Over the last 20 years crime prevention has evolved from defensive measures – locks, lights and landscapes – making it more difficult and less rewarding for offenders to commit their crimes to work with families, schools and communities to reduce the numbers of young people coming through as offenders. Over the same period there have been huge advances in security technology from intelligent surveillance cameras to facial recognition systems, chip and pin cards, property tagging, vehicle alarms and so on.
More recently the Community Safety Partnerships in England & Wales have been made responsible for resettlement services for prolific and persistent offenders; 100,000 offenders responsible for 50% of crime, 7,000 for a staggering 10%. Cutting offending in this cohort even by a few points reduces the number of victims and the bill for courts, cops and corrections. A tough love programme of catch & convict, prevent & deter, rehabilitate and resettle, has reduced offending by 10%.
Along the crime prevention evolutionary route it is reasonable to assert that a large repertoire of tried and tested practice has been garnered – the prevention of repeat burglaries, crime mapping and targeting hot spots, youth programmes that involve mentoring and in situ activities in high crime neighbourhoods to name a few have all been evaluated and shown good results. We even know a lot about where CCTV does and doesn’t work!
Government is committed to introduce approaches based on restorative justice ‘at all stages in the criminal justice system’ to deal not just with victims and offenders but also anti-social behaviour.
The implementation of ‘tried and tested’ prevention practice however remains obstinately patchy and inconsistent.
Why do we find it so difficult to replicate successful programmes? Why is it that we can’t run programmes like say MacDonald’s run their business? You might not like their product but the service is consistent, you get what you pay for, and crucially it is the same wherever you go in the UK and internationally! Even the grandfather of crime prevention the late great Gilbert Bonmaison enjoyed his fries in Montreal!
Maybe it is about ‘not invented here so it can’t be any good’ or ‘it’ll never work in this community’; in other words ‘we are going to do it our way’. Our way typically involves following someone’s hunch or omitting one of the essential ingredients that make for successful programmes; an approach no longer acceptable or fair for tax payers.
Why are we so obsessed with evaluating outcomes when the gap now in the research is about implementation and developing information systems that gather the data needed to manage programme performance?
We have never really invested in developing the tools for implementation, performance management or utilisation training for people in the front line.
The future is about the universal implementation of the programmes that we know work, where they are needed, managing their performance and crucially changing the personnel or the model when we don’t get the results we expect; this does not preclude the quest to continually improve performance, seeking new ways to solve old problems and using our knowledge to respond to new ones.
We must learn from successful businesses. They are driven not just by the bottom line but also the will to survive in highly competitive markets and that means continuous improvement.
Nigel Whiskin has changed policy and practice in unique ways in the UK. He started as a probation officer, founded the first victim support scheme, developed employment for 18,000 offenders for NACRO, started first crime prevention programs in high risk areas, was the founding CEO of Crime Concern where he pioneered Community Safety Partnerships, developed the Youth Inclusion project and much more, developed training for effective restorative justice and is promoting effective policing.
