1 Crime Prevention and Public Policy

Brandon C. Welsh is a Professor of Criminology at Northeastern University, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Visiting Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement in Amsterdam and a Steering Committee member of the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group.

David P. Farrington is Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology in the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, England.

Published: 18 September 2012
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This article introduces crime prevention, which often refers to the attempts to prevent crime or criminal offending before the actual act has been committed. It studies four main crime prevention strategies, namely developmental prevention , community prevention , situational prevention , and criminal justice prevention . It provides an overview of the key theories that support these strategies and notes some relevant research on effectiveness. This article also considers the development of crime prevention in the United States and identifies several key issues that challenge the prevention of crime.

Crime prevention has come to mean many different things to many different people. Programs and policies designed to prevent crime can include the police making an arrest as part of an operation to deal with gang problems, a court sanction to a secure correctional facility, or, in the extreme, a death penalty sentence. These measures are more correctly referred to as crime control or repression. More often, though, crime prevention refers to efforts to prevent crime or criminal offending in the first instance—before the act has been committed. Both forms of crime prevention share a common goal of trying to prevent the occurrence of a future criminal act, but what further distinguishes crime prevention from crime control is that prevention takes place outside of the confines of the formal justice system. 1 In this respect, prevention is considered the fourth pillar of crime reduction, alongside the institutions of police, courts, and corrections (Waller 2006 ). This distinction draws attention to crime prevention as an alternative approach to these more traditional responses to crime.

In one of the first scholarly attempts to differentiate crime prevention from crime control, Peter Lejins ( 1967 , p. 2) espoused the following: “If societal action is motivated by an offense that has already taken place, we are dealing with control; if the offense is only anticipated, we are dealing with prevention.” What Lejins was trying to indicate was the notion of “pure” prevention, a view that had long existed in the scholarship and practice of American criminology (Welsh and Pfeffer 2011 ). It is this notion of crime prevention that is the chief concern of this volume.

There are many possible ways of classifying crime prevention programs. 2 An influential scheme distinguishes four major strategies (Tonry and Farrington 1995 b ). Developmental prevention refers to interventions designed to prevent the development of criminal potential in individuals, especially those targeting risk and protective factors discovered in studies of human development (Tremblay and Craig 1995 ; Farrington and Welsh 2007 ). Community prevention refers to interventions designed to change the social conditions and institutions (e.g., families, peers, social norms, clubs, organizations) that influence offending in residential communities (Hope 1995 ). Situational prevention refers to interventions designed to prevent the occurrence of crimes by reducing opportunities and increasing the risk and difficulty of offending (Clarke 1995 b ; Cornish and Clarke 2003 ). Criminal justice prevention refers to traditional deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative strategies operated by law enforcement and agencies of the criminal justice system (Blumstein, Cohen, and Nagin 1978 ; MacKenzie 2006 ).

In Building a Safer Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime Prevention , Michael Tonry and David Farrington ( 1995 a ) purposely did not address criminal justice prevention in any substantial fashion. This was because this strategy had been adequately addressed in many other scholarly books and, more importantly, there was a growing consensus for the need for governments to strike a greater balance between these emerging and promising alternative forms of crime prevention and some of the more traditional responses to crime. Also important in their decision to focus exclusively on developmental, community, and situational prevention is the shared focus of the three strategies on addressing the underlying causes or motivations that lead to a criminal event or a life of crime. Crucially, each strategy operates outside of the criminal justice system, representing an alternative, perhaps even a socially progressive, way to reduce crime. For these same reasons, we have adopted a similar approach in this volume.

A chief aim of this essay is to provide some background on this view of crime prevention. It also serves as an overview of the key theories that support these three main crime-prevention strategies, important research on effectiveness, and key issues that challenge the prevention of crime. Several observations and conclusions emerge:

Crime prevention is best viewed as an alternative approach to reducing crime, operating outside of the formal justice system. Developmental, community, and situational strategies define its scope.

Developmental prevention has emerged as an important strategy to improve children’s life chances and prevent them from embarking on a life of crime. The theoretical support for this approach is considerable and there is growing evidence based on the effectiveness of a range of intervention modalities.

Community crime prevention benefits from a sound theoretical base. It seemingly holds much promise for preventing crime, but less is known about its effectiveness. Advancing knowledge on this front is a top priority. Nevertheless, there are a wide range of effective models in community-based substance-use prevention and school-based crime prevention.

The theoretical origins of situational crime prevention are wide ranging and robust. The strategy boasts a growing evidence base of effective programs and many more that are promising. There is also evidence that crime displacement is a rare occurrence.

Crime prevention is an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime and is widely supported by the public over place and time. A special focus on implementation science and higher quality evaluation designs will further advance crime-prevention knowledge and practice. Striking a greater balance between crime prevention and crime control will go a long way toward building a safer, more sustainable society.

The organization of this essay is as follows. Section I looks at key historical events that have influenced the development of crime prevention in America. Sections II, III, and IV introduce, respectively, the major crime-prevention strategies of developmental, community, and situational prevention. Section V discusses a number of important cross-cutting issues.

I. A Short History of Crime Prevention in America

The modern-day history of crime prevention in America is closely linked with a loss of faith in the criminal justice system that occurred in the wake of the dramatic increase in crime rates in the 1960s. This loss of faith was caused by a confluence of factors, including declining public support for the criminal justice system, increasing levels of fear of crime, and criminological research that demonstrated that many of the traditional modes of crime control were ineffective and inefficient in reducing crime and improving the safety of communities (Curtis 1987 ). For example, research studies on motorized preventive patrol, rapid response, and criminal investigations—the staples of law enforcement—showed that they had little or no effect on crime (Visher and Weisburd 1998 ). It was becoming readily apparent among researchers and public officials alike that a criminal justice response on its own was insufficient for the task of reducing crime. This observation applied not only to law enforcement but also to the courts and prisons (Tonry and Farrington 1995 b ). Interestingly, this loss of faith in the justice system was not unique to the United States. Similar developments were taking place in Canada, the United Kingdom, and other Western European countries, and for some of the same reasons (Waller 1990 ; Bennett 1998 ).

writing in the mid-1980s, the observations of American urban affairs scholar Paul Lavrakas perhaps best captures this need to move beyond the sole reliance on the criminal justice system:

Until we change the emphasis of our public policies away from considering the police, courts, and prisons to be the primary mechanisms for reducing crime, I believe that we will continue to experience the tragic levels of victimization with which our citizens now live. These criminal justice agencies are our means of reacting to crime—they should not be expected to prevent it by themselves. (1985, p. 110, emphasis in original)

These events, coupled with recommendations of presidential crime commissions of the day—the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice ( 1967 ), chaired by Nicholas Katzenbach, and the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence ( 1969 ), chaired by Milton S. Eisenhower—ushered in an era of innovation of alternative approaches to addressing crime. A few years later, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals ( 1973 ) sought to reaffirm the role of the community in preventing crime. Operating outside of the purview of the justice system, crime prevention came to be defined as an alternative, non–criminal justice means of reducing crime.

A focus on neighborhood, family, and employment was at the heart of this new approach to addressing crime, with a special emphasis on the most impoverished inner-city communities. Nonprofit organizations were the main vehicle used to deliver programs in these substantive areas. A number of situational or opportunity-reducing measures were also implemented to ensure the immediate safety of residents. Some of these programs included neighborhood patrols and block watches (Curtis 1987 , p. 11). By some accounts, this urban crime-prevention and reconstruction movement produced a number of models of success and many more promising programs (see Curtis 1985 , 1987 ).

This mode of crime prevention also came to be known as community-based crime prevention , an amalgam of social and situational measures (see Rosenbaum 1986 , 1988 ). The approach was popularized with a number of large-scale, multisite programs referred to as comprehensive community initiatives (Hope 1995 ; Rosenbaum, Lurigio, and Davis 1998 ). Examples included T-CAP (Texas City Action Plan to Prevent Crime) and PACT (Pulling America’s Communities Together).

The roots of this comprehensive approach—on the social side, at least—go as far back as the early 1930s, with Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay’s Chicago Area Project (CAP; Shaw and McKay 1942 ). The CAP was designed to produce social change in communities that suffered from high delinquency rates and gang activity. Local civic leaders coordinated social service centers that promoted community solidarity and counteracted social disorganization, and they developed other programs for youths, including school-related activities and recreation. Some evaluations indicated desirable results, but others showed that CAP efforts did little to reduce delinquency (see Schlossman and Sedlak 1983 ).

The New York City–based Mobilization for Youth (MOBY) program of the 1960s is another example of this type of crime-prevention initiative. Funded by more than $50 million, MOBY attempted an integrated approach to community development (Short 1974 ). Based on Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s ( 1960 ) concept of providing opportunities for legitimate success, MOBY created employment opportunities in the community, coordinated social services, and sponsored social-action groups such as tenants’ committees, legal-action services, and voter registration. But the program ended for lack of funding amid questions about its utility and use of funds.

A newer generation of these programs, which includes the well-established Communities That Care (CTC) strategy developed by David Hawkins and Richard Catalano ( 1992 ), incorporates principles of public health and prevention science—identifying key risk factors for offending and implementing evidence-based prevention methods designed to counteract them. The CTC has become the best developed and tested of these prevention systems.

By the early 1990s, crime prevention found itself in the national spotlight, although not always to the liking of its supporters. This came about during the lead up to and subsequent passage of the federal crime bill of 1994—the most expensive initiative in history (Donziger 1996 ). Known officially as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, it ultimately became famous for its authorization of funding to put 100,000 new police officers on the streets, as well as infamous for making 60 more federal crimes eligible for the death penalty and authorizing $10 billion for new prison construction. Crime-prevention programs (in the broadest sense) were allocated a sizable $7 billion, but most of this was used on existing federal programs like Head Start in order to keep them afloat (Gest 2001 ).

From the beginning of the bill’s debate on Capitol Hill and across the country, crime prevention—especially programs for at-risk youth—was heavily criticized. The growing political thirst to get tough on juvenile and adult criminals alike, with an array of punitive measures, sought to paint prevention and its supporters as soft on crime. Midnight basketball became their scapegoat. Prevention was characterized as nothing more than pork-barreling—wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars. The end result of all of this was mixed: crime prevention had received substantial funding, but it had been relegated to the margins in the public discourse on crime (Mendel 1995 ).

In more recent years, crime prevention has emerged as an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime. One reason for this is the widely held view of the need to strike a greater balance between prevention and punishment (Waller 2006 ). Another key reason has to do with a growing body of scientific evidence showing that many different types of crime-prevention programs are effective (Sherman et al. 1997 , 2006 ; Welsh and Farrington 2006 ) and many of these programs save money (Drake, Aos, and Miller 2009 ). Not surprisingly, the economic argument for prevention has attracted a great deal of interest from policymakers and political leaders (Greenwood 2006 ; Mears 2010 ). The recent evidence-based movement (see Welsh and Farrington 2011 ) has figured prominently in these developments in raising the profile of crime prevention.

II. Developmental Crime Prevention

The developmental perspective postulates that criminal offending in adolescence and adulthood is influenced by “behavioral and attitudinal patterns that have been learned during an individual’s development” (Tremblay and Craig 1995 , p. 151). The early years of the life course are most influential in shaping later experiences. As Greg Duncan and Katherine Magnuson ( 2004 , p. 101) note: “Principles of developmental science suggest that although beneficial changes are possible at any point in life, interventions early on may be more effective at promoting well-being and competencies compared with interventions undertaken later in life.” They further state that: “early childhood may provide an unusual window of opportunity for interventions because young children are uniquely receptive to enriching and supportive environments…. As individuals age, they gain the independence and ability to shape their environments, rendering intervention efforts more complicated and costly” (pp. 102–103).

Developmental prevention is informed generally by motivational or human development and life-course theories on criminal behavior, as well as by longitudinal studies that follow samples of young persons from their early childhood experiences to the peak of their involvement with crime in their teens and twenties. Developmental prevention aims to influence the scientifically identified risk factors or “root causes” of delinquency and later criminal offending.

The theoretical foundation of developmental prevention is robust, and is the subject of the two opening essays of this volume. Frank Cullen, Michael Benson, and Matthew Makarios overview the major developmental and life-course theories of offending, with a special interest in how the theories explain why some individuals “are placed on a pathway, or trajectory, toward a life in antisocial conduct and crime.” David Farrington, Rolf Loeber, and Maria Ttofi summarize the most important risk and protective factors for offending. They conclude that impulsiveness, school achievement, child-rearing methods, young mothers, child abuse, parental conflict, disrupted families, poverty, delinquent peers, and deprived neighborhoods are the most important factors that should be targeted in intervention research.

Richard Tremblay and Wendy Craig’s ( 1995 ) classic, sweeping review of developmental crime prevention documented its importance as a major strategy in preventing delinquency and later offending. It also identified three key characteristics of effective developmental prevention programs: (1) they lasted for a sufficient duration—at least one year; (2) they were multimodal, meaning that multiple risk factors were targeted with different interventions; and (3) they were implemented before adolescence. Since then, many other reviews have been carried out to assess the effectiveness of developmental prevention, often focusing on a specific intervention modality. This is the approach taken in the next three essays.

Holly Schindler and Hirokazu Yoshikawa review the evidence on preschool intellectual enrichment programs. They find that preschool interventions focused specifically on child-relevant processes (i.e., cognitive skills, behavior problems, or executive functioning) have shown impressive results. Equally desirable effects on long-term behavioral outcomes, including crime, have been demonstrated by what they call “two-generation” preschool programs, which also include a focus on parenting skills or offer comprehensive family services.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of parent training for children up to age five years, by Alex Piquero and Wesley Jennings, shows that this intervention is effective in reducing antisocial behavior and delinquency. The authors also find that parent-training programs produce a wide range of other important benefits for families, including improved school readiness and school performance on the part of children and greater employment and educational opportunities for parents. Training in child social skills, also known as social competence, is the subject of another systematic review and meta-analysis by Friedrich Lösel and Doris Bender. This type of intervention generally targets the risk factors of impulsivity, low empathy, and egocentrism. The authors find that the overall effect of skills training is desirable and that the most effective programs used a cognitive-behavioral approach and were implemented with older children and higher risk groups who were already exhibiting some behavioral problems.

In the final essay in this section, Deborah Gorman-Smith and Alana Vivolo take on the much broader subject of the prevention of female offending through a developmental approach. This is important because little is known about what may work for this population. Their review of prevention programs confirms that most studies continue to focus on male offending; the mostly poor evaluation designs of existing programs for girls and adolescent females prohibit a valid assessment of effectiveness, and a gendered analysis of mixed programs is often lacking.

III. Community Crime Prevention

More often than not, community-based efforts to prevent crime are thought to be some combination of developmental and situational prevention. Unlike these two crime-prevention strategies, there is little agreement in the academic literature on the definition of community prevention and the types of programs that fall within it. This stems from its early conceptions, with one view focused on the social conditions of crime and the ability of the community to regulate them, and another that “it operates at the level of whole communities regardless of the types of mechanisms involved” (Bennett 1996 , p. 169).

Tim Hope’s ( 1995 ) definition that community crime prevention involves actions designed to change the social conditions and institutions that influence offending in residential communities is by far the most informative. This is not just because it distinguishes community prevention from developmental and situational prevention, but also because it highlights the strength of the community to address the sometimes intractable social problems that lead to crime and violence. This focus on the social factors leaves aside physical redesign concepts, including Oscar Newman’s ( 1972 ) defensible space and C. Ray Jeffery’s ( 1971 ) crime prevention through environmental design. Ron Clarke ( 1992 , 1995 b ) describes how these important concepts are more correctly viewed as contributing to the early development of situational crime prevention.

Numerous theories have been advanced over the years to explain community-level influences on crime and offending and that serve as the basis of community crime-prevention programs (for excellent reviews, see Reiss and Tonry 1986 ; Farrington 1993 ; Sampson and Lauritsen 1994 ; Wikström 1998 ). Steven Messner and Gregory Zimmerman’s essay makes a unique contribution to this body of knowledge. Through a macro-sociological lens, the authors elucidate the distinguishing features and evolution of the community–crime link. In a separate essay, Wesley Skogan expounds on the nature of disorderly behavior and its relevance to crime, communities, and prevention. Of particular importance is the role that disorder may play in the destabilization and decline of neighborhoods.

While there is a rich theoretical and empirical literature on communities and crime, up until recently less was known about the effectiveness of community crime-prevention programs. Review after review on this subject—going back to Rosenbaum’s ( 1988 ) and Hope’s ( 1995 ) classics—have consistently reported that there are no program types with proven effectiveness in preventing crime. Importantly, this was not a claim that nothing works and that community crime prevention should be abandoned (Sherman 1997 ; Welsh and Hoshi 2006 ). Some program types were judged to be promising. 3

More recent research finds that some community-based programs can make a difference in preventing crime. Jens Ludwig and Julia Burdick-Will report on the effects of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, which gave vouchers to low-socioeconomic status (often, minority) families to enable them to move to better areas. The large-scale experimental test of the program, which involved 4,600 families in five cities across the country, showed that it was particularly effective in reducing violent crime by youths. The authors also discuss another similar poverty-deconcentration experiment in Chicago that was equally effective.

Christopher Sullivan and Darrick Jolliffe review the effectiveness of two well-known community-based crime-prevention modalities: peer influence and mentoring. They find that programs designed to influence peer risk factors for delinquency are somewhat promising, while mentoring, where the evaluation research is more extensive and robust, can be effective in preventing delinquency. In one systematic review and meta-analysis it was found that mentoring was more effective in reducing offending when the average duration of each contact between mentor and mentee was greater, in smaller scale studies, and when mentoring was combined with other interventions.

Important to all forms of crime prevention, but implicit in community prevention, is the element of partnerships among stakeholder agencies and individuals. Dennis Rosenbaum and Amie Schuck review and assess the literature on comprehensive community partnerships in the context of community crime prevention. They offer several key conclusions, including that these partnerships have wide public appeal, can be difficult to implement because of their complexity, and are most effective when there is a commitment to prevention science and evidence-based practice.

The next two essays diverge slightly from our focus on communities and the prevention of crime, but their importance to the field and this volume cannot be overstated. Abigail Fagan and David Hawkins review the evidence of the effectiveness of community-based substance-use prevention initiatives, while Denise Gottfredson, Philip Cook, and Chongmin Na summarize the evidence of the effectiveness of school-based crime-prevention programs. In both cases, the authors report on a number of successful preventive interventions for youths.

IV. Situational Crime Prevention

Situational prevention stands apart from the other crime-prevention strategies by its special focus on the setting or place in which criminal acts take place, as well as its crime-specific focus. No less important is situational prevention’s concern with products (e.g., installation of immobilizers on new cars in some parts of Europe, action taken to eliminate cellphone cloning in the United States) and on large-scale systems such as improvements in the banking system to reduce money laundering (Clarke 2009 ).

Situational crime prevention has been defined as “a preventive approach that relies, not upon improving society or its institutions, but simply upon reducing opportunities for crime” (Clarke 1992 , p. 3). Reducing opportunities for crime is achieved essentially through some modification or manipulation of the physical environment, products, or systems in order to directly affect offenders’ perceptions of increased risks and effort and decreased rewards, provocations, and excuses (Cornish and Clarke 2003 ). These different approaches serve as the basis of a highly detailed classification system of situational crime prevention, which can further be divided into 25 separate techniques, each with any number of examples of programs (Cornish and Clarke 2003 ). Part of Martha Smith and Ron Clarke’s essay is devoted to an overview of the current classification scheme, as well as the theoretical and practical developments that led to its present form.

The theoretical origins of situational crime prevention are wide-ranging (see Newman, Clarke, and Shoham 1997 ; Garland 2000 ), but it is largely informed by opportunity theory. This theory holds that the offender is “heavily influenced by environmental inducements and opportunities and as being highly adaptable to changes in the situation” (Clarke 1995 a , p. 57). Opportunity theory is made up of several more specific theories, including the rational-choice perspective, the routine-activity approach, and crime-pattern theory. According to Smith and Clarke, these three theories have had the greatest influence on the research and practice of situational crime prevention, and they are described in detail in their essay.

Also important to the theoretical basis and the practical utility of situational prevention is the widely held finding that crime is not randomly distributed across a city or community but is, instead, highly concentrated at certain places known as crime “hot spots” (Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger 1989 ). For example, it is estimated that across the United States, 10 percent of the places are sites for around 60 percent of the crimes (Eck 2006 , p. 242). In the same way that individuals can have criminal careers, there are criminal careers for places (Sherman 1995 ). The essay by Anthony Braga reviews the empirical and theoretical evidence on the concentration of crime at places, times, and among offenders.

Fairly or unfairly, situational crime prevention often raises concerns over the displacement of crime. This is the notion that offenders simply move around the corner or resort to different methods to commit crimes once a crime-prevention project has been introduced. 4 Thirty years ago, Thomas Reppetto ( 1976 ) identified five different forms of displacement: temporal (change in time), tactical (change in method), target (change in victim), territorial (change in place), and functional (change in type of crime).

What Clarke ( 1995b ) and many others (e.g., Gabor 1990 ; Hesseling 1995 ) have found and rightly note is that displacement is never 100 percent. Furthermore, a growing body of research has shown that situational measures may instead result in a diffusion of crime-prevention benefits or the “complete reverse” of displacement (Clarke and Weisburd 1994 ). Instead of a crime-prevention project displacing crime, the project’s crime-prevention benefits are diffused to the surrounding area, for example. The essay by Shane Johnson, Rob Guerette, and Kate Bowers, which reports on a meta-analysis of displacement and diffusion, provides confirmatory evidence for these general points. They also find that a “diffusion of benefit is at least as likely as crime displacement.”

Like the other crime-prevention strategies, numerous reviews have been carried out over the years to assess the effectiveness of situational crime-prevention programs. By far the most comprehensive reviews have been conducted by John Eck ( 1997 , 2006 ). They focused on the full range of place-based situational measures implemented in both public and private settings. In keeping with their evidence-based approach, the reviews included only the highest quality evaluations in arriving at conclusions about what works, what does not work, and what is promising. This had the effect of excluding many situational measures with demonstrated preventive effects—including steering-column locks, redesigned credit cards, and exact-change policies (see Clarke 1997 ). Some of these first-generation situational prevention measures were assessed in weak evaluations that could not convincingly support the assertion that the program produced the reported effect.

John Eck and Rob Guerette’s esssay presents an updated and slightly modified review of place-based crime prevention. They assess the evidence for the effectiveness of various situational measures implemented in five common types of places: residences, outside/public, retail, transportation, and recreation. They find a range of situational measures that are effective in preventing different crimes in each of these settings.

Two other essays review the effectiveness of situational measures applied in other contexts. Paul Ekblom looks at the role of the private sector in designing products that work against crime. A number of successful programs are profiled and critical issues discussed in what the author calls the “arms race” between preventers and offenders. Louise Grove and Graham Farrell review the effectiveness of situational measures designed to prevent repeat victimization of residential and commercial burglary and domestic and sexual violence. The authors find that a number of different measures are effective in preventing repeat victimization, especially of residential and commercial burglary.

V. Advancing Knowledge and Building a Safer Society

The final section of this volume looks at a number of key issues that cut across the three crime-prevention strategies. The first of these concerns implementation. Ross Homel and Peter Homel cover the complexities and challenges of implementing crime-prevention programs, as well as the process of moving from small-scale projects to large-scale dissemination and how to mitigate the attenuation of program effects. As with the science of the effectiveness of crime prevention, the authors call for a science of implementation that conforms with principles of good governance.

The second of these key issues concerns evaluation. An evaluation of a crime-prevention program is considered to be rigorous if it possesses a high degree of internal, construct, and statistical conclusion validity 5 (Cook and Campbell 1979 ; Shadish, Cook, and Campbell 2002 ). Put another way, we can have a great deal of confidence in the observed effects of an intervention if it has been evaluated using a design that controls for the major threats to these forms of validity. Experimental and quasi-experimental research methods are the types of designs that can best achieve this, and the randomized controlled experiment is the most convincing method of evaluating crime-prevention programs. This is the subject of David Weisburd and Joshua Hinkle’s essay. Among the many benefits of randomized experiments, the authors note that randomization is the only method of assignment that controls for unknown and unmeasured confounders, as well as those that are known and measured. They also note that the randomized experiment is no panacea and may not be feasible in every instance, and in these cases other high-quality evaluation designs should be employed.

The next essay by Doris MacKenzie, on the effectiveness of correctional treatment, represents a departure from our focus on alternative, non–criminal justice approaches to preventing crime. Its inclusion in this volume is meant to be an important reminder of a key policy conclusion in our field: it is never too early and never too late to effectively intervene to reduce criminal offending (Loeber and Farrington 1998 , forthcoming). While we maintain that it is far more socially worthwhile and just as well as sustainable to intervene before harm is inflicted on a victim and the offender is under the supervision of the justice system, it is important to recognize that this is not always possible; prevention programs are by no means foolproof.

Public opinion on crime prevention is also important to its future development and practice. Encouragingly, there appears to be a great deal of public support for the kinds of crime prevention covered here. Traditional and economic-based opinion polls consistently show that the public supports government spending on crime prevention rather than on more punitive responses, including building more prisons (Cullen et al. 2007 ), and that the public is willing to pay more in taxes if people know that the money will be directed toward crime prevention rather than crime control (Cohen, Rust, and Steen 2006 ; Nagin et al. 2006 ). These and other important findings are at the center of Julian Roberts and Ross Hastings’s review of international trends in public opinion concerning crime prevention.

In the final essay of the volume we set out our modest proposal for a new crime-prevention policy to help build a safer, more sustainable society. Among its central features are the need to overcome the “short-termism” politics of the day; to ensure that the highest quality scientific research is at center stage in political and policy decisions; and to strike a greater balance between crime prevention and crime control.

Crime-prevention programs are not designed with the intention of excluding justice personnel. Many types of prevention programs, especially those that focus on adolescents, involve justice personnel such as police or probation officers. In these cases, justice personnel work in close collaboration with those from such areas as education, health care, recreation, and social services.

Among the most well known classification schemes include those by Brantingham and Faust ( 1976 ), van Dijk and de Waard ( 1991 ), and Ekblom ( 1994 ).

Promising programs are those where the level of certainty from the available scientific evidence is too low to support generalizable conclusions, but where there is some empirical basis for predicting that further research could support such conclusions (Farrington et al. 2006 ).

See Barr and Pease ( 1990 ) for a discussion of “benign” or desirable effects of displacement.

Internal validity refers to how well the study unambiguously demonstrates that an intervention had an effect on an outcome. Construct validity refers to the adequacy of the operational definition and measurement of the theoretical constructs that underlie the intervention and the outcome. Statistical conclusion validity is concerned with whether the presumed cause (the intervention) and the presumed effect (the outcome) are related.

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Community coalitions, as they are currently applied, are unique organizations whose ability to promote community change is different from other types of community organizations. This article explores those differences and elaborates how community coalitions can use those differences to transform conflict into greater capacity, equity, and justice. Concerns are also raised in this article about how community coalitions can intentionally and unintentionally protect the status quo and contain the empowerment of grassroots leadership and those of marginalized groups. There is a need for more theory, research, and discourse on how community coalitions can transform conflict into social change and how they can increase the power of grassroots and other citizen-lead organizations.

City & Community

Matthew Lindholm

Nancy Rothman

The formation and achievements of an academic,community partnership between the Department of Nursing, College of Allied Health Professions, Temple University, and two Philadelphia public housing developments are the focus of this article. One community,developed, community,based public health minitiative, Lead Awareness: North Philly Style, demonstrates the positive effect of the relationship.

Evaluation and Program Planning

Jéssica Diaz

Community collaborations have become increasingly common responses to prevent the occurrence of complex public health problems, such as violence, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and others. A key unanswered question is: what predicts sustainability of collaboratives? This article explores this question through a cross-site evaluation of 12 local collaboratives funded through the National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention (NFCVP). Conducted as longitudinal case studies, the evaluation is distinct from previous efforts in incorporating data from multiple sources. The results confirm findings from previous studies that have identified having a history of collaboration, a diverse and broad coalition, a clear vision and operation guidelines, and diversified and sufficient funding as key sustainability factors. In addition, this study has found that collaborations that are growing and expanding are more likely to have high resident involvement, a mix of professional and grassroots representation, and a facilitating, rather than direct, role in conducting prevention activities.

Health Promotion Practice

Vincent T Francisco

Journal of Contemporary …

Kerry Brown

American Journal of Community Psychology

Mark T Greenberg

Health Education & Behavior

Abe Wandersman

Spreading Community Accelerators through Learning and Evaluation (SCALE) was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded initiative from 2015–2017 to build capability of 24 community coalitions to advance health, wellbeing, and equity. The SCALE theory of change had three components: develop leadership capability, build relationships within and between communities, and create an inter-community system to spread promising ideas. The theory was operationalized through training academies, coaching, and peer-to-peer learning that explicitly addressed equity and systems change. In this paper, we describe how SCALE facilitated community transformation related to Collaborating for Equity and Justice (CEJ) principles one, three, four, and six.We conducted a multiple case study approach with two community coalitions including site visits, interviews, and observation to illuminate underlying mechanisms of change by exploring how and why change occurs. Skid Row Women worked with women experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles to address diabetes and food systems. Healthy Livable Communities of Cattaraugus County used a portfolio of projects to create system changes to improve population health and increase access to services for people with disabilities in rural New York state.Through our analysis, we describe how two coalitions used SCALE tools for collaborative coalition processes such as aim setting, relationship building, and shared decision making with community residents. Our findings suggest that advancing CEJ principles requires self-reflection and courage; new ways of being in relationship; learning from failure; productive conflict to explicitly address power, racism, and other forms of oppression; and methods to test systems improvement ideas.

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106 Crime Prevention Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best crime prevention topic ideas & essay examples, ✍️ crime prevention essay topics for college, 📃 good essay topics on crime prevention, 🔎 interesting topics to write about crime prevention, ❓ questions about crime prevention.

Technology for Crime Prevention With the modern computer technology and advanced software, criminal justice system has been in a capacity to compile data and store it as well as share its analysis with other agencies both in and out […]
Developmental Crime Prevention Developmental crime prevention is a subsystem of special criminological crime prevention, the target of which is the pre-criminal forms of deviant and delinquent behavior of minors.
Crime Prevention and Risk Management This brochure will outline some basic notions of risk management and assessment and crime and victimization prevention; additionally, it will provide the reader with some basic strategies of daily risk management and include sources for […]
The Most Effective Crime Prevention Strategies in the Past Two Decades The conditions are; the desire of the criminal to carry out an offence, the opportunity to carry out the crime and finally the possession of skills and tools necessary for commitment of the crime.
Approaches to Crime Prevention The objective of the criminal justice system is to ensure proper enforcement of the standards of conduct in protecting the rights of the individuals and the community in a free society.
Effective Physical Security and Crime Prevention Therefore, for effective implementation of the defense-in-depth strategy for the protection of assets, it is important to address the following issues: knowing the enemy, understanding the external enemies, defending against an internal enemy, and knowing […]
Situational Crime Prevention SCP focuses on deterring crime by increasing the risk and effort in committing a crime. However, they add that the effect of such measures varies based on the location and type of crime targeted.
Neighborhood Watch Programs and Crime Prevention The presence of a service that supports victims of crimes in the area also plays a significant role in the lives of the residents and of the neighborhood watch program.
Crime Prevention at the Workplace: Employee Theft Considering that any form of employee theft induces substantial harm to the financial performance of companies, the integration of adequate crime prevention procedures in the corporate security system is of great importance.
Crime Prevention With Rational Choice Theory In addition, pure RCT may be insufficient for explaining nuances associated with the psychological and social profiles of the offenders. In particular, the traditional RCT faces problems explaining violent crime and irrational risk and reward […]
Crime Control and Prevention Methods In addition to notations that are usually tiresome for schoolchildren, police officers who specialize in working with minors can show movies about the dangers of drinking alcohol.
The Use of Social Crime Prevention Techniques in the UK The measures or techniques used in situational crime prevention are intended to pass across a message to the potential criminals that the efforts needed to carry out crime and the associated dangers have been magnified, […]
Crime Prevention Strategies and Quality of Life The aim of crime prevention strategies is to create conditions that cut the chances and motivation for crime, transforming the capability of the criminal justice system to handle crimes.
Developmental Theories and Crime Prevention Programs The use of developmental theories in the design of crime prevention programs can be viewed as a significant breakthrough and an essential step forward as it permits the design of a set of correct behavioral […]
Crime Prevention Strategies at Walden University The other components of the crime prevention program at the institution include the existence of a campus security authority and a memorandum of understanding with the law enforcement authorities.
Crime Prevention, Law Enforcement and Correction Theories Other scholars define crime as a deed or an instance of defiance that is considered hazardous to the morals of the community and the concerns of the nation and is legitimately forbidden by the law.
Applied Crime Prevention in Hollywood 20 Cinema Location The movie theatre is the main business premise within the area. The primary function of this place is to provide entertainment to the public.
Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs Neighborhood networks in Memphis focus on the provision of resources and high-quality programs to the youths and families who are exposed to crime.
White-Collar Crimes: Prevention and Fight The article gives the effects of white collar crimes in different areas of the economy. This article discusses white collar crimes in the perspective of the court.
The Prevention of Crime and Community Justice The psychological and physical developments are very frequent and that is why young people are always anxious and it is very difficult for them to make the decisions.
Screening in Aviation: Prevention of Crime This essay will provide a critical analysis of the strengths of screening, such as the prevention of crime, as well as the weaknesses, such as their congestion, bypassability and privacy concerns, that enable its failures […]
Prevention of Sex Offenders From Committing Crimes The article draws attention to the current problems in the perception of sex offenders by the community. The importance of the continuance of sex offender treatment is emphasized through the notion of a decrease in […]
Crime Prevention Programs in America In the overwhelming majority of cases, the term “crime” is defined as the violation of the rules, established in the society or as the breach of existing legislation.
Prevention & Control Of Crime The study of crime, society’s response to it, and its prevention, including examination of the environmental, hereditary, or psychological causes of crime, modes of criminal investigation and conviction, and the efficacy of punishment or correction […]
Situational Crime Prevention Strategy The origins of SCP date back to the early 1990s, when one of the strategy’s most prominent advocates Clarke had argued that the key to improving the criminogenic situation in a particular area is ensuring […]
Crime Prevention in the United States In the case of shoplifting, the first process undertaken by the police could be to question the criminal on site, followed by contacting their legal guardians, referring them to a community agency, or arresting them.
Crimes Against Small Businesses and Prevention Strategies Small companies have to pay more taxes because of reduced government revenues this is another reason white-collar crimes are ruining them and can even lead to bankruptcy when they cannot face an advantage created by […]
Crime Prevention and Juvenile Delinquency As a specific jurisdiction that will serve as the basis for assessing and implementing the provisions of the crime prevention program, the District of Florida will be considered.
“Broken Windows” and Situational Crime Prevention Theories In the end, the conclusions are drawn to summarize the key findings and determine the importance of the definitions to the understanding of the conceptualization of security.
Violence, Security and Crime Prevention at School The second type of violence is the one directed toward employees by students, parents, or any other category of people served by the school.
Phoenix Park: Community-Based Crime Prevention First of all, due to the community-orientedness of the mentioned strategy, it is essential to explain to the residents that their reports may significantly contribute to the effectiveness of the police.
Crime Prevention Approaches There are various approaches to this; one of them is based on the idea that the redevelopment of physical space in a neighborhood can decrease crime rates in it.
Internet Crimes and Digital Terrorism Prevention The model has the potential to affect the social welfare of different populations. The political impact of the use of technologies to deal with digital terrorism cannot be ignored.
Internet Crime Prevention by Law and E-Business Such measures as laws prohibiting direct links in the e-mail, or authentication and anti-virus systems, might be beneficial to secure citizens from cybercrime.
Crime Prevention and Control Effectiveness Another aspect that needs to be acknowledged is that it is impossible to avoid all of the crimes because some individuals will participate in such activities even if it is dangerous and significant risks are […]
Hughesville’s Environmental Design in Crime Prevention However, these figures are higher for property crimes: the chances of becoming a victim of a property crime are 1 in 86, which is only two times lower than the state average of 1 in […]
American Mafia: Crime Prevention and Prosecution The Mafia is an informal and unofficial name given to a crime organization that has its roots in New York’s Lower East Side and other areas of the East Coast of the United States of […]
Local Crime Prevention Program: Colonial Heights’ Senior Citizens Crime Prevention This program is especially structured for the senior citizens and is based on the fact that older people are more fearful of crime as compared to the other members of the community.
Crime Prevention Programs in the State of California The purpose of the study is to analysis the success and the effectiveness of Gang Violence Suppression Program in California. Gang Violence Suppression Program was therefore established to support the district attorneys’ offices in prosecuting […]
Computer Crimes Defense and Prevention Naval Academy and he said that the security of the United States is threatened by a new breed of adversaries that has found a way to harass and terrorize America.
Assessment of the Sociological Perspectives on Crime Prevention
Background Information About Crime Prevention Policies
Overview of Biosocial Criminology and Modern Crime Prevention
Situational and Social Crime Prevention Techniques
Criminological Classical Theories and Crime Prevention
A Powerful Role for Communication in Crime Prevention
Overview of Community Crime Prevention Programs
Comparing Cyber Crime Prevention Strategies in the UAE and the UK
Computer Crime Prevention and Innovation
Crime and Crime Prevention Through Environment Design
Link Between Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice System
Crime Prevention and Control of the United States
Correlation Between Crime Prevention and Risky Social Problems
Crime Prevention and Its Effects on the Neighborhood
Developmental Crime Prevention and Juvenile Delinquency
Crime Prevention Issues: Murder, Organized Crime, and Fraud
Differences Between Crime Prevention and Community Safety
Crime Prevention Policy and Juvenile Courts as Prevention
Displacement and Diffusion, Mass Media and Crime Prevention
Crime Prevention Program Adopted by Police Force in Australia
Ethical Strategy for Crime Prevention: An Overview
Crime Prevention Program: Gun Control in the USA
Gang Groups and National Crime Prevention Council
Crime Prevention Programs: Evidence for a Developing Country
General Crime Prevention Approaches and Strategies Analysis
Crime Prevention Programs Help Protect and Deter Crime
Improving Crime Prevention: Knowledge and Practice
Crime Prevention: The Assessment of Development Applications
Juvenile Crime Prevention With a Christian Worldview
Police Crime Prevention and Partnerships With the Community
Realism and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
Reducing Crime Through Situational Crime Prevention
Routine Activity and Situational Crime Prevention Theory
School Control and Crime Prevention Within the Walls of the School
Specific and General Crime Prevention Approaches and Strategies
The Police Visibility and Its Effect on Crime Prevention and Control
Methodology of the Proactive Crime Prevention Strategies
The Pros and Cons of Crime Prevention
Major Components of the Crime Prevention
Explaining and Understanding Crime Prevention
Are Custodial Sentences the Most Economical and Effective Way of Crime Prevention?
How Does the Classical Theory Pertain to Crime Prevention?
What Are the Main Crime Prevention Strategies?
How Effective Are Crime Prevention Programs?
What Is the Disadvantage of Social and Community Crime Prevention?
Is Situational Crime Prevention Effective?
What Is Crime Prevention Theory?
Do the Police Officers Do Their Responsibilities in Crime Prevention?
What Are the Aims and Objectives of Crime Prevention?
How Effective Are Police at Crime Prevention?
What Crime Prevention Techniques Are the Most Effective?
Why Is Crime Prevention Important for Society?
What Is the Victoria Police Prevention Program or Community Crime Prevention Strategy?
What Is the Significance of Criminological Theories in Crime Prevention and Control?
What Are the Main Crime Prevention Theories?
Why Is Crime Prevention Better Than Punishment?
Is Restorative Justice Effective in Crime Prevention?
What Is the Best Crime Prevention?
How Is Neo-Classical Criminology Theory Used in Crime Prevention?
What Is the Role of the Criminal Justice System in Crime Prevention?
Is Situational Crime Prevention Right Realism?
What Is the Difference Between Crime Control and Crime Prevention?
Are There Disadvantages of Crime Prevention?
Who Is Responsible for Crime Prevention?
What Is the Role of Police in Crime Prevention in India?
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Essay on Crime Prevention

Crime is a global problem affecting each and every country. Every country suffers from increased crime rates which result to insecurities and a negative impact on the economy. This increased crime rate is fueled by poverty, parental negligence, low self-esteem, alcohol, and drug abuse, resulting from the lack of proper moral values (Topalli & Wright, 2014). Moral values are responsible for determining what is right and wrong and also establish what is socially acceptable. They are ideas considered by society as important and contribute to one’s general personality, and thus, without them, an individual is lost. It is significant to prevent crimes to raise the quality of life of all citizens. Preventing crimes also results to long-term benefits as it reduces social cost resulting from crimes and the costs involved with the formal criminal justice system. In order to prevent these crimes, there is the need to develop evidence-based and comprehensive approaches addressing several factors impacting crimes, including moral values on growing children.

Crimes result from negative moral values, and thus there is a need to promote positive youth development and wellbeing. Horace Mann believes that this prevalence of crime in society could be reduced by moral instruction in schools (Spring, 2019). He argues that for the crime rate to reduce, the moral value of the general public needs to be shaped accordingly. According to him, the most accurate method of doing this is by incorporating moral instruction in the education system. He referred to this method as putting a police officer in every child’s heart. This would enable the child to be conscious of the evil in society and be aware of good and bad. This would guide them as they grow up and prevent them from engaging or committing any crime.

The American Education book portrays crime as a global nuisance, and the more accurate and effective method to prevent it is through education. Mann suggests in this book that the number of police required by society would significantly be reduced by schooling. Thus, education is portrayed as a source of knowledge and a significant tool that would help reduce crime rates remarkably. It is supposed to do this by allowing students to acquire more educational attainment that leads to high paying jobs and thus higher earnings, which increases the opportunity cost of crime and consequently reducing crime. Mann also believes that education would reduce the crime rate by affecting individuals’ personality traits associated with crime. This is done by making students become patient, disciplined and moral. Despite this being a more suitable method of preventing crimes in society, it is not as effective as Mann and other researchers rate it.

Mann theory of preventing crime through schooling is a considerate method, but it is not enough to do so. There is no causal relationship between crime rates and school attendance (Lochner, 2020). It is assumed that schooling and crime rates are related, and thus if school attendance is increased, a consequent crime reduction would be noticed. However, this is wrong, and Mann theory has not proved a reality. According to Joel et al. (2021), the percentage of 5-to 17-years-old students increased from 82.2 in 1959-1960 to 91.9 percent in 2004-2005. The average days of attendance also increased from 160.2 in 1959-1960 to 169.2 in 1999-2000. There was also a rapid increase in violent crimes in 1960-2000 from 160.9 to 506.5 per 100,000 residence (Spring, 2019). As the number of students attending school and the attendance days increased from 1960 to 2004, so did the crime rate. This is proof that the crime rate is irrespective of the number of students going to school and the average days of attendance, and thus Mann theory is ineffective.

Moral value instruction is a vital tool to prevent crimes but implementing it only through schooling, such as Mann suggested, is not only a failing strategy but a waste of time and resources. Moral values in children need to be implemented in many different ways to ensure that they stick as they develop into adults (Damon, 2008). Implementing these moral values would ensure that they grow into morally upright adults, thus reducing crime rates. Implementing moral value through schooling is advised, but it would work with a combination of many other methods including through religion and good parenting. Religion helps in the spiritual growth of a person and emphasizes moral codes aimed to develop values such as social competence and self-control, which are major virtues in crime hating people. According to the study done by Brown and Taylor (2007) on how religion impacts child development, it was found that social competence and the psychological adjustment of third-graders were positive influenced with several religious factors. This shows that religion helps in developing children to become adults with a positive and better judgement that would keep them from engaging in any crime and thus would contribute to crime rate reduction.

Parents are responsible for their children, and they are required to guard and guide them as they contribute to their personality. According to Penn (2015), how a child turns out as an adult depends on how their parents brought them up. As a result of this, it is crucial for parents to be careful of how they handle their children. It is the responsibility of every citizen of a county to help fight and prevent crimes, and thus it is the responsibility of parents to reduce the crime rate by training their children to be better people in future. They should be consistent with rules and monitor their children behaviour to ensure that they instil good moral value in them, equipping them with the knowledge of good and evil. If a child is raised in a way that makes them hate crime, then they would not engage in any, and this would contribute to the general reduction of crime in the society.

In conclusion, the main way of preventing crime is by instilling positive moral values on growing children to ensure that they develop into morally upright adults who would not engage in criminal activities. It is assumed that to instil this moral values in children and prevent crimes in future, the best way is through schooling. But this is not the case as there is no causal relationship between crime rates and schooling, and thus schooling will not necessarily result to a reduced crime rate. In order to ensure that moral values are successfully instilled in children, schooling would have to be combined with other methods, some of which include religion and good parenting, resulting in adults who are conscious of good and evil. Increased crime rate is a problem experienced by all countries globally, and the only way to fight it is by shaping the personality of the future generation by instilling positive moral values as their driving force.

Topalli, V., & Wright, R. (2014). Affect and the dynamic foreground of predatory street crime (1st ed.).

Spring, J. (2019). American Education. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429274138

Lochner, L. (2020). Education and crime. The Economics Of Education , 109-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-815391-8.00009-4

Joel, M., Bill, H., Jijun, Z., Xiaolei, W., Ke, W., & Sarah, H. et al. (2021). National Center for Education Statistics: The Condition of Education 2019. NCES 2019-144 . ERIC. Retrieved 5 July 2021, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED594978.

Damon, W. (2008). Moral child: Nurturing children’s natural moral growth (3rd ed.). FREE Press.

Brown, S., & Taylor, K. (2007). Religion and education: Evidence from the National Child Development Study. Journal Of Economic Behavior & Organization , 63 (3), 439-460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2005.08.003

Penn, H. (2015). Understanding early childhood (3rd ed.). Open University Press.

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