Mob violence in the UK, flash mobs and gang related homicides in North America, and gang violence in Mexico have grabbed the summer headlines.  Then, Bratton, the US super cop, affirms that you cannot arrest the way out.  Now two super crime busters say you can stop this violence but you must invest real money to implement what we know works and follow some simple ukases.

Jack Calhoun is currently Senior Consultant to National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education, and Families and Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.  He was CEO of the US National Crime Prevention Council for more than 20 years.  His ukases are:

1. Cities must establish comprehensive strategies that balance enforcement, intervention and prevention to change structures that influence policies that change lives on the street.  This requires the support of both the mayor and the police chief and the creation of a central planning entity to make it happen that involves all key city and stakeholder groups as well as families and youth.
2. State, provincial and federal governments must overcome ¨braid¨ funding to integrate their funding for schools, health, housing, social services and enforcement to support these comprehensive strategies at the local level.
3. Governments must support and replicate networks of cities like the 13 City California Gang Prevention Network and the Canadian Municipal Network for Crime Prevention to share best practice, and to empower them to implement effective strategies, learn how to overcome inertia, and support communities that do not produce gangs.

Nigel Whiskin is a founder director of Restorative Solutions, a charity providing Restorative Justice training for front line crime fighters and community activists.  For fifteen years, he was the founding chief executive of Crime Concern, a community safety organization that pioneered successful youth inclusion projects and neighborhood safety programs.  His ukases are:

1. Governments must ensure universal implementation of the programs that ¨we know work¨, where they are needed, including fostering ways to manage performance and change the personnel or the model when we don’t get the results we expect.
2. Governments and cities must invest in developing the tools for implementation, performance management and training for people in the front line.
3. Research funders must now focus on improving  implementation and developing information systems that gather the data needed to manage program performance – this means abandoning the obsession with evaluation, as we already know so much about what works from outcome evaluations that are not implemented.

For further information on what we know works and how to implement it see

Institute for the Prevention of Crime, Making Cities Safer:  Action Briefs for Municipal Stakeholders, Number 3, March 2009, University of Ottawa

Waller, Irvin Less Law, More Order: The Truth about Reducing Crime. Ancaster, Manor House, 2008 www.irvinwaller.org

World Health Organization. Violence Prevention: The Evidence. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2009. http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/4th_milestones_meeting/publications/en/index.html