Notes on Recent Trends in Crime Prevention (1998) - Comprehensive Study Notes

Introduction

• Topic: Crime prevention as part of a broader program to reduce crime and ensure public safety, not just formal law enforcement or punishment.
• Public sentiment: crime provokes strong emotion and demand for government action.
• Shift in thinking: traditional enforcement/criminal-justice approaches are only one component of prevention; communities increasingly combine traditional methods with problem-solving and risk assessment.
• Timeframe: last ~25 years of U.S. experience with diverse strategies to prevent and reduce crime.
• Purpose of paper: distill U.S. experiences, lessons learned, and promising approaches to inform crime control programs in the U.S. and elsewhere.
• Scholarly context: literature covers specific program types or syntheses; variation in organizing frameworks and prevention strategies.
• Key contrasts: developmental (risk reduction), situational (opportunity reduction), and community/criminal-justice approaches are integrated; this paper adds a focus on law enforcement/criminal-justice contributions.

What counts as crime prevention?

• Broad definition used here: strategies spanning a range from preventing initial criminal involvement to reducing opportunities and rehabilitating offenders.
• Developmental/primary prevention: prevent criminal behavior before it emerges; targeted at individuals or groups in family/school contexts; focus on risk and protective factors; may use community-based programming.
• Law enforcement approaches: strategies commonly involving police and pre-adjudication processes; include arrests/enforcement and increasingly problem-solving techniques targeting specific situations/places; other actors (businesses, housing authorities) participate.
• Criminal justice and correctional approaches: directed at known offenders, often post-adjudication or in lieu of adjudication (e.g., juvenile diversion, prison-based treatment); rehabilitative focus.
• Paper structure: four major sections—historical studies (1970s–early 1980s), critical evaluation of common flaws, introduction of a new approach, and recommendations for practice/methodology.

Organization of the paper

• Four guiding sections (not a comprehensive literature review):
  • Review major studies from the 1970s–early 1980s across three categories (developmental/primary, situational, law enforcement, and criminal-justice/correctional).
  • Critically examine common elements and methodological flaws across programs.
  • Discuss elements of a new approach with examples from recent strategies.
  • Offer concrete suggestions for crime prevention strategies/methods, noting the field remains evolving.

Crime prevention research: the early years

• Martinson (1974): "What Works?"—summary of The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment ( Lipton, Martinson, Wilks, 1975 ).
  • Major conclusion: “With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism.”
  • This was widely interpreted as “nothing works,” fueling concern about crime control effectiveness.
  • The underlying review covered 231 studies (1945–1967) with adequate, but not flawless, methodologies (e.g., control/comparison groups).
• Wilson (1980) and Lipton et al. (1975): analyses contextualize Martinson; not all findings are new, but the synthesis amplified public/policy concerns about rehabilitation effectiveness.
• Lipton, Martinson & Wilks (1975): systematic review of correctional rehabilitation; many studies had methodological problems; few programs achieved clear success; California Community Treatment Program for juvenile offenders showed initial promise but later reanalyses questioned the claimed success. UDIs and other community-based experiments also faced critique.
• Law enforcement focus in this era: preventive policing and patrol strategies received attention; the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (Kelling et al., 1974) tested patrol intensity effects.
  • Design: five beats increased patrol, five kept at normal levels, five reduced patrol.
  • Result: no statistically significant effects on crime or fear of crime from patrol level changes.
  • Subsequent critiques: the study faced methodological/substantive criticisms, but it prompted a broader questioning of the value of more patrol as a universal crime-prevention strategy.
• International perspective: England (Morris & Heal) argued that traditional policing strategies had limited impact on crime.
• Developmental prevention: Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (1939 start; five-year program) showed that treatment youth did not outperform controls and, in long-term follow-ups, even showed harmful effects.
• Diversion programs (juvenile contexts): used to steer youth toward community services rather than formal processing; large-scale evaluations (e.g., Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders) found diversion did not reduce delinquent involvement and could have unintended side effects (e.g., labeling, social liabilities).
• Overall pattern in early literature: developmental interventions (high-risk youth), law enforcement patrol, and juvenile/diversion efforts often faced serious design/evaluation flaws, leading to doubts about effectiveness.
• Conclusions from early era: while not everything failed, broad claims that “nothing works” were overstated; some programs showed positive effects, but many were limited by design, implementation, or measurement flaws.

Lessons learned

• Early consensus on “nothing works” was challenged by subsequent critiques:
  • Palmer argued Lipton/Martinson reviews overlooked positive findings; the evidence was more nuanced than a blanket failure.
  • Sherman & Weisburd highlighted examples of successful policing initiatives in the 1970s despite Kansas City, suggesting not all policing efforts were ineffective.
• Key methodological insight: effects vary across programs and contexts; some interventions produce large effects for certain offenders or crime types, while others do not.
• The need to rethink general approaches:
  • One-size-fits-all strategies (e.g., universal preventive patrol or uniform sanctions) are naive; differences across crime types and offender characteristics matter.
  • Ronald Clarke emphasized distinguishing types of crime, offenders, motivations, and behaviors; focus on specific problem types.
  • Goldstein (1990) argued for reframing policing toward problem solving rather than merely increasing or decreasing activities; recognizing the complexity of police tasks.
• Design/implementation critiques:
  • Many treatments lacked solid theory backing; interventions were heterogeneous and poorly described, hindering replication and attribution of effects.
  • Dosage of treatment was often too low to generate measurable impacts.
  • Evaluations frequently showed treatment and control groups receiving similar services or participants not receiving intended treatments.
  • Research design flaws (e.g., insufficient statistical power) limited the ability to detect real effects (e.g., large increases in crime in some areas could be statistically non-significant if base rates were small).
• Overall takeaway: lessons from the early era pointed to the importance of theory-led, well-implemented, and rigorously evaluated interventions, with attention to the quality and power of evaluation designs.

New approaches: Recent advances in crime prevention research

• Core characteristics of the new approach:
  • Programs must be carefully focused and highly specific about the problems, offenders, and contexts addressed.
  • Development and implementation are tightly connected to theory; researchers increasingly participate in program design and testing, not just post hoc evaluation.
  • Evaluation designs are emphasized to provide fair tests of effects; sensitivity of designs is crucial to detect real impacts.
• Focused crime prevention in correctional contexts:
  • High recidivism among released inmates prompts targeted interventions for problematic reintegration, especially substance abuse problems.
  • Drug treatment strategies (drug courts and prison-based residential treatment) are prominent.
  • Drug courts: combine judicial supervision with treatment/testing and graduated sanctions; empirical evidence (e.g., Miami drug court) shows lower recidivism and earlier rearrests relative to comparison groups; overall evidence promising but elements of effective practice require clarification.
  • Prison-based residential treatment: effective across several locations and populations; combined approaches (in-prison treatment followed by work-release) yield better arrest-free periods than in-prison treatment alone.
  • Post-release support and community adjustment are critical components of successful work-release programs (e.g., Seattle evaluation showing reduced rearrests but higher rule-violation supervision rates; employment outcomes also important).
  • Challenge: dropout rates in drug-treatment programs complicate evaluation; need methods for selecting offenders likely to succeed in treatment.
  • Emphasis on multi-measure outcomes beyond simple recidivism (e.g., employment, staying drug-free).
• Law enforcement and problem-solving policing (POP):
  • Goldstein’s problem-oriented policing (POP): shift from incident-driven policing to solving underlying problems; focus on specific problem types rather than broad crime categories.
  • SARA model from Newport News researchers (Scan, Analyze, Respond, Assess) became a standard for problem solving; efforts showed promising results in targeted contexts.
  • Newport News evaluation (Spelman & Eck) demonstrated significant reductions in specific problems (e.g., burglaries at a complex, thefts from vehicles, downtown robberies) when POP was implemented with rigorous design.
  • Broader adoption of POP across agencies; continued need for methodologically rigorous evaluations.
  • Limitations and critiques: more evaluations needed to establish generalizable evidence; practice should be grounded in solid research designs.
• Place-based policing and hot spots targeting:
  • Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger’s work on hot spots showed crime concentration at addresses rather than broadly distributed across neighborhoods; focusing enforcement on hot spots can yield substantial benefits.
  • Minneapolis Hot Spots experiment (randomized) found patrols around hot spots reduced overall crime calls by ~1.19 times baseline (modest but statistically significant reductions); addressed criticisms by improving power and design over Kansas City.
  • Weisburd & Green and related studies showed strong effects of crackdowns at drug hot spots on disorder-related crime; gun-crime reductions associated with hot spots policing approaches.
  • Displacement concerns: displacement of crime to other locations/times is not inevitable; several studies show diffusion of benefits to nearby areas and limited displacement.
• Crime prevention by focusing on places and people:
  • Place-focused improvements (e.g., targeted enforcement at drug markets) can produce both crime reductions and improvements in location conditions.
  • Diffusion of crime-control benefits observed in some studies near targeted locations.
• Developmental approaches for high-risk youth:
  • Home visiting programs: targeted at young, single, impoverished mothers; nurse visits during pregnancy and supportive services reduce child abuse/neglect, improve cognitive scores, and reduce problem behaviors.
  • Preschool enrichment programs: focus on reducing school failure and enhancing parental support; Perry Preschool Project found long-run benefits (e.g., fewer arrests by age 27, higher education attainment, employment, home ownership).
  • Other positive programs include broader early-childhood interventions that improve social, emotional, and academic functioning and reduce antisocial behavior.
  • Youth-focused, multi-level interventions (family, school, peers, neighborhood) are more effective for high-risk youth living in disorganized environments.
  • Multisystemic Therapy (MST): targets family, peers, school; for serious juvenile offenders, MST reduced rearrests and serious subsequent offenses, with improved family functioning; effects maintained at four-year follow-up.
• Not all recent efforts succeed:
  • Children at Risk (CAR) program (design to implement eight core services via case management across communities): random assignment evaluation showed no short-term differences in self-reported drug use, delinquency, or other outcomes between treated and control groups; ongoing analysis of educational and official records.
  • CAR highlighted challenges in uniform service delivery, integration of developmental and community components, and translating theory into practice in complex real-world settings.
• Synthesis of new approach in practice:
  • Emphasis on specificity, rigorous program development, strong links between implementation and evaluation, and the use of strong, sensitive research designs to test impacts.
  • Some promising evidence exists across drug courts, residential treatment, work-release programs, POP, hot spots policing, and early childhood interventions; however, evidence remains uneven across programs and contexts.

Conclusions and cautions

• If only 1977 were considered, one might conclude that nothing works across developmental, law enforcement, and correctional strategies.
• In contrast, the intervening decades offer reason for optimism: a new, more tailored approach to crime prevention has emerged, built on the lessons learned and a willingness to design and evaluate programs more rigorously.
• Core substantive shift: from generic to specific problem definitions; from broad strategies to tailored responses to particular crime problems and offender types; from undefined evaluation to strong, methodologically sound assessments.
• Procedural shift: researchers increasingly participate in program development and implementation; emphasis on powerful evaluation methods to fairly assess impacts.
• Caution about rhetoric vs. reality: despite encouraging findings, public discourse around problem-oriented policing and prison-based residential treatment can be overly optimistic relative to the strength of the evidence.
• Context specificity: American crime patterns and policy environment may not map directly to other countries; programs may require adaptation to local contexts and crime realities.
• Bottom line: crime prevention today should be highly problem-specific, context-aware, and backed by robust design and evaluation; continued optimism tempered by caution and attention to implementation quality.

Notes (selected references and points)

• Tonry & Farrington (eds.), Building a Safer Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime Prevention (1995).
• Wikstrom, Clarke, & McCord (eds.), Integrating Crime Prevention Strategies: Propensity and Opportunity (1995).
• Martinson, “What Works? – Questions and Answers about Prison Reform” (1974).
• Lipton, Martinson, & Wilks, The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment: A Survey of Treatment Evaluation Studies (1975).
• Wilson, “What Works? Revisited: New Findings on Criminal Rehabilitation” (1980).
• Palmer, “The youth authority’s community treatment project” (1974).
• Lerman, Community Treatment & Social Control (1975).
• Empey & Erickson, The Provo Experiment (1972); Murray & Cox, Beyond Probation (1979).
• McCord & McCord; McCleary et al.; Warner; UDIS critiques (late 1970s).
• Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown, The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (1974).
• Morris & Heal, Crime Control and the Police (1981).
• Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (Powers & Witmer; 1951) and long-term follow-ups (McCord, 1990s).
• Blomberg; Dunford, Osgood, Weischselbaum (National Evaluations of Diversion Projects) (1982).
• Sherman & Weisburd; Goldstein (POP); Spelman & Eck (1987) on problem-oriented policing.
• Sherman, Gartin, & Buerger, Hot Spots of Predatory Crime (1989).
• Weisburd & Green; Weisburd, Weisburd & Sherman; Green (drug hot spots) (1995–1996).
• Goldstein, “Improving Policing: A Problem Oriented Approach” (1979); Goldstein, Problem-Oriented Policing (1990).
• Spelman & Eck, Problem Solving: Problem Oriented Policing in Newport News (1987).
• Perry Preschool Project; L. Schweinhard et al., Significant Benefits (1993).
• Farrington, Greenwood, Yoshikawa, etc., on early intervention and long-term outcomes (1990s).
• Multisystemic Therapy (MST) trials (1995; 1992).
• Children at Risk (CAR) program and evaluation updates (1996–1997).
• Turner & Petersilia on Work Release (1996).
• Weisburd et al., Crime and Place; diffusion of crime-control benefits (1994–1996).
• Final caution: crime prevention is still evolving; the best evidence supports focused, well-designed, and well-implemented programs with rigorous evaluation.