The pursuit of crime reduction is not the exclusive preserve of action by governments. Rather, it requires finding a balance between the protective efforts of individual citizens (and households) and collective action by government, from the local to the national or federal level. For some types of crime, such as cross-border trafficking, it may require international collaboration between countries through entities such as the International Criminal Police Organization or the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Policies to reduce crime can be aimed at dissuading individuals from being willing to commit crime (individual prevention), at making crime more difficult to commit (social prevention), or at some combination of the two. Crime prevention programs may aim to discourage children and young people from becoming involved in offending, for example, while the installation of car alarms or door locks may harden targets and make theft less likely.

Approaches to crime reduction differ from country to country, as what constitutes a crime and is therefore subject to criminal law varies from place to place as well. Additionally, the pattern of crime within a country as well as the priority attached to reducing particular types of crime can also vary. In some countries, the relationship between religion and criminal law is more blurred than in Western democracies, and this influences both the substance of crime and the institutional methods for its control and reduction. It follows that variation is to be expected when considering such international contexts of crime reduction policy. This article focuses on crime reduction approaches, primarily crime reduction projects and programs, as well as the role of governmental agencies and citizens in reducing crime.

Role of Governmental Agencies

Responsibility for that part of crime reduction that is funded from public sources generally falls on a country’s criminal justice system. This involves a range of agencies including a court service, prosecution service, defense service, police force, offender management services, and judiciary. The service providers include public authorities, voluntary and charitable sector organizations, and commercially operated, profit-driven enterprises.

Beyond the criminal justice system, then, many other agencies have an important role to play in crime reduction. The provisions of education, housing, and social services, for example, may all have an important influence on individual attitudes to crime and on the propensity to offend.

The effectiveness of the agencies responsible for crime reduction policy depends on the quantity of resources made available to them, the clarity of policy objectives, the quality of cooperation among agencies, and the type of incentive structures embedded in the contracts for service delivery.

Role of Citizens

Irrespective of public provision, there remains a key role in crime reduction for the potential victims of crime not only from private citizens but also corporations and other organizations. There are many steps citizens can take in an effort to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime. This ranges from direct crime prevention measures such as locking the doors and windows of cars and houses to indirect strategies such as choosing safer routes when traveling or avoiding rowdy bars.

For corporations, fraud or theft of goods by employees can be just as significant a drain on a firm’s profits as theft by customers in a retail outlet. Reliance on public prevention is unlikely to be sufficient, so firms employ a wide range of methods to reduce their exposure to criminal loss, including employee monitoring, account auditing, security guards, patrols, private closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems, steel window shutters, alarms, and many more.

Crime Reduction Projects and Programs

In most countries, there will, at any instant, be a variety of initiatives and projects in operations designed to reduce particular types of crime or offending. Some of the crime reduction efforts may be based on legislative change, for example, a change to the structure of penalties for those convicted of offenses. Other efforts may be based on experimental interventions or projects that may be a part of a wider, concerted crime reduction program. Some of these projects, particularly those based on prevention and aimed at younger children, may be seeking longer-term effects on offending. Others, such as tackling substance abuse, may have much shorter horizons.

Individual Offending and Reoffending

There is a consensus that reducing individual offending has to take account of a variety of risk and protective factors. Interventions aimed at children and young people attempt to prevent these populations from becoming involved in offending in the first place and to that end target the following: poor behavioral control; deficits in social cognitive ability; emotional problems or distress; antisocial beliefs and attitudes; exposure to violence and conflict in the family; being a victim of abuse; low intelligence quotient; involvement with drugs, alcohol, or tobacco; and treating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or learning disorders.

The probability of an individual convicted of an offense to be reconvicted subsequently has been found to be associated with employment and accommodation status prior to previous imprisonment, drug use and criminal history, drug use since release, and receiving additional punishments while in prison. These findings underpin the host of projects aimed at preventing individuals from becoming offenders or reoffenders. Many have been evaluated in some way, but reliable international evidence derived from well-designed trials to test the effectiveness of such projects remains hard to find.

Situational Crime Prevention

Other approaches to crime prevention focus on reducing the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime, often via a mixture of private and public efforts. For example, the likelihood of a house being burgled may be reduced by steps taken both by the owner (e.g., having a dog, installing an alarm) and by the local government (e.g., funding police patrols, street CCTV systems). In the context of offenses taking place in international venues, such as with piracy, an international naval presence (funded by several national governments) can operate in conjunction with protective measures adopted on individual ships (e.g., more lookouts, anti-boarding devices).

Evaluating the effectiveness of these target-hardening measures in reducing crime is just as challenging as assessing the impact of offender-oriented prevention efforts. For example, installing a CCTV system in one parking lot in a small town may simply displace thefts from cars in that location to a nearby parking lot not covered by CCTV. This does not mean that CCTV systems are ineffective. It means that a wider view has to be taken when taking and assessing the impact of installations.

Contents of Programs

Crime reduction projects vary widely in their content. To give an indication, they may include the following:

initiatives with children and young people such as Sure Start programs, mentoring, and activity-based projects with a focus on an area such as sports, music (or other arts), and environmental work
target hardening, based on the design of products and spaces, the installation of alarms and CCTV, uses of automatic number plate recognition, gates, bolts and locks, and the provision of antipersonnel deterrence in the form of sprays, alarms, and whistles
increased numbers of police and/or the provision of more equipment such as Tasers, guns, communication devices, vehicles, forensic science, and crime scene investigation technology
heavier sentences in the form of larger fines, longer terms of imprisonment, and community service in an effort to provide greater deterrence and incapacitation effects
greater emphasis on offender rehabilitation in prison and probation settings
Measures to address substance abuse in an effort to break the link between alcohol misuse, abuse, and violence against the person and between drugs and acquisitive offenses
measures to reduce social deprivation or exclusion, such as Sure Start programs to improve life chances and reduce the likelihood of becoming an offender
measures to address mental illness, the incidence of which is much higher among offenders
offense-oriented activity such as efforts to intercept drug shipments or people trafficking

Measuring Crime Rates and the Impact of Crime Reduction Policy

There is rarely any completely reliable measure of the underlying volume of crime from which to assess change. Events recorded in police crime statistics will typically be an underestimate of crimes committed as many events will not be reported to the police or will not be recorded. A fall in the number of crimes as recorded by the police will therefore usually be an underestimate of a true reduction achieved.

A more reliable method is to conduct a largescale, properly randomized survey of the experience of crime as reported by respondents. A proportion reporting having experienced, say, a domestic burglary within the previous 12 months, is then used to make an estimate of the total number of burglaries that have taken place. A comparison of this year’s estimate with that of the previous year provides a measure of whether crime reduction has been achieved. Where similar surveys such as the International Crime Victimization Survey have been conducted across several countries, trends can be compared internationally. More often, however, the issue is whether a particular intervention or pilot has been effective. To estimate the size of crime reduction effects, well-designed project evaluations are required, ideally based on the kind of experimental trial methodology utilized by scientists, medical researchers, and others.

Evidence of Program Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness

In a 1997 study of intervention effectiveness by L. W. Sherman, findings included the following:

Community-based programs to address youth violence are more effective when they concentrate resources in high-risk areas, whereas programs for recreation, mentoring, and the advertising of crime prevention are ineffective. From family-based programs, there is strong evidence that intervening at the adolescent stage with high-risk youth in high crime areas is less effective than intervention earlier, at the preadolescent stage. Parent-training strategies have been shown to be effective in improving protective factors with these younger groups. There is evidence that school-based programs are effective in preventing crime if schools have sufficient organizational capacity. Programs for communicating and clarifying norms and for teaching self-control are effective.

Adult employment programs aimed at older male ex-offenders appear effective but do not work with youth violence. Investment in human capital, based on developing job skills, does not reduce crime. There is some evidence that place-based (situational) programs can be effective, but the scientific quality of these studies is rarely very high.
A number of police practices are effective in preventing crime, including putting extra police resources into high-crime hot spots, having police units that focus on serious repeat offenders, and proactive enforcement of drunk driving laws. By contrast, practices that are unlikely to prove effective include increased random patrols of beats, more rapid response to emergency calls, neighborhood watch, arrests of juveniles for minor offenses, arrest crackdowns at drug markets, and community policing that is not focused on known risk factors.
Offender management programs are generally effective when based on a therapeutic community treatment of drug-using offenders in prison; keeping frequent, serious offenders in prison; and structured rehabilitation programs reflecting risk factors. By contrast, programs shown to be ineffective include correctional military-style boot camps, fear-based approaches such as Scared Straight and shock probation, and community-based alternative sanctions that do not have a treatment element, such as intensive supervised probation, and community residential and juvenile wilderness programs.

Cost-Effectiveness

For purposes of comparing benefits from public spending on crime reduction with returns from other programs, such as defense or education, the analysis should be extended to account for costs. Assessing in monetary terms the costs and benefits of projects or interventions provides evidence on the rate of return on crime reduction projects for comparison with the returns from competing public investment programs.

References:

Dhiri, S. & Brand, S. (1999). Crime reduction programme: Analysis of costs and benefits: Guidance for evaluators. London, UK: Research, Development and Statistics Directorate Home Office.
Harper, G., & Chitty, C. (2004). Impact of corrections on reoffending: A review of “what works.” London, UK: Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate.
Ministry of Justice. (2013). The factors associated with proven re-offending following release from prison: Findings from Waves 1 to 3 of SPCR. London, UK: Ministry of Justice.
Sherman, L. W. (Ed.). (1997). Preventing crime: What works, what doesn’t, what’s promising: A report to the United States Congress. Washington, D.C.: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.

Websites

European Crime Prevention Network. Retrieved from http://www.eucpn.org
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Retrieved from http://www.unodc.org

International Approaches to Crime Reduction