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20 Strategies for Reducing Crime in Cities

John k. roman, october 10, 2023.

Complements, not substitutes, to policing

It is easy to despair of crime in cities. But there is much to be learned from recent history. Two decades of research on the almost everywhere, almost all-at-once, Great American Crime Decline of the 1990s —  when violence in America dropped by half in a single decade — finds dozens of evidence-based reasons why crime declined . And overwhelmingly, that research finds that the most effective crime-fighting tools were not explicitly about fighting crime. 

In the 1990s, crime declined, among other reasons , because more people had access to Medicaid , better medicines for behavioral health became available, less cash was in circulation and fewer people were poisoned by environmental toxins . And, more evidence-based programs and practices were used in schools , workforce development and public health . Yes, mass incarceration and new policing strategies played a role, but the strongest evidence suggests they explain perhaps one-quarter of the crime decline . 

What these explanations have in common is strong empirical evidence and a focus on classical prevention based on the idea that supporting people and strengthening communities is the surest path to widespread safety. There are hundreds of solutions — market-based solutions, medical solutions, structural solutions and behavioral nudges — that can meaningfully reduce the risk of crime and violence without expanding the criminal justice system. Instead of responding to problems, these solutions reduce risk factors and risk conditions and promote resiliency, stopping crime and violence before they happen.  

But prevention does not work a la carte and there is no silver bullet, only the hard work of gradual improvements and the challenge of waiting for the longer-term positive outcomes to emerge. Quantity has a quality all its own, and the more of these strategies that are employed, the better the outcomes.

In that spirit, here are 20 crime-reducing strategies that strengthen people and communities and are supported by solid social-science research to reduce crime. The list is here to draw you in.: There are more evidence-based approaches than even this, and even more promising programs being tested. We do not have to settle for 20th-century criminal justice. The vast breadth of available prevention policies and programs should vanquish any one-dimensional view of crime reduction. 

A call for non-criminal justice solutions is not a call to defund the police in disguise. These are complements to, not substitutes for, law-enforcement-led strategies. There are numerous evidence-based law enforcement-focused mechanisms that should be a critical part of any public safety proposal. But, if the arc from Michael Brown to George Floyd taught America anything, it is that we must move beyond law enforcement working in isolation to find justice and safety.

The 20 Strategies 1. Help Victims of Crime  There is far too little support for victims of crime, even though it is the most obvious place to start. Prior victimization — of a person or a place — is the top predictor of future victimization . Supporting people who have been victimized from being victimized again — through social supports and target - hardening — has enormous potential for positive change.   2. Reduce Demand for Law Enforcement A central reason why law enforcement does not prevent more crime or solve more crimes is that they are too busy doing things that accomplish neither objective. If the police were called less often for unproductive reasons, there would be less under-policing — and less over-policing as well. If cities and towns set the explicit goal of having people call the police less often, law enforcement would be more efficient at taking on the tasks that remain. 3. Fixing Distressed Spaces There is a wide body of evidence that shows that places poison people more routinely than people poison places. Crime does not result from “areas” of the “inner city” being high risk, but rather from a few very small, very bad places . Concentrated efforts to improve contagious places can build resiliency across neighborhoods.  4. Making Crime Attractors Less Appealing  Certain places attract and generate crime — schools , the built environment and bars being at the top of the list. More often than not, careful planning and implementation of best practices in situational crime prevention can reduce the harms they unintentionally generate and, in the case of schools and transit, unlock their potential for guardianship. 5. Scientific Supports for Law Enforcement  Police in the United States would benefit from increased reliance on civilians in two realms: translating scientific evidence into practice , and increasing their reliance on civilian analysts to study local policing practices . In particular, if law enforcement was aided by more civilian analysts who were better trained , crime would be reduced while the footprint of policing was reduced.   6. Improving the Job Market and Job Training The relationship between jobs and crime is far more complex than in the popular imagination — higher national-level unemployment rates, for example, do not seem to increase violence . But targeted programs can have large effects. Integrating social and emotional skills training into employment training for young people has solid evidence of effectiveness as does employment planning for people returning from prison and transitional jobs for high risk people .  7. Facilitate Neighborhood Non-Profits In his excellent book ”Uneasy Peace,” Professor Patrick Sharkey reports on a study that found that for each 10 additional nonprofits in a given city, the violent crime rate is reduced by 14% (in the study period between 1990 and 2013). It should come as no surprise that access to more and better services has positive effects. Local government can aid the development of these local assets by providing funding for hyper-local community projects.  8. Make Jails and Prison Less Criminogenic We have overwhelmingly designed our jails and prisons to prevent people from gaining the skills to work and maintain their sobriety when they go home , and cut them off from their most crime-reducing assets, their family and friends. Small investments in humanity yield large returns when jails and prisons are not designed to produce more crime. 9. Better Prepare People to Return Home from Prison People returning from prison need specific supports to facilitate a successful transition – 82% of people released from prison are rearrested within 10 years. And the solutions are simple — leaving facilities with an ID , prescriptions , a place to stay , a way to get started . A goal without a plan is a wish — people should leave prison with a plan and the supports to implement that plan. 10. Fund Community-Based Violence Interruption A growing body of evidence finds that credible messengers — individuals with lived experience — coupled with psychosocial services can prevent retaliatory violence and repeat victimization. But this is a new sector and will need time and space to learn and grow. 11. Use Technology to Reduce Violence Professor Graham Farrell argues convincingly that increases in security technology (such as engine immobilizers and cameras) in the 1990s were the only universal explanation for the universal decline in crime. There is much more that can be done using technology without imposing on civil liberties: text message reminders for court and probation appearances , databases to maintain records on police officers with histories of abuse and anti-crime features on ordinary consumer products are just the start.  12. Tackle the Causes and Consequences of Poverty  Poverty drives crime and violence in numerous ways beyond a simple lack of income, through weakened social bonds . A number of important policies have been successfully piloted but not fully implemented by state and local government. These are the big-ticket items — child poverty tax credits , whole-school anti-bullying programs , expanding Medicaid — that have the biggest crime reduction benefits. But the benefits outweigh the costs for dozens of policies and programs .  13. Fix Long-Standing Problems  Problems often persist because they have high costs, a lack of immediacy and declining political constituency — but these perpetual problems are often the key risk condition causing crime in a place to persist. Unhealthy homes , lead paint and pipes , and under-resourced foster care all promote crime. 14. Shorten the Reach of the Criminal Justice System Too many financial burdens are imposed on people with low risk to public safety, creating a cycle of debt and incarceration , the latter which increases violence through stigma , criminal capital accumulation and a disruption of social bonds . Removing those conditions by clearing old warrants and convictions , reducing toxic fines and fees and ending poverty traps would prevent crime. 15. Help Those with Substance-Use Disorders  In the 1990s and 2000s, with trepidation, the justice system began treating substance-use disorders as a disease rather than a crime. Expansion in the broadest of these interventions – problem-solving courts and in-prison substance use treatment — largely ended more than a decade ago. Many extremely useful ideas have been piloted — trauma-informed care , motivational interviewing , treating withdrawal in prison — but few were ever taken fully to scale. Those foundations are ready-made to build upon.  16. Support Programs for High-Risk Young People and Families A lot of criminology is concerned with bending the criminal trajectory curve — to keep adolescents from accelerating their delinquency or failing to desist as they age — and a huge body of scholarship has contributed to numerous model programs. From prenatal programs , to social and emotional learning , to programs for high-risk adolescents , there is a tremendous base of knowledge. 17. Education Improving education is its own crime-reducing category, but schools can facilitate crime reduction outside of schools. Reducing food insecurity , humanizing discipline and improving the safety of the school commute benefit everyone.  18. Housing Like education, housing is its own category beyond the scope of this essay. But there are housing solutions with specific crime-reducing benefits: permanent, supportive housing ; transitional housing for young people leaving homelessness; and housing programs specifically for people who cycle through emergency services .  19. Policy and Law There are any number of laws and regulations that could be tweaked to meaningfully reduce crime and victimization. For example, higher taxes that specifically target the overuse of criminogenic products like guns and alcohol have been shown to reduce excess demand.  20. Stop the Proliferation of Firearms  The link between firearms and violence is ironclad — the more guns, the more crime. More guns explain much of the difference in rates of violence between the U.S and peer nations. Fixing violence in the U.S. without addressing the gun problem, which is to say ensuring fewer potentially dangerous people have easy access to weapons, is embracing half-measures. Next steps   The next step in strengthening people and communities is for the evidence-making industry to think beyond one intervention at a time. What we need is classical policy analysis that considers the choices faced by lawmakers in the presence of budget constraints. That means embracing cost-effective evidence-based prevention over expensive remediation, and programs that lift as many people as possible and leave behind far fewer than we do today. We need to embrace science and evidence, to think holistically and comprehensively and to stop thinking of crime and violence as a problem that can only be addressed through police and prisons.  In medicine, we learn that our first line of defense is a catchall triage — some exercise, a better diet and more sleep are the cure for a vast array of simple problems before they become serious. In economics, we learn that simple nudges can motivate better choices. In public health, we can learn that a small early change in trend and trajectory today has enormous long-term benefits. All of these lessons await discovery in the public safety sector.  John K. Roman is a senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. He also serves as the co-Director of the National Prevention Science Coalition. Up next...

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8.6 Reducing Crime

Learning objective.

• Describe five strategies that criminologists have proposed to reduce crime.

During the last few decades, the United States has used a get-tough approach to fight crime. This approach has involved longer prison terms and the building of many more prisons and jails. As noted earlier, scholars doubt that this surge in imprisonment has achieved significant crime reduction at an affordable cost, and they worry that it may be leading to greater problems in the future as hundreds of thousands of prison inmates are released back into their communities every year.

Many of these scholars favor an approach to crime borrowed from the field of public health. In the areas of health and medicine, a public health approach tries to treat people who are already ill, but it especially focuses on preventing disease and illness before they begin. While physicians try to help people who already have cancer, medical researchers constantly search for the causes of cancer so that they can try to prevent it before it affects anyone. This model is increasingly being applied to criminal behavior, and criminologists have advanced several ideas that, if implemented with sufficient funds and serious purpose, hold great potential for achieving significant, cost-effective reductions in crime (Barlow & Decker, 2010; Frost, Freilich, & Clear, 2010; Lab, 2010). Many of their strategies rest on the huge body of theory and research on the factors underlying crime in the United States, which we had space only to touch on earlier, while other proposals call for criminal justice reforms. We highlight some of these many strategies here.

Applying Social Research

“Three Strikes” Laws Strike Out

The get-tough approach highlighted in the text has involved, among other things, mandatory minimum sentencing, in which judges are required to give convicted offenders a minimum prison term, often several years long, rather than a shorter sentence or probation.

Beginning in the 1990s, one of the most publicized types of mandatory sentencing has been the “three strikes and you’re out” policy that mandates an extremely long sentence—at least twenty-five years—and sometimes life imprisonment for offenders convicted of a third (or, in some states, a second) felony. The intent of these laws, enacted by about half the states and the federal government, is to reduce crime by keeping dangerous offenders behind bars for many years and by deterring potential offenders from committing crime ( general deterrence ). Sufficient time since the first three strikes laws were passed has elapsed to enable criminologists to assess whether they have, in fact, reduced crime.

Studies of this issue find that three strikes laws do not reduce serious crime and, in fact, may even increase the number of homicides. Several studies have focused on California, where tens of thousands of offenders have been sentenced under the state’s three strikes law passed in 1994. Almost all these studies conclude that California’s law did not reduce subsequent crime or did so by only a negligible amount. A few studies also have examined nationwide samples of city and state crime rates in the states that adopted three strikes laws and in the states that did not do so. These studies also fail to find that three strikes laws have reduced crime. As one of these studies, by three criminologists from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, concludes, “Consistent with other studies, ours finds no credible statistical evidence that passage of three strikes laws reduces crime by deterring potential criminals or incapacitating repeat offenders.” The national studies even find that three strikes laws have increased the number of homicides. This latter finding is certainly an unintended consequence of these laws and may stem from decisions by felons facing a third strike to kill witnesses so as to avoid life imprisonment.

In retrospect, it is not very surprising that three strikes laws do not work as intended. Many criminals simply do not think they will get caught and thus are not likely to be deterred by increased penalties. Many are also under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol at the time of their offense, making it even less likely they will worry about being caught. In addition, many three strikes offenders tend to be older (because they are being sentenced for their third felony, not just their first) and thus are already “aging out” beyond the high-crime age group, 15–25. Thus three strikes laws target offenders whose criminality is already declining because they are getting older.

In addition to the increase in homicides, research has identified other problems produced by three strikes laws. Because three strikes defendants do not want a life term, some choose a jury trial instead of pleading guilty. Jury trials are expensive and slow compared to guilty pleas and thus cost the prosecution both money and time. In another problem, the additional years that three strikes offenders spend in prison are costing the states millions of dollars in yearly imprisonment costs and in health-care costs as these offenders reach their elderly years.

As should be clear, the body of three strikes research has important policy implications, as noted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham scholars: “(P)olicy makers should reconsider the costs and benefits associated with three strikes laws” (p. 235). Three strikes laws do not lower crime and in fact increase homicides, and they have forced the states to spend large sums of money on courts and prisons. The three strikes research strongly suggests that three strikes laws should be eliminated.

Sources: Kovandzic, Sloan, & Vieraitis, 2004; Walker, 2011

A first strategy involves serious national efforts to reduce poverty and to improve neighborhood living conditions. It is true that most poor people do not commit crime, but it is also true that most street crime is committed by the poor or near poor for reasons discussed earlier. Efforts that create decent-paying jobs for the poor, enhance their vocational and educational opportunities, and improve their neighborhood living conditions should all help reduce poverty and its attendant problems and thus to reduce crime (Currie, 2011).

A second strategy involves changes in how American parents raise their boys. To the extent that the large gender difference in serious crime stems from male socialization patterns, changes in male socialization should help reduce crime (Collier, 2004). This will certainly not happen any time soon, but if American parents can begin to raise their boys to be less aggressive and less dominating, they will help reduce the nation’s crime rate. As two feminist criminologists have noted, “A large price is paid for structures of male domination and for the very qualities that drive men to be successful, to control others, and to wield uncompromising power.…Gender differences in crime suggest that crime may not be so normal after all. Such differences challenge us to see that in the lives of women, men have a great deal more to learn” (Daly & Chesney-Lind, 1988, p. 527).

Lessons from Other Societies

Preventing Crime and Treating Prisoners in Western Europe

The text suggests the get-tough approach that the United States has been using to reduce crime has not worked in a cost-effective manner and has led to other problems, including a flood of inmates returning to their communities every year. In fighting crime, the United States has much to learn from Western Europe. In contrast to the US get-tough approach, Western European nations tend to use a public health model that comprises two components. The first is a focus on crime prevention that uses early childhood intervention programs and other preventive measures to address the roots of crime and other childhood and family problems. The second is a criminal justice policy that involves sentencing defendants and treating prisoners in a manner more likely to rehabilitate offenders and reduce their repeat offending than the more punitive approach in the United States.

The overall Western European approach to offenders is guided by the belief that imprisonment should be reserved for the most dangerous violent offenders, and that probation, community service, and other forms of community corrections should be used for other offenders. Because violent offenders comprise only a small proportion of all offenders, the Western European approach saves a great deal of money while still protecting public safety.

The experience of Denmark and the Netherlands is illustrative. Like the United States, Denmark had to deal with rapidly growing crime rates during the 1960s. Whereas the United States responded with the get-tough approach involving longer and more certain prison terms and the construction of more and more prisons, Denmark took the opposite approach: It adopted shorter prison terms for violent offenders and used the funds saved from the reduced prison costs to expand community corrections for property offenders. Finland and the Netherlands have also adopted a similar approach that favors community corrections and relatively short prison terms for violent offenders over the get-tough approach the United States adopted.

All these nations save great sums of money in prison costs and other criminal justice expenses because they chose not to adopt the US get-tough approach, yet their rates of serious violent crime lag behind the US rates. Although these nations obviously differ from the United States, the advantages of their approach should be kept in mind as the United States evaluates its get-tough policies. There may be much to learn from their less punitive approach to crime: While the United States got tough, perhaps they got sensible.

Sources: Dammer & Albanese, 2011; Waller & Welsh, 2007

A third and very important strategy involves expansion of early childhood intervention (ECI) programs and nutrition services for poor mothers and their children, as the Note 8.28 “Children and Our Future” box discussed earlier. ECI programs generally involve visits by social workers, nurses, or other professionals to young, poor mothers shortly after they give birth, as these mother’s children are often at high risk for later behavioral problems (Welsh & Farrington, 2007). These visits may be daily or weekly and last for several months, and they involve parenting instruction and training in other life skills. These programs have been shown to be very successful in reducing childhood and adolescent misbehavior in a cost-effective manner (Greenwood, 2006). In the same vein, nutrition services would also reduce the risk of neurological impairment among newborns and young children and thus their likelihood of developing later behavioral problems.

A fourth strategy calls for a national effort to improve the nation’s schools and schooling. This effort would involve replacing large, older, and dilapidated schoolhouses with smaller, nicer, and better equipped ones. For many reasons, this effort should help improve student academic achievement and school commitment and thus lower delinquent and later criminal behavior.

A final set of strategies involves changes in the criminal justice system that should help reduce repeat offending and save much money that could be used to fund the ECI programs and other efforts just outlined. Placing nonviolent property and drug offenders in community corrections (e.g., probation, daytime supervision) would reduce the number of prison and jail inmates by hundreds of thousands annually without endangering Americans’ safety and save billions of dollars in prison costs (Jacobson, 2006). These funds could also be used to improve prison and jail vocational and educational programming and drug and alcohol services, all of which are seriously underfunded. If properly funded, such programs and services hold great promise for rehabilitating many inmates (Cullen, 2007). Elimination of the death penalty would also save much money while also eliminating the possibility of wrongful executions.

This is not a complete list of strategies, but it does suggest the kinds of efforts that would help address the roots of crime and, in the long run, help to reduce it. Although the United States may not be interested in pursuing this crime-prevention approach, strategies like the ones just mentioned would in the long run be more likely than our current get-tough approach to create a safer society and at the same time save us billions of dollars annually.

Note that none of these proposals addresses white-collar crime, which should not be neglected in a discussion of reducing the nation’s crime problem. One reason white-collar crime is so common is that the laws against it are weakly enforced; more consistent enforcement of these laws should help reduce white-collar crime, as would the greater use of imprisonment for convicted white-collar criminals (Rosoff et al., 2010).

Key Takeaways

• The get-tough approach has not been shown to reduce crime in an effective and cost-efficient manner. A sociological explanation of crime thus suggests the need to focus more resources on the social roots of crime in order to prevent crime from happening in the first place.
• Strategies suggested by criminologists to reduce crime include (a) reducing poverty and improving neighborhood living conditions, (b) changing male socialization patterns, (c) expanding early childhood intervention programs, (d) improving schools and schooling, and (e) reducing the use of incarceration for drug and property offenders.

For Your Review

• The text notes that social science research has not shown the get-tough approach to be effective or cost-efficient. If this is true, why do you think this approach has been so popular in the United States since the 1970s?
• Of the five strategies outlined in the text to reduce crime, which one strategy do you think would be most effective if it were implemented with adequate funding? Explain your answer.

Barlow, H. D., & Decker, S. H. (Eds.). (2010). Criminology and public policy: Putting theory to work . Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univeristy Press.

Collier, R. (2004). Masculinities and crime: Rethinking the “man question”? In C. Sumner (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to criminology (pp. 285–308). Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell.

Cullen, F. T. (2007). Make rehabilitation corrections’ guiding paradigm. Criminology & Public Policy, 6 (4), 717–727.

Currie, E. (2011). On the pitfalls of spurious prudence. Criminology & Public Policy, 10 , 109–114.

Daly, K., & Chesney-Lind, M. (1988). Feminism and criminology. Justice Quarterly, 5 , 497–538.

Dammer, H. R., & Albanese, J. S. (2011). Comparative criminal justice systems (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Frost, N. A., Freilich, J. D., & Clear, T. R. (Eds.). (2010). Contemporary issues in criminal justice policy: Policy proposals from the American society of criminology conference . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Greenwood, P. W. (2006). Changing lives: Delinquency prevention as crime-control policy . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Jacobson, M. (2006). Reversing the punitive turn: The Limits and promise of current research. Criminology & Public Policy, 5 , 277–284.

Kovandzic, T. V., Sloan, J. J., III, & Vieraitis, L. M. (2004). “Striking out” as crime reduction policy: The impact of “three strikes” laws on crime rates in US cities. Justice Quarterly, 21 , 207–239.

Lab, S. P. (2010). Crime prevention: Approaches, practices and evaluations (7th ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.

Rosoff, S. M., Pontell, H. N., & Tillman, R. (2010). Profit without honor: White collar crime and the looting of America (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Walker, S. (2011). Sense and nonsense about crime, drugs, and communities: A policy guide (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Waller, I., & Welsh, B. C. (2007). Reducing crime by harnessing international best practices. In D. S. Eitzen (Ed.), Solutions to social problems: Lessons from other societies (pp. 208–216). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Welsh, B. C., & Farrington, D. P. (2007). Save children from a life of crime. Criminology & Public Policy, 6 (4), 871–879.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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24 ways to reduce crime in the world’s most violent cities

Violent crime is deeply entrenched in some developing countries, particularly in Latin America. Our experts offer these solutions to bringing down high rates

Treat violence as a public health concern: We need to use campaigns and technology to reach every child and family in these countries. We need to develop those tools to make sure that everybody feels important and cared for through parenting interventions, family interventions, wellbeing campaigns, and early childhood education. Anilena Mejia, research fellow, The University of Queensland , Brisbane, Australia

Localise programmes: During the 90s in Rio we had rates of homicide that would go beyond epidemic levels (over 100 per 100,000 citizens). It took a really costly but comprehensive programme in Brazil called Pronasci to tie up a lot of elements that were drivers of violence in the country, building local frameworks, gun-free zones and fostering civic culture to reduce violence, which has been the case in Bogotá, Medellín in Colombia and Santa Tecla in El Salvador. Natasha Leite de Moura, project adviser, public security programme, United Nations , Lima, Peru

Focus on hotspots: We’ve got scientific evidence that a focus on hotspots and ‘hot people’ can prevent or reduce violence. But we need also accompany this with other measures – urban upgrading, better urban planning, situational prevention – especially early childhood intervention. Robert Muggah, research director of Igarapé Institute , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the SecDev Foundation , Canada

Look at the whole picture: While people are aware that there are high levels of lethal violence in Brazil, this is often misrepresented by national and international media as a simple cops vs robbers dynamic – a misrepresentation that more often than not criminalises poverty. Much more work needs to be done on understanding the official and unofficial social, political and economic structures that sustain these high levels. Damian Platt, researcher, activist and author , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Create well-targeted programmes: If the goal is to reduce homicides, then programme selection should be located in hotspot areas and focused on the population group most likely to commit violence crimes, often young males between 10-29 years old. The risk factors for why these young men get involved in criminality also needs to be clearly diagnosed and complemented with a treatment plan that involves the family and community. Enrique Roig, director, citizen security, Creative Associates , Washington, DC

Focus on prevention: Prison populations are overflowing, crime is high and violence is a culture in South Africa. The focus needs to be on preventing the conditions that draw people into violent or criminal behaviour. In order to do this we need a systematic, integrated, coordinated approach combining the responsibilities of a wide range of state and non-state actors. Venessa Padayachee, national advocacy and lobbying manager, Nicro , Cape Town, South Africa

Avoid repressive policies: Many countries have approached the problem of violence from a crime and security angle, focusing their action on law-enforcement only. Unfortunate examples of this are the ‘mano dura’ tactics in Central America. While justice and police have an important role to play, repression only is counter-productive if not combined with development interventions that look at the drivers of violence, and tackle things like skills and education of youth, socio-economic inequalities, and access to communal services. Luigi De Martino, senior researcher, Small Arms Survey , Geneva

Be proactive: You have to systematically invest in protective factors. Supporting proactive community associations and schools to activate their involvement has also demonstrated positive results in places such as Cape Town, Chicago and New York. In addition, promoting links between neighbouring communities that adjoin each other is also important. John de Boer, senior policy adviser, United Nations University , Centre for Policy Research, Tokyo, Japan

Don’t forget about male violence: There are lots of interventions that are focused on women’s rights. These are noble. But the vast majority of killings I have seen around the world are by men on men. I think this needs to be addressed. The international community focuses a great deal on the impact of violence against women. If you address the male drivers of violence, you reduce the female harm of violence. Iain Overton, author, Gun Baby Gun , London

But treat male and female violence as the same issue: Male and female dimensions of violence are connected. We need to look at these issues comprehensively rather than a divide and conquer approach. Research has shown it is not just about single risk factors (i.e. being a male is a risk factor) that determines violence – rather it is the accumulation of risk factors that produce violence. John de Boer

Move away from the focus on poverty: Criminalising certain areas or groups makes it harder for people to actually coexist, and the emphasis on poverty is a misleading one. Latin America proves as long as history of studies that show poverty and violence do not have a direct correlation. Countries are overcoming extreme poverty and becoming more violent, so it is now part of our job to look beyond those solutions and what other factors may be driving those rates. Natasha Leite

Focus on gun control: Where there are no guns, there are no gun deaths. A simple and practical way to start impacting armed violence is to try to stem the flow of illegal guns. I believe in the gun control approach as a first step. Iain Overton

Understand that violence is going virtual: Cyberspace is a new domain for violence. This ranges from the use of social media to project force (videos showing assassinations, torture, threats), to recruit would-be members of extremist groups (digitally savvy marketing campaigns, online chat sites), for selling product (deep web), and also for more banal but no less important forms of intimidation and coercion (bullying). Violence is going virtual, and we need to get a much better handle on all of this. Robert Muggah

Find the balance between repression and prevention: Local experiences and efforts deal mainly with interpersonal aspects of violence. When illicit or transnational crime starts co-opting state forces, people stop trusting their security forces, governments and start focusing on private and personal security, stop using public spaces. So the idea is not create a system based entirely on repression or prevention, but to find that balance and incorporate rehabilitation and reintegration policies and funding into security strategies. Natasha Leite

Intervene early: We know that a better understanding of the drivers of violence is essential, and that starting interventions early (childhood - possibly even before kids are born at a pre-natal stage) is crucial. John de Boer

Learn from history: A lot of human rights violations of massive proportions in Brazil , such as slavery and dictatorship, were never really dealt within a transitional or reconciliation process. At the same time, the security forces are relying on structures that don’t make sense and foster competition and corruption. Natasha Leite

Keep in mind the impact of drugs: The global “war on drugs” is a massive driver of crime, violence and insecurity, not only in the Americas but increasingly globally. It is time for all international anti-violence development initiatives to take this on board. It still amazes me how much taboo there is around this issue, especially regarding the cocaine industry. Damian Platt

Target inequality: We need to address economic inequality which I believe is central to reducing crime and violence in the long run. We need universal provision of high quality childcare that is affordable for all, and to narrow the difference between the top-to-bottom earnings and rebuild the link between economic prosperity and wages. Vanessa Padayachee

Be aware of the link between organised crime and terrorism: My own take on the Zetas is that the lines that once separated organised crime from terrorism are increasingly blurred. That does not mean that they are the same actors, nor motivated by the same factors. However, there is an increasing convergence among some gangs and terrorists in terms of their methods. The Zetas have clearly appropriated terrorist tactics to pursue their motives. John de Boer

See violence as a priority: One thing that we need to do better at the UN is to better prepare peacekeeping, humanitarian, and development actors to ensure that their interventions reduce violence over the long-term by helping to move key reforms and structural changes forward. One key development would be a measurable and effective target within the SDG process to reduce violence. This needs to be a global priority. John de Boer

Raise awareness of improvised explosive devices (IEDs): Countries can be more active in the control of conventional munitions stockpiles, states and international bodies can mitigate the proliferation of IEDs. They can step up the sharing of information on IED events to enhance awareness of the threat and to inform national and international decision making. Luigi de Martino

Use non-violent language: In a nation that has a long history of violence, we need to teach non-violence and non-violent communication. In the work I do with young men coming out of gangs, teaching non-violent communication, conflict resolution and basic communication skills has been so powerful. Vanessa Padayachee

Remember the details: Too often development programmes are scattered across a wide geographic area and the indicators for success are based on development outcomes and not reducing violence. For example, a workforce development programme to employ young people in a middle-income neighbourhood should be quite different from a workforce development programme targeted at young men who have been in conflict with the law. The latter will require soft skills, cognitive behavioural therapy and trauma counselling in addition to the job component. Enrique Riog

Be smart: We believe that targeted investments in income de-concentration, primary and secondary education, early family support, and the rest can prevent violence but not if conducted in a blanket approach. We need to get smarter about how we allocate aid if we want to really have a meaningful impact on preventing and reducing violence. Robert Muggah

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How to Reduce Crime in Your Neighborhood

Last Updated: February 6, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Saul Jaeger, MS and by wikiHow staff writer, Eric McClure . Saul Jaeger is a Police Officer and Captain of the Mountain View, California Police Department (MVPD). Saul has over 17 years of experience as a patrol officer, field training officer, traffic officer, detective, hostage negotiator, and as the traffic unit’s sergeant and Public Information Officer for the MVPD. At the MVPD, in addition to commanding the Field Operations Division, Saul has also led the Communications Center (dispatch) and the Crisis Negotiation Team. He earned an MS in Emergency Services Management from the California State University, Long Beach in 2008 and a BS in Administration of Justice from the University of Phoenix in 2006. He also earned a Corporate Innovation LEAD Certificate from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 2018. There are 19 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 312,675 times.

There are plenty of easy steps that you can take to help make your community a better place. By building a relationship with your neighbors and your local police department, you’ll raise awareness and make it easier to enact change in your area. Just remember, you are not going to find success if you go out trying to fight crime yourself. The goal here is to build your community up to make it less welcoming for criminals, not to confront strangers or call the police every time you see something vaguely suspicious.

Get to know your neighbors.

• Criminals don’t like to be challenged. If a burglar is driving around looking for houses to break into, they’re going to be put-off if they see a bunch of folks in the neighborhood chatting it up.
• There’s a strategy you can use here known as positive loitering. The premise is that if you hang out outside with people in the neighborhood, you can keep your eyes peeled and show criminals that they aren’t welcome. [2] X Research source
• The occasional block party or garage sale are a great way to get to know your neighbors!

Start a neighborhood watch.

• The first goal of a neighborhood watch is to report crime and suspicious activity. Outside of that, you could institute citizen patrols, clean up vandalism, or organize youth events.
• Remind everyone to stay reasonably cautious and not to get paranoid about crime. Some watch groups have resulted in racism and hysteria, because people started feeling like they were the cops. Keep everyone cool to make sure things don’t get carried away. [4] X Trustworthy Source PubMed Central Journal archive from the U.S. National Institutes of Health Go to source

Get to know your local police department.

Report suspicious activity when you see it.

• Don’t call 911 if there isn’t a crime taking place or the suspicious activity isn't an emergency or a crime in progress.
• For issues that are not so black and white if they constitute an emergency, check resources in your relevant area to see what issues they expected to be reported to 911. For example, in New York City, illegal marijuana smoking is an issue that they officially instruct citizens to call 911. [7] X Research source

Push local politicians to do more.

• You could ask them to tear down vacant properties in your area. There’s a lot of evidence that abandoned buildings are linked to higher crime rates. [10] X Research source
• If you don’t have streetlights, ask for them! Street lighting can dramatically lower crime.
• If you’ve noticed an uptick in problematic loitering or public drinking around local businesses, you could let your local representative know [11] X Research source

Keep your neighborhood clean.

• Cleaning up and painting over the graffiti in your neighborhood is a great way to make it look nicer.
• This is a phenomenon known as broken window theory. The premise is that small signs of decay—like broken windows—send a psychological message that law and order are not being enforced. It’s a hotly-debated idea, but there’s evidence that it has merit. [13] X Research source

Increase the number of cameras around your home.

Put up signage as a warning to criminals.

• You can throw a security company sign in your yard, even if you don’t have a security system installed.
• Even if you never got an official neighborhood watch off of the ground, you can still ask about putting the signs up! Criminals won’t know the difference.
• Consult your local government before nailing signs to electrical poles and such. In most cases they’re going to honor small requests like these.

Start a community garden and cultivate green spaces.

• When it comes to your hedges and bushes, make sure you trim them low enough so that you can see out of the window. Keep them small enough that a potential burglar won’t be able to hide themselves near a door and hide while they try to break in.

Give your time or money to local youth groups.

• This is also just a great way to make the world a better place. The more positivity you can inject into your community, the better you’re going to feel about your neighborhood.

Expert Q&A

• Don’t confront the subject if you see them actively committing a crime. You could be putting yourself in harm’s way if you do this. Just call emergency services and let the professionals handle the problem. [21] X Research source Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Be mindful and self-reflective before you call the cops on someone. When you call, report what you see and what they appear to be doing, not a speculation that can not be reasonably ascertained by observations. Racial profiling has been a huge problem when it comes to crime-prevention programs and neighborhood watch groups, so make sure you’re doing the right thing before you hit the send button to call the police. Somebody being a specific race is not a reason for you to be suspicious. [22] X Research source Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ Saul Jaeger, MS. Police Captain, Mountain View Police Department. Expert Interview. 21 February 2020.
• ↑ https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/ed/pdf/K12/policies-politiques/e/703A.pdf
• ↑ https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/Publications/NSA_NW_Manual.pdf
• ↑ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36214281/
• ↑ https://www.theiacp.org/news/blog-post/10-ways-community-members-can-engage-with-law-enforcement
• ↑ https://www.fitchburgwi.gov/906/Crime-Prevention-Tips-Resources
• ↑ https://oasas.ny.gov/cannabis
• ↑ https://www.justice.gov.nt.ca/en/going-to-court-as-a-witness-or-victim/
• ↑ https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/can-tearing-down-vacant-house-make-your-neighborhood-safer
• ↑ https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/186049.pdf
• ↑ https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/community-cleanup
• ↑ https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/
• ↑ https://www.justice.gov/jmd/political-activities
• ↑ https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2011/04/28/lets-move-grow-more-community-gardens
• ↑ https://www.useful-community-development.org/cleaning-up-your-neighborhood-park.html
• ↑ https://youth.gov/youth-topics/involving-youth-positive-youth-development
• ↑ https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/youth
• ↑ https://www.police.vic.gov.au/preventing-motor-vehicle-theft
• ↑ https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/race-discrimination/publications/know-your-rights-racial-discrimination-and-vilification

About This Article

To reduce crime in your neighborhood, get to know the usual happenings so you’re more likely to notice if something’s wrong. Remember to stay up-to-date on criminal activity in your area, and form a neighborhood watch so you and your neighbors can keep each other informed about any suspicious activity in the area. Finally, occupy high-crime areas en masse with your neighbors when you can to help push criminal activity out! Keep reading for tips on how celebrating together as a community can make for a stronger neighborhood! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Violent Crime Rates Are Surging. What Can Be Done To Reverse The Trend?

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Ronald Wright, a criminal justice expert and law professor at Wake Forest University, about why so many cities across the U.S. are experiencing a surge in violent crime.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Now, the president focused on violent crime because, as the mayor pointed out, it is up nationwide in many big cities. Why would that be? We've called Ronald Wright, a criminal justice expert and law professor at Wake Forest University. Good morning to you.

RONALD WRIGHT: Good morning.

INSKEEP: What kinds of crimes are up here, exactly?

WRIGHT: Homicides are up. Nonviolent crimes are down. And then violent crimes that are not homicides are close to steady - in some places, up a couple of percent, in a couple of other places, down a few percent.

INSKEEP: Is this reliable information? Because when we get into crime statistics, we often learn that the federal government doesn't have the precision that we might wish to have with crime stats.

WRIGHT: They're reasonably reliable. But they're not complete. So we still at this point are just looking at reports, early reports, from a number of cities. But we won't get the complete national picture for months and months, which is remarkable when you think about it.

INSKEEP: And I don't want to suggest at all that an increase in homicides is not important. Obviously, it's exceptionally important in the lives of people who are directly affected. But I want to keep it in perspective. Are we still relatively near historic lows in crime? Or have things significantly moved up?

WRIGHT: Homicides have significantly moved up from recent years. So this takes us back to levels - homicide rates that we would have seen in the late '90s. But it would have been much higher than this as a matter of homicide rates in the early '90s. And as for the other crimes, we're still way down at the lower levels that we had been moving toward over the last couple of decades.

INSKEEP: So we're focused here on homicides. We're focused, I think, in many cases, on gun homicides. That's certainly what the president was focused on yesterday, looking at different ways to reduce the availability of firearms within the rather limited power the federal government seems to have. Is the availability of firearms a clear factor in this increase in homicides?

WRIGHT: Yeah, I think it is because we have a larger group of people who purchased firearms during the pandemic. It's not just the usual sales that ebb and flow. But we do have a larger group of people holding firearms. And lots of the crime increase that we're seeing, particularly in homicide, is gun related. So I think availability of guns is part of the problem. These are always multipart problems.

INSKEEP: Wasn't there an enormous increase in gun sales during 2020, the time of the pandemic and also of the election?

WRIGHT: Yeah. That's right. And it's not just the usual people buying guns because they're anxious about the, you know, political state of the nation. But this was an increase in the number of people buying, not just the number of guns. So this wasn't just people adding to their existing stockpile of guns. But this was new gun owners coming on.

INSKEEP: Well, that is particularly interesting because I'm mindful - and tell me if I'm wrong about this. I'm mindful that if you have a gun in the house, I mean, there's just a chance it's going to be used. The availability of a gun increases the chance that someone in that household at some point is going to use it. Is that a factor here?

WRIGHT: It is. If you don't follow proper storage procedures then bringing a gun into the house brings more risk with it into the house, unless you are doing the things that you need to do to store the gun properly.

INSKEEP: And we have in this case, from what you're describing, people who are new gun owners.

WRIGHT: Yes. That's right.

INSKEEP: So what would you do about this problem, this rise in homicides, if it were up to you?

WRIGHT: I would be focused on the local response because crime - public safety and crime is a state and local issue before it is a federal issue. So at the federal government level, what you can do is support local governments, listen and provide them resources, provide them better data so that they're not flying blind. They can see what they're doing and compare it to other places. But the response has to be local rather than federal.

INSKEEP: And what could local communities, local police do?

WRIGHT: Well, ultimately, what they're aiming for is a relationship of trust with the community. You don't solve crimes if you show up, there's a shooting, and you ask what happened and everybody mistrusts the police and they won't answer your questions. So you've got to create that relationship of trust.

INSKEEP: Ronald Wright, criminal justice expert and law professor at Wake Forest University. Thanks so much, sir.

WRIGHT: Thank you.

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10 Things to Know about Combating Violence in America

“With violent crime on the rise, we must invest in more police.” You’ve probably heard this recently from the media, elected officials, and some people directly impacted by gun violence. The pain of communities facing the threat of interpersonal gun violence demands that something be done to protect families, create safer streets, and save lives. If you combine that desperate need for solutions with a society where police have been legitimized as the first, last, and only resort, it’s easy to understand why people would clamor for more police right now.

While this may seem like a logical response, the facts show more policing is not the answer. Let’s explain why, and what alternatives communities can invest in to help effectively reduce violence.

The 10 points below unpack why prioritizing alternative responses to harm and violence is more effective and longer lasting than shoveling even more money into policing, and without the increase in racial injustice and harassment that comes with more officers. These points will also help you see right through cynics who cry “law and order!” for reasons that have nothing to do with actually addressing violence or repairing communities.

1. There are many effective approaches to reducing violence that don’t involve police.

Investments in housing , health care , jobs programs , education , after school programs , gun control , environmental design , and violence interruption programs have all been proven to quantifiably reduce violence. For example, one study found that every additional community-focused nonprofit in a medium-sized city leads to a 12 percent reduction in homicide rate, a 10 percent reduction in violent crime, and a 7 percent reduction in property crime. In Philadelphia, simply cleaning vacant lots in neighborhoods below the poverty line resulted in a 29 percent decrease in gun assaults.

2. Policing is not especially effective at reducing violence.

Police typically deal with violence only after someone has already been killed, injured, or otherwise harmed. Even then, many police departments are alarmingly ineffective at holding anyone accountable for violent crimes, as reflected by low “clearance rates” (whether any suspect is ever charged for a reported crime). For example, a recent study found Chicago has a homicide clearance rate of about 40 percent , which drops to just 22 percent when the victim is African American.

3. Investing so heavily in policing is not evidence-based.

The uniquely American dependence on police as first responders to every social problem is the product of decades of reliance on antiquated and disproven theories about safety, the fearmongering of powerful police lobbyists , and policymakers’ racist support for devastatingly harmful militarized policing in communities of color . Policing as a one-size-fits-all solution to violence is simply a bad and dangerous policy choice made by elected officials — one they now have a responsibility to correct.

4. There is no connection between violence and police budgets.

America has steadily increased police funding year-over-year regardless of whether crime rates are going up or down . There is no documented connection between the two. In 2020, for example, Houston, Nashville, Tulsa, and Fresno all increased their police budgets — and all saw increased homicides. Most experts believe the recent increase in homicides in some cities is due to the pandemic, economic stress, unprecedented gun sales, and the defunding of community services — not a lack of resources for police.

5. There is a connection between violence and defunding social services.

As noted above, community investments have proven effective at reducing violence, and the converse is also true: Underfunding and defunding these supports for decades in communities of color has a deeply destabilizing effect that increases the likelihood of homicide , violence, and other crime.

6. Violence interruption programs show extraordinary promise during moments of heightened interpersonal violence.

In addition to long-term investments in social infrastructure, “violence interruption programs” — community-driven interventions to prevent or peacefully resolve conflict — are proving remarkably effective. For example, in Baltimore, directly impacted staff and volunteers of the Safe Streets Program engage in conflict resolution and connect people to services and resources. Since last June alone, the group has peacefully resolved over 400 conflicts without police, 70 percent of which involved a gun.

7. Most communities are still safer than they have ever been in modern history.

While any and all loss of life to violence is tragic and unacceptable, elected officials who are charged with crafting sensible policy would be wise to keep some long-term perspective in mind. In 1980, there was an average of 10.2 murders per 100,000 people nationwide; in 1991 it was 9.8. In 2020 there was an average of 6.5 murders. In recent months, although homicides in particular have ticked up , overall violent crime continues to fall or remain near all-time lows . For example, in New York City, violent crime overall is currently down and homicides down 2.4 percent compared to the same time last year.

8. Many more police officers could focus on violent crime without increasing police budgets or adding officers.

The data show officers spend more than one-third of their time responding to non-criminal calls, and about 80 percent of the arrests they make are for low-level and non-serious offenses like “disorderly conduct” and substance use violations. Just 5 percent of arrests and 4 percent of police time are spent on the most serious forms of interpersonal harm. This focus on low-level arrests fuels racial injustice , harms families , and sows distrust . It also means police departments are spending a fraction of their enormous budgets on investigating violent crimes. Starting today, mayors and police chiefs could follow the lead of other cities that have prohibited officers from focusing on some low-level offenses, and shift more officers and resources into investigating homicides and violence, while investing new dollars in non-police alternatives that will actually address the root causes of violence.

9. Violence is a complex public health problem with numerous interconnected causes.

Violence is caused by many different things , including poverty, alcohol, guns, interpersonal conflict, unmet mental health and social needs, juvenile trauma, and more. It is no wonder then that relying on a single approach — policing — has not worked in the past and is not going to work to meet the moment now.

10. We know what works to build safe and healthy communities.

Reducing violence is difficult and takes time, but the solutions are not mysterious. To see them in action, just look at a nearby affluent (likely majority white) neighborhood or community. You’re likely to find a neighborhood where people have stable, well-paying jobs and access to well-funded public services, experience little violence, and have a fairly small police force that responds only when it is wanted. Instead of fully and equitably funding all these same approaches in low-income communities and communities of color, we overfund police year after year after year.

This is a critical moment to decide which path we are going to take to combat violence. Are we going to continue the racist, harmful, and dangerous status quo of endlessly cutting blank checks for police while neglecting proven alternatives? Or will we finally decide to fully invest in a more effective multi-pronged approach to public safety and community health?

As you are reading this article, there is a good chance that your city leaders are debating whether to increase their police department budgets instead of spending those dollars on violence interruption programs, affordable housing, or recreation centers. They are likely weighing decisions about how to spend billions of dollars in new federal funding that can either be allocated to police or to alternatives like mental health care services.

You can make a difference by calling or emailing your mayor and council members today and asking them to prioritize alternatives to police.

Learn More About the Issues on This Page

• Criminal Law Reform
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• Racial Justice
• Reforming Police

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We have solutions to crime. We just need to scale them

Spark Inside is licensing its programmes to other charities working in prisons. Image:  Andy Aitchison/Spark Inside

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Baillie Aaron

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Economic Progress is affecting economies, industries and global issues

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Stay up to date:, economic progress.

Crime and violence are woven into our social fabric. They top every politician’s priority list, make daily newspaper headlines, and cause tremendous harm to society.

We already have solutions to these problems. Around the world, we are seeing pockets of innovation in reducing violence and crime. Countries such as Brazil, Scotland and the US are leading the way by approaching criminal justice radically differently.

Brazil is notorious for its violent and riot-fuelled jails. Its reoffending rate sits at 70%, and it has the third highest prison population in the world.

However, a national non-profit organization, the Brazilian Fraternity of Assistance to the Convicted (APAC) , is changing that by running prisons focused on humanity, responsibility and trust. At APAC-run prisons, prisoners study, participate in recreational activities and eat healthy meals in clean, spacious facilities. At its best, the reoffending rate in APAC prisons is one tenth of the national average, at just 7%.

Across the Atlantic, the Scottish city of Glasgow was known as the murder capital of Europe, before the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) was established. The VRU reframed the violence epidemic as a public health issue, bringing together multiple agencies from beyond the criminal justice system – health, education and social work – to tackle the root causes of violent crime. In Glasgow’s case, these were poverty, inequality, and addiction. As a result, recorded crime in Scotland is at a 40-year low.

In the US, a country with over 2.3 million people behind bars, an evidence-based policy approach called Justice Reinvestment is gaining traction in several states. Officials in Pennsylvania are shrinking the budget for prisons and reinvesting the savings in education, health, housing, addiction and mental health support to tackle the drivers of crime. Early results show that in states taking a justice reinvestment approach, total recidivism and the overall crime rate is reducing.

Despite their strong track records, these innovative interventions remain small-scale and on the margins of social justice reforms. Meanwhile, violence and crime remain persistent global problems.

How do we scale these effective, local solutions, in order to achieve social justice, and ensure that we are improving society for everyone, around the world?

One approach has been to create global non-profit organizations to deliver services internationally. In recent years, this organizational structure has been criticised for losing touch with local needs, and therefore delivering less effective services, with one-size-fits-all programming.

So, how do interventions remain locally-responsive, while driving forwards global scale to maximise impact for all? A solution has emerged, derived from corporate models for expansion, which is known as social replication.

What is social replication?

Social replication is a means of enabling non-profit service delivery organizations to scale their impact beyond their direct work, through partners.

The methods range from tightly controlled franchising, through to loosely controlled open-source dissemination. The grounding premise is that, while local organizations and communities are the experts in what it is that they need to flourish, many innovations in the social sector have packaged components that can be brought in and adapted.

The advantage of social replication is that models proven to successfully reduce violence and crime in local contexts, could be expanded for global impact through pre-existing local organizations, which already have community traction, funding and infrastructure in place to deliver.

While the model has been proven with various types of social services, there is still a question of whether local justice interventions can scale globally in this way.

Spark Inside, a UK-based charity reducing reoffending and violence in prisons through professional coaching services, is seeking to find out.

Spark Inside

With a coaching model proven to work in London , Spark inside has been approached by organizations working in prisons across the world – from the US, to Morocco and Peru – interested in replicating its approach.

Spark Inside’s team was initially sceptical of the idea of pursuing social replication. It felt more comfortable thinking about expansion in a traditional way, building offices in other cities and creating a global NGO. But the associated infrastructural costs were high, and there was a concern that Spark Inside would lose its innovative edge.

The other alternative was to not expand at all, and remain a high quality, innovative local service – but with limited impact, and knowing that any other organization wishing to pursue a similar approach to coaching in prisons would need to start from scratch unnecessarily.

To provide the greatest benefit to the largest number of people, while retaining its innovative local edge, Spark Inside decided to try a new approach, known as social licensing.

After receiving expert consultancy from Spring Impact , Spark Inside is starting to license its programmes to other charities working in prisons. Licensees receive a comprehensive operational manual from Spark Inside covering aspects of delivery, from contacting prisons, through to recruiting coaches and evaluating results.

In exchange, they will pay a licensing fee to Spark Inside and agree to maintain certain aspects of the model to ensure quality control. Outside of those, licensees have the flexibility to tailor the programme to meet the needs of their participants, prison and culture.

Once Spark Inside has proven the concept of national scale, it will embark on licensing its models internationally. It aims to encourage other organizations proven to reduce violence and reoffending locally, to build towards a global impact.

Social replication in an era of growing inequality and crime

Alongside Globalisation 4.0, there is a question mark over whether our public institutions can withstand the changing nature of crime, violence and their causes, which include deepening social inequality.

The cost of failure is high: not only in terms of reduced safety and increased violence, but also economically. Each year $81 billion is spent on incarceration in the US alone.

It is clear that we can no longer afford to think exclusively locally when it comes to reducing crime and violence; nor is this an efficient or effective approach. It is not efficient to spend time and resources “reinventing the wheel” in communities around the world, when best practice already exists.

Let’s take advantage of the opportunities around us to scale local justice solutions, for global safety impact.

Author: Baillie Aaron is the founder and CEO of Spark Inside .

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More Police, Managed More Effectively, Really Can Reduce Crime

When a city applies moneyball methods to policing, it lowers the rate of offenses by an average of 10 percent.

Can simply adding more police officers to the streets, or changing the ways in which they operate, actually reduce the rate of crime? A report from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, What Caused the Crime Decline? , provides an answer to this question. Two specific approaches to policing really can bring down crime.

First, increasing numbers of police officers can reduce crime. Increased police in the 1990s brought down crime by about 5 percent (this could range from 0 to 10 percent). Police employment increased dramatically in the 1990s, rising 28 percent. One major contributor was the 1994 Crime Bill, which provided funding for 100,000 new local officers. A body of empirical research has found that simply having more officers on the streets, even if they are not arresting or stopping anyone, can be a crime deterrent.

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We also find that police techniques can be effective in reducing crime. Interestingly, the biggest impact has come from something that gets a lot less ink than controversial measures such as stop-and-frisk or the use of military equipment.

Credit the digital revolution. During the 1990s, police forces started using computers to target their efforts. The technique goes by the name CompStat. Part management tool, part geographical data-driven analysis, CompStat was developed in the 1980s to combat subway crime in New York City. Originally, it was no more complex than sticking pins into a subway map on the wall, looking for patterns. But it worked. Police commissioner Bill Bratton then implemented it full-scale into the NYPD in 1994. It then spread, in some form, to many big cities around the country.

We analyzed crime data from the 50 largest cities. Forty-one currently use some form of CompStat. We find that the introduction of CompStat is associated with a roughly 10 percent decrease in crime (this could vary from 5 to 15 percent). In other words, crime is about 10 percent lower in a city that uses a program like CompStat than in an otherwise identical city without it. The effect holds true for violent crime, property crime, and homicide.

CompStat, of course, varies city to city. And in some places it has faced criticism. In New York, for example, it is sometimes argued that CompStat can lead to overly aggressive policing, akin to stop-and-frisk. HBO’s “The Wire” highlighted the risk of officers “juking the stats” when utlitizing CompStat. But it is critical to understand that CompStat is not a proxy for any of these tactics that police use on the ground in neighborhoods. CompStat is about what happens inside police departments. The hallmarks of CompStat are its strong management and accountability techniques within a police department, as well as its reliance on data collection to identify crime patterns to then choose locations and tactics to deploy resources to break those patterns.

Adding more police officers, and adopting strong, proven management techniques, can actually reduce the rate of crime. Even their combined impact, though, accounts for only a fraction of the documented reductions. Changes in law enforcement are a key part of the larger puzzle, accelerating and reinforcing the other factors that combined to produce the historic drop in crime rates.

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Sample Essay on Rising Crime Rates

Posted by David S. Wills | Nov 21, 2022 | Model Essays | 0

There are many common IELTS topics that you frequently see in task 2 of the writing test, and one of those is the topic of crime. Today, we are going to look at a sample essay relating to this subject and I’ll point out some useful ideas in terms of vocabulary and structure.

Analysing the Question

Before you start any IELTS essay, you should spend a moment thinking about the question. This is important because sometimes they can be trickier than they initially appear.

Here’s our question for today:

In many countries, the level of crime is increasing and crimes are becoming more violent. Why do you think this is and what can be done about it?

Fortunately, this is not a difficult question. The meaning is pretty straightforward and I think most people could grasp what they need to do. Ultimately, you need to do two things:

• Say why crime is increasing in frequency and level of violence
• Suggest some solutions to this problem

This is what’s known as either a “ cause and solution essay ” or “problem and solution essay.” Either way, you have two parts – either a cause or a problem and then a solution to that problem.

It is important you don’t focus only on one part. Also, in this particular question, don’t overlook the fact that it’s about both rising crime levels and rising violence levels.

Generating Ideas

This isn’t the easiest question to answer. Actually, it took me a while to think of some good ideas for it because, to the best of my knowledge, crime (and especially violent crime) has actually been decreasing in recent decades! Look at this line graph:

Of course, that’s just for Western Europe, and in some parts of the world the opposite trend can be observed. Here, we can see that some places have, sadly, seen a rise in homicides (that means the same as murder):

Considering the question, I had to think creatively. In those places that I don’t really know about, what factors could have caused rising crime levels and in particular rising violent crime rates?

To answer questions like this, it’s not enough just to be good at English. You need to have a good general knowledge and that means you should read widely, listen to podcasts, watch the news, and become an informed world citizen.

I have a whole article on learning to generate great ideas for IELTS essays.

Structuring your Essay

When it comes to cause and solution essays, I typically structure them like this:

There may be other great ways to structure your essay, but this is my preference. It allows me to write sample answers quickly and effectively, putting forth my position as clearly as possible in a very short time.

Think about it: You have two things to write, so why not put one in each of your body paragraphs? Simple!

I will structure this essay as follows:

In this sort of essay, it can be hard to write an introduction and in particular an essay outline . That’s because you aren’t putting forth any opinion and instead you’re hinting at the ideas that you will explain later.

I want to make clear in my essay that this is not an easy situation to explain and that it will also be hard to fix! Don’t worry. You can be honest. It’s better to give a nuanced explanation than to simply say, “We need the government to solve it.” That is simplistic and lacks intelligence.

Finally, remember to include a conclusion that summarises your ideas without repeating them.

Vocabulary about Crime

I have a whole article on the IELTS topic of crime and punishment . It gives lots of vocabulary and even includes a helpful video that can make learning more interesting!

In this essay, I will use the following words and phrases:

Remember that you can always learn more crime-related vocabulary by searching on Google News or just reading the newspaper each day. I highly recommend that you check out websites such as BBC News and The Guardian . You will see a lot of articles about crime there.

Sample Band 9 Answer

In some parts of the world, crime rates are increasing and the types of crime are becoming more violent. This can be attributed to urbanisation and the deterioration of traditional values and, in order to fix it, societies will need to work to give people more opportunities.

Whilst crimes rates are plummeting in most parts of the world, in some places they are on the rise. Obviously, the reasons for this depend on the individual location, but generally it seems to happen because people are moving from traditional ways of living to big cities. The problem is that, in small communities, people have purpose and accountability. In other words, a young man would be known by all the people in his village and have a job to do in order to contribute to that society. However, when the village disbands and he goes to the big city, it is not easy to make a good living. He might become part of a gang or become addicted to drugs. Without accountability and in the comparatively anonymous environment of the big city, he could easily become engaged in desperate and violent crimes.

Fixing this sort of problem is never easy, but there are various approaches. Certainly, it helps to improve policing but perhaps the problem can be stopped at its root if people are given more education and opportunity. These people would likely not turn to crime if they were supported as part of a community. Again, this is not an easy thing to facilitate, but it is possible through different approaches. Ultimately, the aim needs to be maintaining social values and giving people a sense of responsibility and purpose. When people have these things, they are much less likely to engage in violent crimes.

In conclusion, there are myriad reasons for crime rates increasing but perhaps urbanisation and the loss of traditional values are to blame. Giving people purpose and making them accountable for their own actions could counteract this.

As I mentioned above, I felt surprised that this question talked about rising crime rates but it does make sense when you think that certain countries or parts of countries are indeed experiencing this problem. Thus, I tried to put my feelings forward with careful explanations.

You will see that my body paragraphs are quite complex. That’s because this is not a simple topic. I don’t feel it’s possible to get a band 9 for Task Response without explaining just how complex the causes and solutions to crime are. It is not an easy issue to discuss.

You will see that I’ve avoided any bizarre vocabulary. Long-term readers of this blog will know that such an approach is not helpful. The best thing is to use the right word, whatever that may be. Aim for accuracy rather than obscurity.

About The Author

David S. Wills

David S. Wills is the author of Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the 'Weird Cult' and the founder/editor of Beatdom literary journal. He lives and works in rural Cambodia and loves to travel. He has worked as an IELTS tutor since 2010, has completed both TEFL and CELTA courses, and has a certificate from Cambridge for Teaching Writing. David has worked in many different countries, and for several years designed a writing course for the University of Worcester. In 2018, he wrote the popular IELTS handbook, Grammar for IELTS Writing and he has since written two other books about IELTS. His other IELTS website is called IELTS Teaching.

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Essay 269 – The best way to reduce crime in society

Gt writing task 2 / essay sample # 269.

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Some people think that the best way to reduce crime in society is to give longer prison sentences to offenders. Others think that there are better alternatives to reduce crime.

Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Model Answer:

People remain deeply divided when it comes to their opinion on punishing offenders and decreasing crime in society. Many believe that the most useful tool for curbing crime in society is to punish criminals by sentencing them to longer periods, whereas others believe there are more effective instruments for reducing crime. This essay will discuss both views, but I believe a short prison sentence with active community service and education programmes for offenders are the most useful steps to beat crime.

The advocates of longer prison sentences believe that it effectively cuts the crime rate in society. They go on arguing that long term imprisonment is more effective in reducing crime since it keeps criminals away from society while offering convicts enough time to ponder on what they have done wrong and how they can become better citizens once they are out of prison. Moreover, the thought of going back to jail is a motivator to dissuade them from committing further crimes. Interestingly, not only them but people in their circle are also scared of violating laws in the future when longer prison sentences are in place. Thus, the threat of longer prison time will deter crimes in society.

Others, on the contrary, argue that there are far better measures to beat crimes in society. One of the most prominent alternatives would be engaging convicts in community services. It offers an opportunity for the criminals to observe the damage caused by their crime. In addition, community services also provide the offenders with a constructive means of repairing the damage brought forth by their offence. This, in turn, can evoke responsibility for their actions, thereby averting them from committing further offences. According to the Bureau of Crime statistics and research study, for example, community service is more effective than incarcerating criminals.

In my opinion, however, the best approach to reducing crime is short prison sentences and education programmes along with community services. This is because it enhances skills to compete in the labour market; consequently helping previously imprisoned persons lead a decent life. This, in turn, reduces recidivism. For example, a growing body of studies suggests that an education scheme with a short prison sentence reduces the crime rate substantially by decreasing recidivism.

In conclusion, there are far more effective ways to tackle crimes in society than longer prison sentences. However, short prison periods with an education scheme are the most effective instrument for reducing crimes.

One Comment to “Essay 269 – The best way to reduce crime in society”

Also, we can stop crime by creating job opportunities for those with abilities in different fields regadless of their educational qualification.

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The New Policing, Crime Control, and Harm Reduction

by Anthony A. Braga | July 2017

The “new policing,” as described by Professor Fagan, captures a concerning element of the slow drift of the police profession away from community problem-solving models of policing popularized during the 1980s and 1990s and towards more aggressive enforcement strategies over the last two decades. It is important to note here that the so-called new policing also has desirable elements that better position police departments to enhance public safety and security. The police should embrace an analytical approach to understanding crime patterns and trends. Crime is highly concentrated in small high-risk places, and committed by and against a small number of people who are at high-risk of being the victim of a crime or party to it (Braga, 2012). Police managers should also be held accountable for their performance in detecting and addressing these identifiable risks.

The new policing model unfortunately emphasizes increased law enforcement action over more nuanced prevention strategies that engage the community. One-dimensional and overly-broad police surveillance and enforcement strategies do little to change the underlying dynamics that drive serious urban violence and have generally not been found to be effective in controlling crime (e.g., see Braga et al., 2015). Indiscriminate police enforcement actions also contribute to mass incarceration problems that harm disadvantaged neighborhoods (Young and Petersilia, 2016). This is particularly true when such an approach is coupled with a “crime numbers game” managerial mindset that promotes yearly increases in arrest, summons, and investigatory stop actions as key performance measures (Eterno and Silverman, 2012). Indeed, Professor Fagan makes a strong case that aggressive enforcement strategies in the new policing may heighten racial and economic disparities and possibly reinforce segregation.

Fagan’s essay, however, does not focus on the kinds of crime control strategies that police executives could pursue in the new policing model that would help reduce harmful consequences on poor and disadvantaged neighborhoods. As suggested by former President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2015), police strategies that unintentionally violate civil rights, compromise police legitimacy, or undermine trust are counterproductive. This is precisely why they recommended that law enforcement agencies develop and adopt policies and strategies that reinforce the importance of community engagement in managing public safety. While community policing programs have not been found to be effective in reducing crime, they have been found to generate positive effects on citizen satisfaction, perceptions of disorder, and police legitimacy (Gill et al., 2014). Moreover, community engagement strategies implemented as part of community policing programs can provide important input to help focus problem-oriented policing, hot spots policing, and focused deterrence approaches, which do seem to reduce crime (Weisburd et al., 2010; Braga et al., 2014; Braga and Weisburd, 2012).

Developing close relationships with community members helps the police gather information about crime and disorder problems, understand the nature of these problems, and solve specific crimes. Community members can also help police prevent crime by contributing to improvements to the physical environment and through informal social control of high-risk people. In this way, police strategies focusing on high-risk people and high-risk places would cease to be a form of profiling and become a generator of community engagement projects (Braga, 2016). Indeed, a central idea in community policing is to engage residents so they can exert more control over dynamics that contribute to their own potential for victimization and, by doing so, influence neighborhood levels of crime (Skogan and Hartnett, 1997). Preventing crime by addressing underlying crime-producing situations reduces harm to potential victims as well as harm to would-be offenders by not relying solely on arrest and prosecution actions.

Community engagement in developing appropriately focused strategies would help to safeguard against indiscriminate and overly aggressive enforcement tactics and other inappropriate policing activities, which in turn erode the community’s trust and confidence in the police and inhibit cooperation. Collaborative partnerships between police and community members improve the transparency of law enforcement actions and provide residents with a much-needed voice in crime prevention work. Ongoing conversations with the community can ensure that day-to-day police-citizen interactions are conducted in a procedurally just manner that enhances community trust and compliance with the law (Tyler, 2006).

Community problem-solving strategies, rather than aggressive enforcement, should be the last prong of the new policing model. In the context of racial and economic segregation, the positive impacts of such a policy change could be profound. Reduced mobility driven by fears of undue police attention, financial burdens imposed by fines and other criminal justice system costs, employment and education limitations associated with criminal records, and other negative externalities experienced by residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods would diminish. Effective police-community partnerships could improve the connection of local residents with a range of government and non-profit resources that promote public safety by improving neighborhood conditions. Safer neighborhoods are more attractive to private businesses who can provide jobs and much needed goods and services to local residents. In this way, police departments could be key initiators of longer-lasting social and economic changes that undo the harms associated with racial and economic segregation.

The ideals of community policing have been around for a long time. Unfortunately, many police departments do not seem to be embracing these approaches with fidelity to the original principles (National Research Council, 2004). It is perhaps not surprising that even though community policing has been widely adopted, at least in principle, substantial conflict between police and the communities they serve continues to occur. It is high time that police departments reinvest in implementing community policing with a much more meaningful commitment to problem-solving and prevention-oriented approaches that emphasize the role of the public in helping set police priorities. By doing so, “new policing” strategies can be oriented towards reducing harm while controlling crime.

Braga, Anthony A. 2012. “High Crime Places, Times, and Offenders.” In The Oxford Handbook on Crime Prevention , edited by Brandon C. Welsh and David P. Farrington. New York: Oxford University Press.

Braga, Anthony A. 2016. “Better Policing Can Improve Legitimacy and Reduce Mass Incarceration.” Harvard Law Review Forum , 129 (7): 233 – 241.

Braga, Anthony A., Andrew V. Papachristos, and David M. Hureau. 2014. “The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Justice Quarterly , 31 (4): 633 – 663.

Braga, Anthony A. and David L. Weisburd. 2012. “The Effects of Focused Deterrence Strategies on Crime: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Evidence.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 49 (3): 323 – 358.

Braga, Anthony A., Brandon C. Welsh, and Cory Schnell. 2015. “Can Policing Disorder Reduce Crime? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , 52 (4): 567 – 588.

Eterno, John and Eli Silverman. 2012. The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation . New York: CRC Press.

Gill, Charlotte, David L. Weisburd, Cody Telep, Zoe Vitter and Trevor Bennett. 2014. “Community-Oriented Policing to Reduce Crime, Disorder and Fear and Increase Satisfaction and Legitimacy Among Citizens: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Experimental Criminology , 10 (4): 399–428.

National Research Council. 2004. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Committee to Review Research on Police Policy Practices . Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Skogan, Wesley and Susan Hartnett. 1997. Community Policing , Chicago Style. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tyler, Tom R. 2006. Why People Obey the Law: Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Compliance (rev. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Weisburd, David L., Cody Telep, Joshua Hinkle, and John Eck. 2010. “Is Problem Oriented Policing Effective in Reducing Crime and Disorder?” Criminology & Public Policy , 9 (1): 139–172.

Young, Kathryne M. and Joan Petersilia. 2016. “Keeping Track: Surveillance, Control, and the Expansion of the Carceral State.” Harvard Law Review , 129 (7): 1318 – 1360.

Anthony A. Braga is Distinguished Professor and Director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University’s College of Social Sciences and Humanities. 

More in Discussion 24: Policing and Segregation

Policing and Segregation

by Jeffrey A. Fagan

The Dynamics of Policing and Segregation by Race and Class

by Monica Bell

The New Policing, Crime Control, and Harm Reduction

by Anthony A. Braga

High Volume Stops and Violence Prevention

by Philip J. Cook

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Tackling the causes of crime, not sending more people to jail, is the only way to fight it

Emeritus professor of Criminology, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Ph.D. Candidate, Legal Studies, Carleton University

Disclosure statement

Irvin Waller made a donation to the federal Greens and Ontario NDP in 2023.

Jeffrey Bradley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Ottawa provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA-FR.

University of Ottawa and Carleton University provide funding as members of The Conversation CA.

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Canadians want to fight crime , but Conservative Party proposals to increase incarceration aren’t likely to work.

Read more: Pierre Poilievre's proposed mandatory minimum penalties will not reduce crime

Based on our analysis for the Canadian Centre for Safer Communities, there is a way to significantly reduce violent crime within the next five years. It requires becoming not “tough on crime,” but “smart on crime” before it happens.

This approach requires governments to invest in enough proven prevention measures to greatly reduce injuries, trauma and loss of life stemming from violent crime.

Cities like Glasgow in Scotland have demonstrated a 50 per cent reduction in violence in just three years by appointing a senior official to expand the use of proven programs.

The city’s community safety plan diagnosed the risk factors and focused proven prevention initiatives on those most vulnerable to violence.

The U.K. government is replicating the Glasgow model across the country and evaluating whether it’s working . The city of London has adopted the Glasgow model via its Office for Violence Reduction, and in four years has seen a 25 per cent reduction in homicides and robberies .

Horner recommendations

Thirty years ago, Bob Horner, a staunch Conservative and former RCMP officer, chaired a parliamentary committee on crime prevention in Canada. He was blunt: “If locking up those who violate the law contributed to safer societies, then the United States should be the safest country in the world.”

But Horner did not just criticize, he made recommendations on how to prevent crime. He correctly called for an official at a senior level to be solely tasked with putting effective prevention into action. Unfortunately, two decades later, there is still no such senior official responsible for reducing violence and advocating for the smart investments needed to do so.

Horner also called for an annual investment in crime prevention equivalent to five per cent of the expenditures spent on policing and criminal justice. No government in Canada has reached this modest target.

Instead, a rising $18 billion is spent on policing annually and another $6 billion on prisons as violent crime ticks back up .

Both the Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper governments allocated the equivalent of one per cent of their federal policing and prison expenditures to a strategy that consisted of little more than small, short-term crime prevention projects unlikely to influence national rates of violence.

Public Safety Canada’s own evaluation of its national crime prevention strategy recognizes two challenges: First, the work of crime prevention is split between two departmental branches — emergency management and crime prevention. Second, it lacks the technological infrastructure to monitor and learn from the results of programs aimed at preventing crime.

Public Safety Canada’s annual spending on expanding proven prevention programs that tackle the causes of crime are woefully short of the equivalent of five per cent of its annual expenditures for the RCMP and Corrections Canada. Not surprisingly, Public Safety’s departmental plan shows it does not meet its own targets for reducing crime nationally.

Preventing violence

We have stronger evidence today than in 1993 on what prevents violent crime before it happens. That evidence is publicly available from various sources, including the United States Justice Department’s Crime Solutions platform.

As part of our analysis , we examined Crime Solutions and several similar platforms to explain to decision-makers how these programs are proven to stop violence and how to implement them.

Public Safety Canada has a crime prevention inventory based on results from some of its own short-term prevention projects, and illustrates the savings in tax dollars. The U.K., meantime, is spending $350 million over the next 10 years just to share their effective prevention strategies .

Key components of these proven solutions include:

• Hiring and training social workers and mentors to reach out to young men prone to involvement in violence and to assist with trauma;

• Recruiting case workers to join surgeons in hospital emergency rooms to ensure that victims of violence do not make repeat appearances ;

• Helping young men with problem-solving skills and emotional regulation to control the anger that can lead to injuries to others;

• Providing opportunities for job training , mentoring and jobs in areas where the violence originates;

• Participation in courses that prevent sexual violence by shifting social norms about consent in schools and encouraging students to take action as bystanders at universities .

Community safety planning

Ontario changed the name of its policing law in 2019 to the Community Safety and Policing Act with a new section that requires municipalities to develop community safety and well-being plans.

Success depends on help from professionals, such as the Canadian Centre for Safer Communities , to identify strategies that will tackle the risk factors that contribute to crime. Efforts must be focused on getting measurable reductions in crime, such as a decrease in police reports and fewer injured victims entering hospitals.

The federal government must accelerate this change in approach by appointing a senior official for violence prevention. Ottawa must also develop professional community safety planners, raise awareness nationally about proven solutions and provide tools to achieve and track results.

Smart investing of $1 billion a year in prevention by all orders of government — or the equivalent of five per cent of the billions spent on policing and punishment — would significantly reduce injuries, trauma and lives lost while protecting citizens.

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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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Does Nothing Stop a Bullet Like a Job? The Effects of Income on Crime

Do jobs and income-transfer programs affect crime? The answer depends on why one is asking the question, which shapes what one means by “crime.” Many studies focus on understanding why overall crime rates vary across people, places, and time; since 80% of all crimes are property offenses, that’s what this type of research typically explains. But if the goal is to understand what to do about the crime problem, the focus will instead be on serious violent crimes, which account for the majority of the social costs of crime. The best available evidence suggests that policies that reduce economic desperation reduce property crime (and hence overall crime rates) but have little systematic relationship to violent crime. The difference in impacts surely stems in large part from the fact that most violent crimes, including murder, are not crimes of profit but rather crimes of passion – including rage. Policies to alleviate material hardship, as important and useful as those are for improving people’s lives and well-being, are not by themselves sufficient to also substantially alleviate the burden of crime on society.

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Some people think that the best way to reduce crime is to give longer prison sentences. Others, however, believe there are better alternative ways of reducing crimes. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

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IELTS Writing Task 2

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Some people think that the best way to reduce crime is to give longer prison sentences. Others, however, believe there are better alternative ways of reducing crime. Discuss both views and give your opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

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Model essay #1:, some people think that the best way to reduce crime is to give longer prison sentences. others, however, believe there are better alternative ways of reducing crime..

There are different opinions about how to reduce crime. Some people believe that giving longer prison sentences is the best way to achieve this, while others argue that there are better alternative methods. In my opinion, while longer prison sentences may deter some individuals from committing crimes, alternative approaches such as education and rehabilitation are more effective in reducing crime in the long run.

Those who advocate for longer prison sentences argue that harsher punishments act as a deterrent, dissuading potential offenders from engaging in criminal activities. They believe that the fear of spending a significant amount of time in prison will discourage individuals from breaking the law. However, research has shown that the threat of punishment alone is not always effective in preventing crime. Many individuals who commit offenses do not consider the potential consequences of their actions in the heat of the moment.

On the other hand, proponents of alternative methods argue that addressing the root causes of criminal behavior is essential for reducing crime. By investing in education and providing opportunities for skill development and employment, individuals are less likely to turn to illegal activities. Moreover, rehabilitation programs within the prison system can help offenders reintegrate into society as law-abiding citizens, reducing the likelihood of reoffending.

In my view, while longer prison sentences may serve as a temporary deterrent, they do not address the underlying issues that lead individuals to commit crimes. By focusing on education, skill-building, and rehabilitation, society can address the root causes of criminal behavior and ultimately reduce crime rates in a more sustainable manner.

In conclusion, while longer prison sentences may seem like a straightforward solution to reducing crime, alternative approaches such as education and rehabilitation are more effective in the long term. By addressing the root causes of criminal behavior, society can create a safer and more productive environment for all individuals.

Model Essay #2:

Some people believe that the most effective way to reduce crime is by imposing longer prison sentences, while others argue that alternative methods are more suitable. In my opinion, giving longer prison sentences can act as a deterrent and prevent potential offenders from committing crimes, thus reducing criminal activities in society.

Those in favor of longer prison sentences argue that harsher punishments send a strong message to potential offenders and discourage them from engaging in criminal behavior. The fear of spending an extended period behind bars can serve as a powerful deterrent, particularly for individuals who are contemplating breaking the law. This approach aims to create a safer environment by keeping potential offenders off the streets and away from committing crimes.

On the other hand, proponents of alternative methods emphasize the importance of addressing the root causes of criminal behavior, such as poverty, lack of education, and limited employment opportunities. They argue that investing in education and rehabilitation programs can provide individuals with the necessary skills and support to lead law-abiding lives. While these alternative approaches are valuable, they may not provide immediate solutions to prevent crime in the short term.

In my view, while alternative methods are important for addressing the underlying issues that lead to criminal behavior, longer prison sentences play a crucial role in deterring potential offenders and reducing crime rates. By imposing stricter punishments, the justice system sends a clear message that criminal activities will not be tolerated, thus creating a safer environment for all members of society.

In conclusion, while alternative methods are valuable in addressing the root causes of crime, longer prison sentences serve as a powerful deterrent to potential offenders, thus reducing criminal activities and creating a safer society. It is essential to strike a balance between imposing stricter punishments and implementing rehabilitative measures to effectively combat crime in society.

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An Engineering Experiment to Cool the Earth

A new technology is attempting to brighten clouds and bounce some of the sun’s rays back into space..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Katrin Bennhold. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

After failing for decades to cut carbon emissions enough to stop the planet from dangerously overheating, scientists are increasingly looking at backup measures, some that would fight the warming by intervening in the climate itself. Today, my colleague Christopher Flavelle on the efforts to engineer our way out of the climate crisis.

It’s Friday, April 5.

So, Chris, you’ve been covering climate change for a while, but recently you’ve been focused on a very special project. Tell us about this.

Yeah, two things have been happening in climate change recently that are really important. Number one, records have been falling at alarming rates. Last year was, again, the hottest year on record. Much the world surpassed the important threshold of 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. So the world is getting warmer at an alarming rate.

At the same time, emissions aren’t falling. The message of the last generation has been, we need to cut emissions really to almost zero by the end of this century. And in fact, the reverse is happening. Emissions are continuing to rise.

At the same time, the number and characteristics of weather disasters have become really alarming. So the effects of that warming have become really clear. And it’s clear that the world is struggling to adapt to those effects.

So the other thing that’s happening at a high level is there’s more research and more consideration of OK, what if we can’t cut emissions fast enough? What if we’re going to have this really severe degree of warming? Can we do something else, maybe temporarily, to buffer those effects? And that’s led to this question of, what kinds of changes can we make deliberately to the atmosphere, to the environment that will maybe produce some sort of artificial cooling in the meantime?

So earlier this week I was able to watch, as scientists did, the first outdoor tests in the US on a technology that will aim to do just that. It’s called marine cloud brightening.

So what is this idea of brightening the clouds? Where did it originally come from?

So everyone I talked to pointed back to one really important moment in 1990 when a British physicist named John Latham was taking a hike in Wales with his young son. And they were looking out at the clouds over the Irish Sea.

And as Dr. Latham later told it, his son asked him, “Hey, why are clouds bright?” And Dr. Latham said, “Well, because they reflect sun right back in the sky.” And his son said, “So they’re like soggy mirrors.”

And Dr. Latham went on to write a letter in 1990 that was published in the Journal Nature, saying, you know what, if we can deliberately manipulate these clouds, maybe we can make them more reflective and actually counteract the effects of global warming. That was the inception point for this idea, and it led to decades of research culminating in this week’s test.

So the idea is if you can make clouds more reflective, you can reflect more of the sun’s heat back into space. So it won’t get trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere in the first place.

Exactly. That’s what they’re trying to do.

That’s a very simple, and at the same time, a very powerful idea. I love actually that they were hiking in Wales. That’s where I am right now, and we sure have a lot of clouds here, rain clouds. But tell me more about what you saw at the testing site.

So this Tuesday, a little after 7:00 in the morning, I pulled up in a parking lot on a dock at the edge of Alameda.

I’m standing at the gangplank to the USS Hornet, a decommissioned aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay here for the first test in the US of a machine that was designed to try to brighten clouds, a way of maybe temporarily cooling the Earth.

And I made my way up one of the massive gangplanks and came in to find a cluster of some of the top atmospheric scientists in the world.

Have you met Sarah?

How do you do?

Hi, Rob. How are you?

Looking really excited. And they accompanied me out to the flight deck —

Here we are.

— of this aircraft carrier.

Pretty epic.

It’s pretty great.

Which was a bit like a party. They’d set up a little table on the side with some coffee and some sandwiches, and people were chatting and saying hi to each other. And I asked them why they were excited.

So I know a thousand of what you know, and I still find this exciting. You guys, walk me through. Is this like a big day for you or just like one more test?

No, this is a big day for me.

And they said this was actually a huge day in their research.

Just looking at it, going, yeah, this is the culmination of years of work, right?

Wow, and tell me about what exactly they were so excited about and what they were doing on the ship.

Yeah, the thing everyone was excited about was this machine set up at the far end of the flight deck of this aircraft carrier. It’s blue. It’s shiny. It looks a bit like a snow maker or maybe like a spotlight.

This machine is a sprayer. What it does is it sprays really, really, really small aerosol particles, in this case, smashed up sea salts, a long distance at just the right size and just the right volume. Because in theory, at some point, you could use this machine to change the size and number of the droplets in the clouds. You can make them brighter conceptually it’s possible. The question is, technologically, can we do it?

Yeah, the particles are coming out in a super concentrated there. So whatever’s coming out of that circle there is basically going to be huge by the time it gets to the cloud.

And so the goal with this test was they spent years building this sprayer that can use really high pressured air to smash salt particles into super small bits, about 1,700th the size of a human hair.

What they didn’t know, until this week, and they’re trying to find out right now, once you spray it, do those aerosols that are so finely tuned stay that size? In theory, they should.

What they don’t know is, things like wind and humidity and temperature could potentially cause them to coagulate, to regroup, which would throw the whole thing off. If the aerosols you’re shooting into clouds are too big, you can backfire the whole purpose. You can wreck what you’re trying to do because you make clouds less reflective, not more reflective.

So the whole goal of the experiment is, OK, can they make the spray just so, so that even in outdoor conditions, the aerosols that are so finely sized remain the size you want them to be. And that’s what they’re trying to find out.

And you watched the actual test of this. What did you see? What happened?

Those instruments are emitting a slight hum.

So operating the sprayer is not straightforward.

And they’re filling the tanks with the salt water that’ll be used to produce the mist.

There was somebody crouched on the control deck, the panel of instruments at the side of the sprayer. So I went over and tried to sit next to him and watch him as he turned a series of knobs and careful sequence.

OK. Yeah, everybody, we’re going to run some air. So the — ... We need two minutes here just to have power on this.

And after a series of tests to make sure the valves were clear —

OK, ear protection, please.

— finally the moment came, and he got an all clear over his walkie-talkie. And he turned on the water —

Water on, copy, over.

— and the air.

[COMPRESSOR ACTIVATING]

Since the sound of the compressor pushes pressurized air through the sprayer, it’s making a dull, throbbing sensation. You can feel it a little bit through the deck of the ship.

We all had ear protectors. And even with the ear protectors, it was really loud. And then you can almost feel the spray bursting out of this machine and watch it travel really hundreds of feet down the deck of the aircraft carrier.

OK, water off, fan off. Good job.

Awesome, guys, you’re done. Thank you. Excellent.

First test is done.

My first signal that things have gone well was I looked up when the spraying machine was turned off and saw some scientists high-fiving down the deck.

What’d you think?

It’s beautiful.

Is it what you thought it would be?

It’s better. And I’m optimistic that it will tell us a lot about what these things do. This made me really optimistic.

And the idea is to do several short bursts like that through the day?

And everyone seemed really excited that this thing they’d worked on for years was finally happening in this really important outdoor test.

OK, so it sounds like this test was a success.

Yeah, they stressed that they need a lot of time to really go over the results. They’ll be doing this test again and again in different weather conditions. But the initial reaction seemed positive. They seemed to think that the numbers they were getting were what they were hoping to see.

And so now the goal is, can they maintain the right size aerosols even in different conditions down the deck of this aircraft carrier? That’ll give them some confidence that if they decided one day to try and do this on the open ocean to actually brighten clouds, they’d have the ability to do it.

So, Chris, if all of this works, how and when do these researchers anticipate that this would actually be used?

Well, here’s a great example. In the month of February, a version of this testing was also happening in Australia, off the Coast of Australia, where researchers were testing whether marine cloud brightening could be used to cool the ocean just a little bit around the Great Barrier Reef.

Really high ocean temperatures are causing bleaching of that coral reef. The idea was, could they use marine cloud brightening to save some of those reefs from dying? And that’s probably a good idea of the fairly localized situation, where you could, in theory if you do it right, have a fairly quick degree of cooling that could maybe try to avert or mitigate something pretty acute like a heat wave or a stretch of warm weather that would kill coral. But the science is probably too new at this point to talk about the right situations to use it. Those conversations are all down the road as researchers look at these and other ideas for what they could do if things get really bad.

We’ll be right back.

So, Chris, when I think about solutions to climate change, it usually involves these very hard things we need to do, like, change the way we live, the way we drive, what we eat. We need these international treaties. We need carbon taxes regulation. There’s lots of hard stuff, and we haven’t gotten that far.

But here you’ve just told me about this technology that, if it ends up working, could actually help cool the planet without anyone needing to do any of these hard things. It sounds great.

It does sound great. Now, we’ve got to say, first of all that whenever anybody working on this stuff talks about it, the first thing they say is this is not an alternative to reducing emissions. This is looking for ways to buy time as we try to cut emissions. There’s no way to really deal with climate change that doesn’t entail burning less fossil fuel and quickly.

But yes, in addition to brightening clouds, there’s other ways to try to bounce more sunlight back into space and other ideas. My colleague David Gelles wrote the first piece in our series looking the idea of removing carbon dioxide directly from the air, reversing our past emissions.

Other ideas include finding ways to suck up more of the CO2 in the oceans. There’s even ideas that my colleague Cara Buckley covered of could we build a sort of a giant parasol way out in space that would reflect or scatter more of the sunlight and prevent some of that sunlight from even reaching the Earth in the first place?

So there’s a huge number of ideas that until very recently seemed just so bizarre and/or so expensive and/or so dangerous that they were hardly worth pursuing seriously. And what’s changed really quickly in the last really year or two is all of a sudden those ideas have switched from being too wild to spend much time on to being so important because the situation is so dire that we can’t not look at them. And that’s the pivot that my team has been trying to cover.

And what characterizes all these initiatives is that rather than reducing our own emissions, we’re now trying to intervene in the climate in a proactive way, engineering the climate in a way.

Yes, and you hear the phrase geoengineering to describe these ideas collectively. And what people who research this will stress is, we’re already geoengineering. For more than a century, we’ve been geoengineering in the sense of putting climate changing pollution into the atmosphere that’s caused the planet to change by trapping more heat in the atmosphere. So the question is, do we want to deliberately geoengineer in a way that will ease that pressure rather than just making it worse?

Of course, there some controversy attached to this. And there are some pretty valid concerns about what the consequences might be if we keep on pursuing these ideas.

And why are they controversial?

Well, the first concern that you hear is this idea of moral hazard, that if people come to think that there are ways of addressing climate change that don’t require them to change their lifestyle or sacrifice conveniences or change the kinds of cars they drive or how their power is generated that they will lose interest in those tough changes. And the momentum, such as it is, towards cutting emissions will fade even more. But we don’t know yet whether politicians or governments or companies or just people will misuse these ideas to try to shirk the harder work of reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we emit.

Another really important argument you hear is, OK, side effects. Do we really know what would happen if we tried these things? Marine cloud brightening is one of those situations where there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns, as they say.

The known unknowns are, well, what would happen to things like ocean circulation? What would happen to precipitation? What would happen to the effect on the amount of energy reaching the ocean? What would happen to the fisheries industry? We don’t really know, and researchers are trying to find out, what those effects might be.

Then there are the unknown unknowns. If you start deliberately changing the cloud system, well, what else might happen that we haven’t anticipated? Do you move the location of where rainfall happens? Do you perhaps upset the monsoon cycle in India? Do you change the ability to grow food in parts of the world?

So if you do this at a bigger scale, the consequences of those potential side effects get more and more severe. And I talked to environmentalists who said that’s a real concern. You just can’t model those risks. And you, to a degree, by pursuing this, have to accept that risk is real and almost roll the dice.

And I guess much like climate change, where you have a group of countries that is most responsible for CO2 emissions that have caused the global warming and then a whole other group of countries that are probably suffering the worst consequences, even though they haven’t contributed to those emissions nearly as much, you might see a situation where this kind of interference with the climate at the initiative of some countries, presumably the wealthy countries that have that technology, would then have unintended consequences in countries that have no control over this. So that’s tricky.

That’s right. And that takes us to a third category of concerns, which is, OK, let’s assume that things are bad enough, that collectively societies want to take those risks of those side effects. Well, then who chooses, who decides when we get to that point? Is there even a mechanism that would allow you to get informed consent from everybody who’d be affected?

And if these would affect everybody, it’s hard to imagine how you would build a governance mechanism that would allow you to say, before we push the button, are we sure everybody is OK with this? The only counter to all of these concerns is compared to what? And this is the point that researchers make.

OK, this is dangerous. OK, it presents challenges, but compared to what? Their point is, don’t compare it to a situation where everything’s fine. Compare it to a situation we’re actually in, where the trajectory of global warming is so serious and isn’t looking like it’ll get better any time soon. Well, compared to those risks, how do these risks compare?

And the question is, would you rather have a world of basically uncontrolled warming? And we have an idea of what that brings, wildfires and drought and sea level rise and storms and diseases. Is that better than some of these more perhaps controlled risks associated with deliberately tinkering with the environment?

So it’s almost like pick your poison. What sort of threats do you want to embrace? And that’s the overwhelming dilemma that we face with this technology.

In a way, what it makes me think, is that these crazy initiatives that we’ve been hearing about from you are yes, they’re testament to our failure in a way to combat climate change so far, because they’re such a last resort, really, such as an act of desperation. But at the same time, it seems like this urgency has actually unleashed a lot of energy and money to tackle the problem.

Yeah, and there’s good news in this. The good news is, the research we’re talking about demonstrates the really amazing capacity of scientists to come up with new ideas, develop new technologies, test them quickly, and at least build some options.

So if there’s any rays of hope around climate change, it’s that humanity’s capacity to innovate and find new ideas is almost endless. So the question is not, are we pursuing the wrong research ideas? The question is, can we find good ideas fast enough to avert the really serious consequences of climate change that we’re already facing?

Chris, I just remember that scientist we heard in the tape from your visit. And she was so excited. And she said that she was really optimistic. I wonder, how are you feeling?

I think the frustration that you’ll hear among climate reporters, and I’m in this group, is that most people seem not to appreciate the severity of the situation that we’re in. There seems to be a view that we’re dealing with this. People are buying electric cars, and we’re getting more solar power and wind power. And things are going the right way, and this will be OK.

Things are not going the right way. Not only are we on the wrong trajectory in terms of emissions, we are so far away from being on the right trajectory for emissions that it’s hard to imagine us cutting emissions globally at a rate anywhere near fast enough to avoid almost unbearable consequences of global warming. So that’s the downside.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Here’s the good news, though. I do think, and this again I think is a view among other climate reporters, the capacity of scientists and of companies to change track and to find new products and apply new ideas is really impressive. It just doesn’t feel like there’s a connection yet between the urgency of the situation and the way people and companies and governments are responding.

And so I guess if the question is, how I feel about this? I am constantly amazed at the ingenuity of the researchers I come across in my job every day. What I don’t yet know about is whether or not society will move fast enough to adopt and apply those ideas before the conditions that we face from climate change become almost unbearable.

Well, Chris, on this cautiously optimistic note, thank you very much.

Here’s what else you need to know today. In a tense phone call with Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, President Biden called the airstrikes that killed seven aid workers this week unacceptable and threatened to condition future support for Israel on how it addresses concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It was the first time that Biden explicitly sought to leverage American aid to influence Israel’s conduct of the war against Hamas. But the White House stopped short of saying directly that the president would halt arms supplies or impose conditions on their use as some fellow Democrats have urged him to do.

And a centrist group called No Labels has abandoned its plans to run a presidential ticket in this year’s election after failing to recruit a candidate. The group, which last year said it raised $60 million, had planned to put forward what it called a bipartisan unity ticket in the event of a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump but in recent months suffered a string of rejections from prominent Republicans and Democrats who declined to run on its ticket.

Today’s episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Eric Krupke, Luke Vander Ploeg and Rachelle Bonja. It was edited by Patricia Willens, contains original music by Rowan Niemisto, Elisheba Ittoop, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

“The Daily” is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Yang, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, MJ Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schroeppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez, and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Special thanks to Lisa Tobin, Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, and Nina Lassam.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Katrin Bennhold. See you Monday.

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Hosted by Katrin Bennhold

Featuring Christopher Flavelle

Produced by Michael Simon Johnson ,  Eric Krupke ,  Luke Vander Ploeg and Rachelle Bonja

Edited by Patricia Willens

Original music by Rowan Niemisto ,  Elisheba Ittoop and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Decades of efforts to cut carbon emissions have failed to significantly slow the rate of global warming, so scientists are now turning to bolder approaches.

Christopher Flavelle, who writes about climate change for The Times, discusses efforts to engineer our way out of the climate crisis.

On today’s episode

Christopher Flavelle , who covers how the United States tries to adapt to the effects of climate change for The New York Times.

Background reading

Warming is getting worse. So they just tested a way to deflect the sun .

Can we engineer our way out of the climate crisis ?

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We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Katrin Bennhold is the Berlin bureau chief. A former Nieman fellow at Harvard University, she previously reported from London and Paris, covering a range of topics from the rise of populism to gender. More about Katrin Bennhold

Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter who writes about how the United States is trying to adapt to the effects of climate change. More about Christopher Flavelle

Luke Vander Ploeg is a senior producer on “The Daily” and a reporter for the National Desk covering the Midwest. More about Luke Vander Ploeg

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