By Vania Ceccato and Andy Newton

This book offers a comprehensive overview of areas with elevated levels of crime, which we consider ‘risky places.’ These can be facilities, nodes, or paths and can be found everywhere, from small towns to megacities. Crime and fear are examined from the perspective of those who use these places, based on examples from the US, the UK, Sweden, Nigeria, Brazil, China, Australia, and more. Advocating for a systems thinking approach, the book shows what can be learned from risky places and identifies ways to address their inherent problems. The book also assesses current barriers to applying systems thinking and identifies ways to foster interconnected long-term crime prevention strategies that meet the diverse needs of multiple stakeholders. Aimed at academics, students, and professionals in urban planning, criminology, geography, and related fields, this book is a vital resource for those dedicated to creating safer, more inclusive, and sustainable environments.

London; New York: Routledge, 2025. 

By Nick Cowen

This chapter discusses what crime is, why it provokes government action and the problems of both private and public approaches to crime prevention. For classical liberals, crime is deliberate or reckless harm imposed on persons and their property through violence or deception. Besides violating people’s interests as moral equals, crime weighs heavily on commercial societies as it raises the costs of production, trade, and exchange with strangers. Crime is a significant challenge because it is: a) a disequilibrium phenomenon resulting from an information asymmetry between potential victim and offender; b) imposes externalities on the community that are hard for isolated actors to internalize; c) frequently causes more harm than apprehended offenders could realistically compensate. Private crime prevention strategies use insurance, security, reputation, and bargaining with potential offenders to face this challenge. The success of private crime prevention is often underrated. Nevertheless, only capable states have so far managed to reduce violent crime to low levels by historical standards. State solutions bring their problems as they allow for predation and the imposition of externalities through the ‘legitimate’ political process.  

Forthcoming, 2024.

By Yvon Dandurand Abeni Steegstra Vivienne Chin

This report presents the results of a review of the crime situation and a gap analysis on crime prevention and response interventions in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) countries. The main objective of the review is to inform discussions and decisions on the role that Canada can play to help address, at the national and regional levels, the increasing crime levels in the Caribbean. The report offers recommendations in relation to crime prevention interventions to address the risk factors associated with criminal behaviour as well as interventions to respond to criminal activities and reduce future crime through deterrence and offender rehabilitation and reintegration. The review was conducted between October 15, 2023, and March 30, 2024. It covers all CARICOM countries except Haiti. The review relied on: 1. Existing crime data to identify crime rates and crime trends in the CARICOM countries, including violent crime, youth crime, gender-based crimes, and various threats related to organized transnational crime. 2. Existing national victimization data and public perceptions of crime and public safety data. 3. Available information and data on the effectiveness of law enforcement and criminal justice responses to crime and key crime prevention initiatives in CARICOM countries. 4. Public domain information on existing mechanisms to address security governance and collaboration within the region. 5. Public domain information on the assistance provided by Canada and other donors and international agencies in the areas of public safety, criminal justice reform and capacity building, and crime prevention, and on their development plans. 6. Key informant interviews with 93 stakeholders of the region about ongoing criminal justice and crime prevention initiatives, at the national and regional levels, and perceived priorities and opportunities for further initiatives. 7. Consultations and document review concerning existing programming mechanisms in Canada and Canada’s policy engagement at the various missions. Within the scope of the project, the review team considered several specific questions related to perceived gaps in crime prevention and response interventions in CARICOM. It also considered key crime prevention and response interventions being planned or implemented in CARICOM countries. Increased violence in CARICOM countries has been attributed to several factors, including structurally weak social protection, the effects of the COVID-19 epidemic, gang competition and fragmentation, changes in the illicit drug market, the availability of firearms, and a relatively high level of impunity for violent crimes. The dramatic increase in recent years in homicidal violence in many Caribbean countries is largely due to the intense competition between gangs over drug markets. However, there is great intraregional variance in the prevalence of violent crime. Several factors contribute to the proliferation of gangs and gang violence. The lack of economic opportunities, low social cohesion, and weak community resilience are often cited as key drivers of local gang growth. So is transnational organized crime and access to profitable illicit markets. The analysis identified several gaps in three main areas: (i) measures to strengthen the criminal justice system’s responses to crime and deter or reduce it; (ii) measures to control gang violence, transnational organized crime, and emerging crimes; and (iii) measures to prevent violence and crime, including at the school and community levels and measures to prevent recidivism and reintegrate offenders. 

Vancouver, BC:  International Centre for Criminal Law Reform 2024. 197p.

.By Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Community Violence Can Be Prevented All people want to be healthy, safe, and connected to other people. We all want to have access to life opportunities, including education and employment, to become valued members of communities and society, and to live our lives free from violence. To support community violence prevention and promote health and safety, the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the Community Violence Prevention Resource for Action (or Prevention Resource, for short). DVP’s vision is to have a violence-free society in which all people and all communities are safe, healthy, and thriving. Violence is preventable using a public health approach. This includes bringing together partners and community members to consider local needs and the best available evidence to implement violence prevention strategies. About this Prevention Resource for Action Community violence happens in public places, such as streets or parks, between people who may or may not know each other. Examples include assaults, fights among groups, homicides, and fatal and nonfatal shootings. This resource is informed by research and conversations with community members, people who have experienced violence, and other partners.a It is an update to the Youth Violence Prevention Resource for Action.  It includes evidence for preventing violence experienced by youth (ages 10-24), which is now under the larger community violence topic. In this update, we expand the evidence to include examples for preventing violence experienced by young adults (ages 25-34). Young adults ages 20-24 have the highest homicide rate. They are closely followed by young adults between the ages of 25-29, 30-34, and then teens ages 15-19.8 Over the past 40 years, we have learned a lot about preventing violence, but there is still more work to do. This resource is intended to help communities and states prevent violence before it starts and lessen the harms of violence that occur by describing the best available evidence for community violence prevention. DVP looks forward to learning from communities and states about how this resource is being used and how it can be improved so that all communities are safe, healthy, and thriving. This Prevention Resource has three components. The first component is the strategy, or the direction or actions needed to prevent community violence. The second component is the approach, or specific ways to advance the strategy through policies, programs, or practices. The third component is the evidence for each approach in preventing community violence or the conditions or behaviors that increase risk for community violence. The examples provided in this resource are not intended to be a comprehensive list of evidence-based programs, policies, or practices for each approach. Rather, they illustrate models that have been shown to prevent community violence or impact conditions or behaviors that increase risk or protect against violence    

Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  2024. 104p.  

By Temitope, O. Awodiji  and  John Owoyemi 

In this study, 10 communities in the North Western area of New Mexico are used to examine the efficacy of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) concepts in urban settings. The research looks at the connection between crime rates and urban architecture in Luna by combining secondary data from the Unified Crime Report (UCR) with findings from earlier studies on topography and architectural features. It is accepted that several CPTED initiatives have limitations, such as dependence on secondary data and the need for more thorough research, even while they show promise in lowering crime and improving safety. Among the recommendations are the inclusion of primary data collecting and the consideration of socioeconomic issues. Policymakers, urban planners, and community stakeholders may establish more fair and effective methods to promote safer urban environments by considering these recommendations. By providing insights into the challenges of creating surroundings that support community safety and well-being, this study adds to the continuing conversation on crime prevention and urban planning. 

Journal of Multidisciplinary Engineering Science and Technology (JMEST) ISSN: 2458-9403 Vol. 11 Issue 4, April - 2024 

By John Macdonald, Viet Nguyen Viet,  Shane T. Jensen,  and Charles C. Branas

Objective: Place-based blight remediation programs have gained popularity in recent years as a crime reduction approach. This study estimated the impact of a citywide vacant lot greening program in Philadelphia on changes in crime over multiple years, and whether the effects were moderated by nearby land uses. Methods: The vacant lot greening program was assessed using quasi-experimental and experimental designs. Entropy distance weighting was used in the quasi-experimental analysis to match control lots to be comparable to greened lots on pre-existing crime trends. Fixed-effects difference-in-differences models were used to estimate the impact of the vacant lot greening program in quasi-experimental and experimental analyses. Results: Vacant lot greening was estimated to reduce total crime and multiple subcategories in both the quasi-experimental and experimental evaluations. Remediating vacant lots had a smaller effect on reducing crime when they were located near train stations and alcohol outlets. The crime reductions from vacant lot remediations were larger when they were located near areas of active businesses. There is some suggestive evidence that the effects of vacant lot greening are larger when located in neighborhoods with higher pre-intervention levels of social cohesion. Conclusions: The findings suggest that vacant lot greening provides a sustainable approach to reducing crime in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and the effects may vary by different surrounding land uses. To better understand the mechanisms through which place-based blight remediation interventions reduce crime, future research should measure human activities and neighborly socialization in and around places before and after remediation efforts are implemented.

J Exp Criminol. 2022 September ; 18(3): 639–664.

By Shelley Trevethan and Eva Maxwell

This report reviewed and synthesized literature in response to two guiding research questions: how have Indigenous cultural practices, traditions, and activities been included in crime prevention programming and what is their connection with crime prevention; how have culturally-relevant crime prevention programs been evaluated and what is their contribution to crime prevention outcomes? This literature review includes a review of risk/protective factors for crime among Indigenous persons; a summary of the literature on crime prevention programs for Indigenous Peoples; an analysis of the connection between cultural practices, traditions, and activities and crime prevention objectives; a review of program evaluations; a summary and analysis of evaluation approaches and methodologies; a review of the effectiveness of Indigenous cultural practices, traditions, and activities based on existing evaluation results; and, conclusions and recommendations. Articles reviewed for this review were published in English, dated from 1983 to 2021, and represented 22 countries. Countries of publication included Canada, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Africa. Overall, the literature in this field (a total of 291 articles and publications) is relatively new and challenging to find, particularly so for literature on the evaluation of programs. Indeed, the majority of articles reviewed were from gray literature sources, indicating that the field has not been extensively researched in academia; thus, causality is difficult to establish. Key themes included over-representation of Indigenous Peoples in all stages of the criminal justice system (and the reasons); risk and protective factors; nature of existing programming; and approaches for culturally competent evaluation

Research Report: 2023-R009   Ottawa: Public Safety Canada, 2023. 301p.

Loss Prevention and Security Procedures By Robert James Fischer & Richard Janoski

Loss Prevention and Security Procedures by Robert James Fischer & Richard Janoski provides a comprehensive overview of strategies and tactics essential for safeguarding businesses and organizations. This practical guide offers insights into the latest advancements in loss prevention technologies and security measures, equipping readers with the knowledge needed to mitigate risks effectively. Fischer and Janoski's expertise shines through in this invaluable resource, making it a must-read for professionals in the field of security and loss prevention.

Butterworth-Heinemann, Dec 13, 1999, 336 pages

By The Violence Policy Center

Silencers are devices that are attached to the barrel of a firearm to reduce the amount of noise generated by the firing of the weapon. By providing a larger contained space for the gases generated by the discharge of the gun’s ammunition round to dissipate and cool before escaping, silencers reduce the sound generated by the weapon’s firing. Since 1934, silencers have been regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).1 The NFA requires that transferees of silencers submit fingerprints and a photograph, pay a special tax, and undergo a background check. It also requires a “Chief Law Enforcement Officer” or CLEO to sign a statement confirming that a certifying official is satisfied that the fingerprints and photograph accompanying the application are those of the applicant and that the certifying official has no information indicating that possession of the silencer by the applicant would be in violation of state or local law. In January 2016, however, the Obama administration finalized a new rule that eliminates the CLEO sign-off requirement and replaces it with a requirement that local law enforcement need only be notified of the transfer of a silencer Hiram Percy Maxim is credited with patenting the first silencer in 1908. But a short time later their utility in crime was demonstrated in a tragic murder-suicide on Central Park West in New York City in 1915. In the decades that followed, silencers were used by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II for clandestine missions. Silenced handguns were also used in Vietnam for multiple purposes. According to a former Special Forces NCO, military units used suppressed pistols “for all sorts of sneaky ops, from dumping guards to out and out assassinations.”2 In 1967, a new generation of silencers was developed by Mitch WerBell for Sionics, a company that specialized in counterinsurgency equipment. The acronym Sionics stood for Studies in Operational Negation of Insurgency and Counter Subversion. The company supplied silencers and similar items for covert operations by military and “CIA-type” clandestine organizations.3 These next-generation silencers were more efficient than their turn-of-the century predecessors and could effectively be used on battle rifles and Carbines. Today’s military silencers are used by special operations units to reduce noise and muzzle flash. A relatively new priority for the gun lobby and firearms industry has been to expand the market for the legal use of silencers. In 42 states silencers are now legal. But the ultimate goal is to weaken federal law regulating the transfer and use of silencers. Legislation has been introduced in Congress to accomplish this goal. Misleadingly labeled the “Hearing Protection Act,” the bill would remove silencers from the list of NFAregulated firearms and accessories, making them subject only to the regulations that currently apply to hunting rifles. In their public statements, proponents of the bill would like the public and policymakers to believe that silencers are innocuous devices used merely to protect the hearing of shooters, including children. But in fact, the campaign to deregulate silencers is merely the latest attempt by the gun lobby and firearms industry, in the wake of declining household gun ownership, to market yet another military-bred product with little concern for its impact on public safety.4 In fact, because the “Hearing Protection Act” would allow silencers to be sold under the same standards as traditional hunting rifles, this would allow the gun industry to manufacture firearms with integral silencers, creating a whole new class of firearm that could be marketed to the general public. ,,,,, A ban on silencers for civilian use would enhance public safety. The explosion in the popularity of silencers has significantly increased the likelihood they will be used in crime. The advantages of using silencers, including reduced noise and increased accuracy, make them attractive to mass shooters, terrorists, and common criminals. In addition, the administrative burden placed on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives diverts resources from the agency’s more important regulatory and law enforcement responsibilities. Conversely, silencers serve no sporting purpose.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Institute, 2019.  16p.  

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Mike Hough and Mike Maxfield

Join us as we delve into the evolution of crime surveying in the 21st century with a special focus on the landmark British Crime Survey. In this comprehensive exploration, we reflect on the past quarter-century of crime trends, methodologies, and societal shifts that have shaped our understanding of criminal behavior.

From the inaugural survey in 1999 to the latest data-driven analyses, this commemorative edition offers valuable insights into the complex landscape of crime detection and prevention. Uncover how technology, demographic changes, and policy initiatives have influenced the prevalence and perception of crime across the United Kingdom.

Celebrate this milestone anniversary by delving into the intricate tapestry of crime surveying, where data meets narrative to illuminate the challenges and triumphs of combating crime in the modern era.

Crime Prevention Studies Volume 22. Criminal Justice Press Monsey, NY, U.S.A.. Willan Publishing Cullomptom, Devon, U.K.. 2007. 321p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Herman Goldstein

In his seminal work on problem-oriented policing, Herman Goldstein emphasizes the importance of addressing the root causes of crime and disorder within communities. Goldstein’s book provides a framework for law enforcement agencies to shift their focus from reactive responses to proactive measures aimed at preventing recurring issues.

The core concept of problem-oriented policing lies in identifying specific problems within a community, analyzing the underlying factors contributing to those problems, and developing tailored strategies to mitigate them. By working collaboratively with community members, local organizations, and other stakeholders, law enforcement can implement sustainable solutions that address the root causes of crime and disorder.

Goldstein’s book serves as a guide for police departments looking to adopt a more proactive and community-centered approach to policing. By encouraging officers to engage with the community, gather data on recurring issues, and implement evidence-based strategies, problem-oriented policing offers a promising alternative to traditional law enforcement practices.

Overall, Herman Goldstein’s book on problem-oriented policing provides valuable insights and practical tools for law enforcement agencies seeking to build safer and more resilient communities through proactive problem-solving strategies.

NY. McGraw-Hill. 1990. 221p.

By Rafael A. Mangual

After a long period of continuous violent-crime declines throughout the U.S.—spanning from the mid-1990s through the early 2010s—many American cities are now seeing significant increases in violence. Nationally, in 2015 and 2016, murders rose nearly 11% and 8%, respectively. The national homicide rate declined slightly in 2017 and 2018, before ticking upward in 2019. In 2020, the nation saw its largest single-year spike in homicides in at least 100 years—which was followed by another increase in murders in 2021, according to CDC data and FBI estimates. In the last few years, a number of cities have seen murders hit an all-time high. In addition to homicides, the risk of other types of violent victimizations rose significantly, as well. While various analyses estimated a slight decline in homicides for the country in 2022, many American cities still find themselves dealing with levels of violence far higher than they were a decade ago. While violent crime—particularly murder—is the most serious due in large part to its social costs, there have also been worrying increases in crimes such as retail theft, carjacking, and auto theft, as well as in other visible signs of disorder in public spaces (from open-air drug use and public urination to illegal street racing and large-scale looting and riots). Although several contributing factors are likely, this general deterioration in public safety and order was unquestionably preceded and accompanied by a virtually unidirectional shift toward leniency and away from accountability in the policing, prosecutorial, and criminal-justice policy spaces. That shift is evidenced by, among other things, three major trends in enforcement: • A 25% decline in the number of those imprisoned during 2011–2212 • A 15% decline in the number of those held in jail during 2010–2113 • A 26% decline in the number of arrests effected by law-enforcement officers during 2009–1914 Notable contributing factors to the decline in enforcement include: • A sharp uptick in public scrutiny and interventions—in the form of investigations and legal action taken by state attorneys general and the federal Department of Justice—against local law-enforcement agencies • The worsening of an ongoing police recruitment and retention crisis, particularly in large urban departments • The electoral success of the so-called progressive prosecutor movement, which, by 2022, had won seats in 75 jurisdictions, representing more than 72 million U.S. residents • Perhaps most important, the adoption of a slew of criminal-justice and policing reform measures at all levels of government Those who are skeptical of the criminal-justice reform movement have devoted most of their efforts to arguing against the movement’s excesses and explaining why it would be unwise to enact certain measures. Less effort has been devoted to the extremely important task of articulating a positive agenda for regaining what has been lost on the safety and order front. This paper seeks to add to that positive agenda for safety by proposing three model policies that, if adopted, would help, directly and indirectly, stem the tide of rising crime and violence, primarily by maximizing the benefits that attend the incapacitation of serious criminals (especially repeat offenders) and by encouraging the collection and public reporting of data that can inform the public about the downside risks that are glossed over by decarceration and depolicing activists.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2023. 19p.