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- Title
Evidence-Based Crime Prevention: Conclusions and Directions for a Safer Society.
- Authors
Welsh, Brandon C.; Farrington, David P.
- Abstract
In an evidence-based society, government crime prevention policy and local practice would be based on interventions with demonstrated effectiveness in preventing crime - using what works best. Systematic reviews are the most comprehensive method of assessing the effectiveness of crime prevention measures and, in an evidence-based society, they would be the source that governments would turn to for help in the development of policy. This article summarizes the main findings of a project of the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group to advance knowledge on what works to prevent crime for a wide range of interventions, organized around four important domains: at-risk children, offenders, victims, and high-crime places. The full conclusions are published in the forthcoming book Preventing Crime: What Works for Children, Offenders, Victims, and Places. The good news from this first wave of reviews is that most of the interventions are effective in pre- venting crime and, in many cases, produce sizeable effects. This includes social-skills training for children, cognitive-behavioural therapy and incarceration -based drug treatment for offenders, face-to-face restorative justice conferences involving victims and offenders, prevention of repeat residential burglary victimization, hot spots policing, closed-circuit television surveillance, and improved street lighting. Acting on the evidence from these systematic reviews could contribute to a safer society, both now and in the long run. Alongside the Campbell Collaboration effort to prepare and maintain systematic reviews for use by policy makers, practitioners, and the general public, a program of research into new crime prevention and intervention experiments needs to be initiated.
- Subjects
CANADA; CRIME prevention; VICTIMS; CRIMINAL justice system; SOCIAL policy; CRIME; SOCIAL problems
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice, 2005, Vol 47, Issue 2, p337
- ISSN
1707-7753
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3138/cjccj.47.2.337