Are police-led social crime prevention initiatives effective? A process and outcome evaluation of a UK youth intervention

Hobson, Jonathan ORCID: 0000-0001-8081-6699, Lynch, Kenneth ORCID: 0000-0002-5296-2864, Payne, Brian ORCID: 0000-0001-6134-9191 and Ellis, Elizabeth ORCID: 0000-0001-9628-8413 (2021) Are police-led social crime prevention initiatives effective? A process and outcome evaluation of a UK youth intervention. International Criminal Justice Review, 31 (3). pp. 325-346. doi:10.1177/1057567718814891

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Abstract

Police-led interventions with ‘at risk’ young people, raise a number of debates around policing in society including the allocation of resources at a time of fiscal austerity, the extent to which the police should prioritise the safety and wellbeing of young people, and the role that the police should take in preventing youth crime. This article explores the impact and effectiveness of a police-led social crime prevention initiative in England. It adopts the QUALIPREV approach by Rummens et al (2016) on behalf of the European Crime Prevention Network to analyse the data allowing for a detailed and replicable analysis of core aspects including police engagement, risk management, offending rates and police-community relations. Drawing on comparisons between the UK case study and previous studies on police-led social crime prevention projects in Australia and Canada, the article identifies a number of common challenges for schemes of this nature including problems with multi agency working, developing a clear project identity, unequal resources across different locations, and the difficulty in recruiting and retaining volunteers. However, there were also significant benefits to such schemes, including positive impacts on offending rates, engagement of at risk young people, and wider benefits to the communities within which the young people live, including participation, volunteering and reduction in risks of community harm. A cost-benefit analysis also shows such scheme have the potential to offer significant savings to the criminal justice system as a whole.

Item Type:	Article
Article Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Social Crime prevention; Police-led intervention; Working for reward; Youth offending
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology. > HV6001 Criminology H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology. > HV7231 Criminal justice administration
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Business, Computing and Social Sciences
Research Priority Areas:	Place, Environment and Community
Depositing User:	Kenny Lynch
Date Deposited:	01 Nov 2018 14:32
Last Modified:	31 Aug 2023 08:24
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/6152

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