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Prevention
Any organizational activity aimed at
keeping unlawful behavior from
occurring or keeping such behavior to a
minimum and avoiding intervention
 Prevention in general
 Primary, secondary, tertiary

Difficulty of evaluating
prevention
Correlational
 If nothing happens, was it because of
prevention. Tiger prevention
 Secular drift
 Resistance of politicians, public, etc.

Theories
Deterrence
 Biological explanations (genetics, health
care, diet)
 Psychological characteristics:
aggression, hyperactivity, impulsivity,
intelligence, moral development

Theories
Sociological
 Differential association, social/self
control
 Ecological
 Strain, opportunity, middle class
measuring rod
 Economics, relative deprivation

Theories

Conflict
Crime prevention study
University of Maryland
 Rated studies on such aspects as
 Control of other variables
 Statistical power
 Research design:
 Correlations, temporal sequence,
comparisons, random assignment and
comparisons

Study
Evaluation of history, chance factors,
selection bias
 Evaluated studies and examined results
 What works, what doesn’t work, what’s
promising

What doesn’t work
Gun buyback programs
 Community mobilization in high crime
inner city areas
 Home visits by police to couples after
domestic violence
 Individual and peer counseling of
students

What doesn’t work
DARE
 Summer jobs for at-risk youths
 School-based leisure time enrichment
programs
 Short term nonresidential training
programs

What doesn’t work
Neighborhood watch, esp. in high crime
areas where voluntary participation
needed
 Arrests of juveniles for minor offenses
(backfires)
 Arrests of unemployed suspects for
domestic assault

What doesn’t work
Increased raids on drug markets
 Storefront police officers
 Correctional boot camps
 Scared Straight
 Shock sentences
 Home detention and EM for low-risk
offenders

What doesn’t work
ISP
 General counseling of offenders
 Residential programs for juvenile
offenders in rural settings (outward
bound, etc)

What works
Frequent home visits to infants
 Preschool and weekly home visits by
teachers to children under 5
 Family therapy and parent training
about delinquent and at-risk
preadolescents

What works
Clarifying and communicating norms
about behavior through rules and
schoolwide initiatives (such as
antibullying campaigns) in schools
 Life Skills Training programs, teaching
such skills to youths as stress
management, problem-solving, selfcontrol

What works
Training in thinking skills to high-risk
youths
 Ex-offender job training for old males
 Nuisance abatement (threatening civil
action against landlords for not
addressing drug dealing and crime on
premises)

What works
Extra police patrols in high crime hot
spots
 Repeat offender units
 Arresting domestic abusers if they are
employed
 Incarceration of repeat offenders who
will continue to commit crimes

What works
Rehabilitation programs for offenders
using treatments appropriate to their
risk factors
 Therapeutic community programs in
prisons

What’s promising
Gang offender monitoring
 Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America
 Community based afterschool
recreation programs
 Battered women’s shelters seems to
work if the women take further steps
 School within schools

What’s promising
Job Corps
 Prison-based vocational education
programs in the federal prisons
 Dispersing inner-city public housing
residents to scattered suburban public
housing (reduced crime, high school
dropout and parental unemployment

What’s promising

Enterprise zones with tax-break
incentives in areas of high
unemployment
What’s promising: deterrence
2nd clerk in already robbed convenience
stores
 Redesigning layout of retail stores to
reduce shoplifting
 Training and management of bar staff
reduces tavern violence and accidents
 Metal detectors in schools reduce
weapon carrying (although not assaults)

What’s promising
Airport metal detectors
 Sky marshals
 Street closures, barricades and
rerouting
 Target hardening
 Problem-solving analysis addressed to
the specific crime situation

What’s promising
Arrests for carrying unauthorized
concealed weapons
 Community policing reduces community
perceptions of crime severity
 Polite Field interrogations of suspicious
persons
 Higher numbers of police officers (some
cities)

What’s promising
Drug courts
 Drug treatment in jails followed by urine
testing in the community
 Intensive supervision and aftercare of
minor juvenile offenses (runaways,
truants) reduced future offending for first
time offenders (but not multiple)

What’s promising
Intensive supervision and aftercare of
serious juvenile offenders
 Fines
 Day fines for technical violations
