Evaluating Crime Reduction Initiatives (Crime Prevention Studies)

Evaluation has been a driving force in the recent worldwide growth of problem-oriented policing and situational crime prevention, two related approaches whose primary goal is to reduce opportunities for crimes. Nevertheless, in their introduction the co-editors report a growing consensus that evaluations of many of these programs have been unsatisfactory. Debates about how best to improve evaluations, what types of assessments will be most useful to policymakers and practitioners, and what has been learned from past evaluations, form the starting points for the chapters in this volume. Chapter topics addressed in this volume include: Is the standard of evaluations in problem-oriented policing projects good enough? by Johannes Knutsson; An appraisal of 37 years of situational crime prevention evaluations by Rob Guerette; Using signatures of opportunity structures to examine mechanisms in crime prevention evaluations by John Eck and Tamara Madensen; Conducting interviews in small areas to evaluate community perceptions of crime reduction strategies by Anthony Braga and Brenda Bond; Whats the what in what works? in health, policing and crime prevention by Nick Tilley; Estimating and extrapolating causal effects for crime prevention policy and program evaluation by Gary T. Henry; and, Potential uses of computational methods in the evaluation of crime reduction activity by Shane D. Johnson. This book shows that the task of conducting qualified evaluations is complicated. It represents a challenge both to the police and to the researchers excerpt from the Foreword by Ingelin Killengreen, National Police Commissioner of Norway.