Crime prevention

Crime prevention is the attempt to reduce victimization and to deter crime and criminals. It is applied specifically to efforts made by governments to reduce crime, enforce the law, and maintain criminal justice.

Overview
Crime prevention is any initiative or policy which reduces or eliminates the aggregate level of victimization or the risk of individual criminal participation. It includes government and community based programs to reduce the incidents of risk factors correlated with criminal participation and the rate of victimization, as well as efforts to change perceptions.

Criminologists such as Gottfredson, McKenzie, Eck, Farrington, Sherman, Waller and others have been at the forefront of analyzing what works to prevent crime. Prestigious commissions and research bodies, such as the World Health Organization, United Nations, the United States National Research Council, the UK Audit Commission and so on, have analyzed their and others' research on what lowers rates of interpersonal crime. They agree that governments must go beyond law enforcement and criminal justice to tackle the risk factors that cause crime because it is more cost effective and leads to greater social benefits than the standard ways of responding to crime. Interestingly, multiple opinion polls also confirm public support for investment in prevention. Waller uses these materials in Less Law, More Order to propose specific measures to reduce crime as well as a crime bill.

Some of the highlights of these authorities are set out below with some sources for further reading. The World Health Organization Guide (2004) complements the World Report on Violence and Health (2002) and the 2003 World Health Assembly Resolution 56-24 for governments to implement nine recommendations, which were:


 * 1) Create, implement and monitor a national action plan for violence prevention.
 * 2) Enhance capacity for collecting data on violence.
 * 3) Define priorities for, and support research on, the causes, consequences, costs and prevention of violence.
 * 4) Promote primary prevention responses.
 * 5) Strengthen responses for victims of violence.
 * 6) Integrate violence prevention into social and educational policies, and thereby promote gender and social equality.
 * 7) Increase collaboration and exchange of information on violence prevention.
 * 8) Promote and monitor adherence to international treaties, laws and other mechanisms to protect human rights.
 * 9) Seek practical, internationally agreed responses to the global drugs and global arms trade.

The authoritative commissions agree on the Role of Municipalities, because they are best able to organize the strategies to tackle the risk factors that cause crime. The European Forum for Urban Safety and the United States Conference of Mayors have stressed that municipalities must target the programs to meet the needs of youth at risk and women who are vulnerable to violence. To succeed, they need to establish a coalition of key agencies such as schools, job creation, social services, housing and law enforcement around a diagnosis. Impressive successful policies to reduce crime in cities such as Birmingham and Bogotá illustrate this as do the local neighborhood successes in Chicago.

Types
Primary prevention address individual and family level factors correlated with later criminal participation. Individual level factors such as attachment to school and involvement in pro-social activities decrease the probability of criminal involvement. Family level factors such as consistent parenting skills similarly reduce individual level risk. Risk factors are additive in nature. The greater the number of risk factors present the greater the risk of criminal involvement. In addition there are initiatives which seek to alter rates of crime at the community or aggregate level. For example, Larry Sherman from the University of Maryland in Policing Domestic Violence (1993) demonstrated that changing the policy of police response to domestic violence calls altered the probability of subsequent violence. Policing hot spots, areas of known criminal activity, decreases the number of criminal events reported to the police in those areas.

Secondary prevention uses techniques focusing on at risk situations such as youth who are dropping out of school or getting involved in gangs. It targets social programs and law enforcement at neighborhoods where crime rates are high. The use of secondary crime prevention in cities such as Birmingham and Bogotá have achieved large reductions in crime and violence. Programs that are focused on youth at risk have been shown to significantly reduce crime.

Tertiary prevention is used after a crime has occurred in order to prevent successive incidents. Such measures can be seen in the implementation of new security policies following acts of terrorism such the September 11, 2001 attacks.