What are the cost savings from preventing a typical burglary, robbery, assault, or even a criminal career? Who benefits from these savings? How often do the benefits from preventing crime or criminal behavior exceed the resources spent on preventing or controlling crime? Is it more cost-effective to invest in early childhood programs or juvenile boot camps to reduce criminal offending? These are some of the important questions that face policymakers in crime and justice today. Answering them is no easy task. Nevertheless, it is important to provide answers in order to ensure that the dollars devoted to crime reduction are spent as efficiently as possible. The principle aim of Costs and Benefits of Preventing Crime is to report on and assess the present state of knowledge on the monetary costs and benefits of crime prevention programs. Remarkably, this crucial topic has rarely been studied up to the present time. This book examines key methodological issues, reports on the most up-to-date research findings, discusses international policy perspectives, and presents an agenda for future research and policy development on the economic analysis of crime prevention. Throughout, it addresses the important question of how governments should be allocating scarce resources to make crime prevention policy and practice more effective and to produce the greatest economic benefits to society. The book brings together research and perspectives from across North America, Europe, and Australia.

Provides an integrated and holistic review of effective crime prevention programs, practices and policies, their theoretical grounding, the scientific evidence of their effectiveness, and the practical issues involved in their implementation at the community, state and national levels. The Prevention of Crime offers a comprehensive yet easy-to-understand overview of crime prevention strategies, such as programs and practices guided by life-course developmental theories of crime, situational crime prevention, law enforcement practices and policies, and correctional interventions. Containing the most up-to-date and accurate information about “what works” in crime prevention, this unique textbook introduces students to the public health and prevention science approaches to addressing the causes of crime, with a focus on prevention-oriented, community-based interventions. Throughout the text, the authors emphasize the importance of using high-quality scientific methodologies to identify effective and ineffective interventions that are based on theory, provide expert insights on practical issues relating to crime prevention in communities, and discuss how practitioners can effectively implement a range of crime prevention strategies. Incorporating recent advances and emerging research in the field, the second edition of The Prevention of Crime contains new and updated coverage of developments in criminological theory and evaluation methods, efforts to avoid and correct discriminatory crime prevention practices, understand how and why communities make adaptations to evidence-based interventions (EBI), strategies to investigate and communicate the impact of EBIs on different populations (including members of racial/ethnic minority groups), and more. This edition includes new links to relevant research and internet resources, additional real-world examples, updated crime statistics, and information on recent changes in EBI registries that list crime prevention interventions. Describes effective interventions that have been developed, tested, and used in the United States and internationally Demonstrates the relationship between criminological theories, research, and practice Discusses the practical challenges of implementing crime prevention strategies and policies Corrects misconceptions about widely-used prevention models shown to be ineffective in reducing crime Draws from cutting-edge conceptual frameworks and the latest research in prevention science and crime prevention Written to be accessible to students without formal training in research methods, The Prevention of Crime, Second Edition, is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate programs in criminology, criminal justice, and prevention science programs, as well as courses on psychology, public health, sociology, and social work.

Crime prevention policy and practice is, on the whole, far from objective. Instead of being based on scientific evidence, the crime policy agenda is seemingly driven by political ideology, anecdotal evidence and programme trends. Evidence-Based Crime Prevention seeks to change this by comprehensively and rigorously assessing the existing scientific knowledge on the effectiveness of crime prevention programmes internationally. Reviewing more than 600 scientific evaluations of programmes intended to prevent crime in settings such as families, schools, labour markets and communities, this book grades programmes on their scientific validity using the 'scientific methods scale'. This collection, which brings together contributions from leading researchers in the field of crime prevention, will provide policy-makers, researchers and community leaders with an understandable source of information about what works, what does not work and what is promising in preventing crime.

Cites successful examples of community-based policing.

A critical examination of the ways in which music is understood and exploited in American law enforcement and justice

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.

In Crime Prevention: Programs, Policies, and Practices, criminologists Steven E. Barkan and Michael Rocque present a well-rounded exploration of evidence-based policies, programs, and practices. Grounded in criminological theory and emphasizing the social, psychological, and biological roots of crime, this text presents current research, perspectives, and examples that capture the key crime prevention concepts students should understand, including the public health model for crime prevention. Highlighting the importance of applying theory to real-world solutions, the authors′ discussion of crime prevention strategies integrates theory and practice throughout the text.