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TOWARDS A DISCIPLINE OF CRIME PREVENTION: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO ITS NATURE, RANGE AND CONCEPTS Paper for 22nd Cropwood Conference 'Preventing Crime and Disorder' September 1994 Ekblom, P. (1996). ‘Towards a Discipline of Crime Prevention: a Systematic Approach to its Nature, Range and Concepts’, in T Bennett, ed., Preventing Crime and Disorder: Targeting Strategies and Responsibilities , Cambridge Cropwood Series, 43-98. Cambridge: Institute of Criminology. Paul Ekblom Home Office Research and Planning Unit Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the following for ideas, comments and editorial assistance: Gloria Laycock, Pat Mayhew, Mike Sutton, Nick Tilley and participants at the 3rd International Seminar on Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis held at Rutgers University, June 1994 - especially Ron Clarke (for allowing me to hold a long session on the proximal circumstances approach), Freda Adler, Pat and Paul Brantingham, John Eck, Marcus Felson, Tom Gabor, Gerhard Mueller and Barry Poyner. I also thank Sue Arthur (for refining and doing the coding of the Safer Cities schemes) and Ho Law (for developing the data entry menu system). Lastly, thanks to Trevor Bennett, for the opportunity to present this paper at the Cropwood Conference and for detailed comments on an earlier draft.
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TOWARDS A DISCIPLINE OF CRIME PREVENTION: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO ITS NATURE, RANGE AND CONCEPTS

Paper for 22nd Cropwood Conference 'Preventing Crime and Disorder' September 1994

Ekblom, P. (1996). ‘Towards a Discipline of Crime Prevention: a Systematic Approach to its Nature, Range and Concepts’, in T Bennett, ed., Preventing Crime and Disorder: Targeting Strategies and Responsibilities, Cambridge Cropwood Series, 43-98. Cambridge: Institute of Criminology.

Paul Ekblom

Home Office Research and Planning Unit

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the following for ideas, comments and editorial assistance: Gloria Laycock, Pat Mayhew, Mike Sutton, Nick Tilley and participants at the 3rd International Seminar on Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis held at Rutgers University, June 1994 - especially Ron Clarke (for allowing me to hold a long session on the proximal circumstances approach), Freda Adler, Pat and Paul Brantingham, John Eck, Marcus Felson, Tom Gabor, Gerhard Mueller and Barry Poyner. I also thank Sue Arthur (for refining and doing the coding of the Safer Cities schemes) and Ho Law (for developing the data entry menu system). Lastly, thanks to Trevor Bennett, for the opportunity to present this paper at the Cropwood Conference and for detailed comments on an earlier draft.

UK Crown Copyright

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1. Introduction: the tangle of prevention Anyone coming new to the field of crime prevention today, as practitioner, policy-maker or academic, could be forgiven for expressing some bewilderment. Consider the sheer exuberant variety of contemporary preventive action, in terms of both methods of prevention and arrangements for implementation:

* 'wheels' schemes to tackle joyriding* a crime prevention bus driven round a city* morality-play puppet shows* street lighting programmes* parenting support classes* community development to halt the 'spiral of decline'* posters intended to warn victims and deter pickpockets* neighbourhood watch (farm watch, shop watch, fish watch)* design of 'safe' shopping centre* inclusion of user's photograph on credit card* electronic point-of-sale stock control* social education of young people in a rough estate* designed-in high-technology car locks and immobilisers* security patrols/CCTV* alleviation of bad housing conditions* all-female taxi service

Attempts to bring order to this luxuriant growth are of limited success, as the following jumble of 'practice' terms and categorisations shows:

* Community crime prevention* Community safety* Crime control/reduction* Crime prevention through environmental design* Criminality prevention* Defensible space* Design against crime* Developmental prevention* Opportunity reduction* Physical crime prevention* Primary / secondary / tertiary prevention* Risk management* Situational crime prevention* Social crime prevention* Tackling the roots of crime* Victim-oriented prevention

Many are vague. Collectively they are confusing: they often overlap, and dichotomies are false or superficial. The term 'community', in particular, is notoriously loose and it is rarely clear whether this refers to community = neighbourhood as target of prevention; community = method of social control; or community = participative planning and delivery of action. It is fair to say that in terms of implementing specific interventions and achieving specific results,

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community crime prevention is imprisoned by the poverty of its concepts.

Take also the commonly-used distinction between physical versus social prevention: physical improvements to the environment may facilitate social surveillance; social community development approaches may be used to facilitate implementation of physical target-hardening. What is worse, 'physical or situational', and 'social' refer to what are virtually two separate worlds of prevention - each with its own history, its own preventive methods, its own theoretical background, its own favourite approaches to implementation.1

The widely-used primary/secondary/tertiary classification of Brantingham and Faust (1976) focuses on the target of prevention to the exclusion of the nature of the action itself.2 But a call to focus on the nature of the preventive action has been made by Tilley (eg 1993) who argues with considerable justification that the causal mechanisms underlying the preventive activity - how precisely the 'wheels project' or the CCTV cameras are supposed to have their effect on crime - have often been ignored to their peril by policy makers, practitioners and evaluators alike.3

What of the defining boundaries of prevention - do they help the newcomer understand what is meant? A commonly-used definition of crime prevention refers to 'actions outside the conventional Criminal Justice System'. This residual definition is hardly conducive to conceptual clarity. Besides, all of the following criminal (and civil) justice system activities and aims have obvious and often explicit preventive functions:

* Arrest * Policing* Conflict resolution * Prison* Correction / reform * Probation* Denunciation * Reparation * Deterrence * Restitution* Diversion * Sentencing* Incapacitation * Trial

The division between prevention and CJS is arbitrary in other ways too. Preventive action can be targetted on known offenders and their criminogenic life circumstances, such as debt and

1    ? Even in the Home Office the two approaches have a tendency to split across this axis, with Criminal Department responsible for 'criminality prevention / roots of criminality' and Police Department for 'situational prevention' (although Police Department, with its involvement in the Safer Cities Programme, does have an interest in the whole range of preventive activity under the rubric 'community safety').

2    ? Primary prevention addresses the reduction of crime opportunities throughout society without reference to offenders or potential offenders. Secondary prevention addresses the change of people, typically those at high risk of embarking on a criminal career, so that they remain law-abiding. Tertiary prevention is focused on the truncation of the criminal career in length, seriousness or frequency of offending, ie it deals with the 'treatment' of known offenders.

3    ? Pawson and Tilley (1992, 1994) have developed an approach to the implementation and evaluation of prevention and correction, based on the philosophical perspective of Scientific Realism and its particular view of causality. Prevention is seen as involving the triggering of one or more specific causal mechanisms, in a particular context, leading to a particular outcome pattern. The approach has great potential to articulate how prevention works.

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drug dependency (eg Forrester et al. 1988, 1990). Many preventive schemes also rely on fear of arrest, trial and punishment to influence offenders. Conversely, preventive action often makes the CJS more effective - identification of marked property may aid conviction, or CCTV recordings may secure arrests.

The arbitrary boundaries between the preventive functions of the CJS, and prevention as currently understood, may have offered important protection for the latter whilst it struggled to create a niche for itself during the seventies and eighties. However, they now militate against the full application of the problem-oriented approach4 to prevention. Why restrict the choice of solution to a particular local crime problem either to conventional policing and legal strategies, or to preventive action?5 There may be much synergy if, say, property-marking and target-hardening in a particular housing estate were accompanied by a police crackdown on fences and the resale of stolen goods.

In sum, crime prevention is in a dreadful conceptual tangle both on its own home territory and in its boundaries with the conventional CJS. This may have been acceptable during a decade of rapid growth on many fronts, although the suspicion is that it has allowed a great deal of effort to be spent on very loosely-conceived activity. Whatever the case, for consolidation and further progress, a change of tack is needed: crime prevention needs to become a discipline.

The complex nature of prevention (Graham, 1990) makes this a challenging goal. To move towards it, prevention needs several ingredients, including much greater precision of terms and concepts, linked by a consistent and comprehensive conceptual framework; and a focus on the causal mechanisms by which preventive action is supposed to have its effect - that is, a very practical connection with theory.

The aim of this paper is to present my own attempt to meet these requirements (a fuller account is in Ekblom, 1994). This work originates from both a long-term interest in the field and a more particular need to find useful ways of classifying some 3,000 extremely diverse preventive schemes from the Safer Cities Programme, whose impact on crime I am currently evaluating (Ekblom, 1992; Ekblom, Sutton and Wiggins, 1993). In presenting it here, I offer participants in the conference a definition and a systematic map of crime prevention based on a model of the causes of the criminal event. The details may be far from perfect but only by approaching the problem in this way can we hope to unscramble the conceptual tangle described above. Of more immediate concern, the paper is also meant to encourage us all, over the next couple of days, to use the same conceptual base rather than loosely employing slogans and terms that go sailing past one another without properly connecting. The price of this precision, however, is a necessary evil: the introduction of some new terms, more exact versions of existing ones, and a fairly demanding focus on detailed definitions and distinctions.6 To ease the burden on the reader, wherever possible details and qualifications have been relegated to footnotes. These

4    ? 'Problem orientation' (Goldstein, 1979, 1990) lay behind the whole thrust of the development of the 'preventive process' (Ekblom, 1988) as fostered by the Home Office during the 1980s. In other words, rather than reaching for the most familiar or the most ready-made solution to a crime problem, the nature of the crime problem itself - highly specific and often local - should determine the action.

5    ? This would have to be subject to any legal barriers and codes of practice forbidding for example the improper sharing between agencies of information about individual offenders and drug addicts (cf Ekblom, 1986).

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could be skipped on a first read to get a quick feel for the approach as a whole, and returned to subsequently.

Section 2 of the paper proposes a definition of crime prevention in terms of intervention in the causes of criminal events. Section 3 accordingly sets out a model of the criminal event and its immediate causes. Using this as a basic framework Section 4 builds onto it a model of crime prevention, attempting to capture the complexity of prevention on the ground, in its real-life untidiness, in an organised way. Section 5 returns to the question of the development of crime prevention as a discipline, sketching out how the approach described in this paper can contribute to this. At various points the paper draws illustrations from the classification of the Safer Cities schemes, and elsewhere.

2. A definition of crime preventionCrime prevention can be defined as intervention in mechanisms that cause criminal events, in a way which seeks to reduce the probability of their occurrence. This definition is simple, positive and non-restricting (it could apply equally to target-hardening flats, setting up a youth club, police patrolling or incapacitating offenders). It also focuses directly on how the preventive action actually works when delivered to the target people, institutions or locations. Being based on causes, it links prevention with criminological theory; however, it does this in a minimalist way so that no theories of crime are excluded. In focusing on criminal events, it connects to the nearest thing to a 'universal bottom line' of prevention (Ekblom and Pease in preparation) - reduction in the frequency of criminal events.7

There is obviously an infinity of possible causes of criminal events. Some causes are remote or 'distal' - such as abuse in childhood producing violent assaults in adolescence, or structural and technological change introducing completely new opportunities for crime. Others are near or 'proximal' - the presence of a motivated offender in a suitable crime situation immediately before the occurrence of the criminal event itself. It is these proximal circumstances - the offender in the situation - which form the final point on which all the diverse structural, social, ecological and psychological causes of the criminal event must inevitably converge8. As such, they offer the best basis for organising descriptions of how the many methods of prevention work. The paradigm9 of proximal circumstances is illustrated in Figure 1 and described in the next section.

6    ? The terms and definitions used, which attempt to bridge the divide between crime prevention theory and research, crime prevention management and crime prevention implementation, are available from the author as a glossary.

7    ? Many preventive schemes seeking to reform offenders are evaluated solely in terms of effects on those offenders, rather than effects on local crime rates. The former are important, but only as an intermediate objective; tha latter effects comprise the ultimate objective.

8    ? Of course, events prevented never exist. Such 'non-events' are really best considered as 'events that might have been', say, had the front door not been locked and bolted, or had the (potential) offender not had the remedial schooling... These events could be called 'virtual' (like the 'virtual image' in optics, from which light rays only appear to originate) - but even so they are worth retaining because they help to provide a focus.

9    ? The term 'paradigm' is used here in preference to 'model' because what is being attempted is the development of a new, complete and durable way of conceiving of the field.

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3. A model of the immediate causes of the criminal event - the paradigm of proximal circumstancesTo state an important truism, the criminal event requires at its bare minimum the interaction of a potential offender and a situation to produce behaviour. The potential offender can be anyone10 (we all have the potential to offend, given the right situation). The behaviour in question has, of course, to be defined as criminal; and it usually involves conflict between individuals (eg over ownership of property, or noise levels) and also, perhaps, with the state. This section looks more closely in turn at the offender and the situation, identifying key aspects which can make the criminal event more, or less, likely and which provide a basis for distinguishing between different methods of prevention. It then uses these aspects to set out an initial classification. After describing some further important features of the proximal circumstances paradigm, it sets it in a wider theoretical context and finally illustrates its breadth in covering the whole field of preventive action including that normally considered the preserve of the CJS.

The potential offender The potential offender brings to the situation his or her presence, with or without facilitators (Clarke, 1992) such as weapons or forged security passes. Offenders also have offence-assisting resources such as skills, strength, and knowledge. Even physical distinctiveness can be included (anyone who is six feet six with bright red hair is not cut out to be a pickpocket). Corresponding offence-hindering resources include the capacity to hold down a decent job, and social skills to defuse arguments before they get out of control.

Offenders also bring a set of dispositions. These can be defined as relatively permanent capacities to behave in certain ways, to perceive and think in certain ways or to seek certain goals. They include motives, emotions, values, moral reasoning, ways of perceiving, habits and strategic decisions (eg the decision to remain a criminal). Despite this diversity, most dispositions have two fundamental aspects:11

i) the potential to behave in particular ways in particular situations, such as the inherited capacity for violence or an attitude, acquired in childhood, of disregard of others' rightful ownership of property; or alternatively, internalised controls against aggression or theft.

ii) the current state, which results from the influence of current or recent circumstances in activating and directing the potential - for example entering the crime situation: when already in a state of anger; having made a decision to go looking for likely houses to burgle; or influenced by recent acquisition of a delinquent friend or loss of an important controlling relationship.

10

    ? The corporate offender would need a somewhat different framework, although the blameworthy individual in the corporate context would not.

11    ? Psychology has unfortunately so far failed to provide us with a clear and unified model of its own from which we might borrow more detailed and better-defined aspects of the offender than these rough-and-ready ones - but criminologists unfortunately cannot wait for psychology to be 'finished' before having to draw on psychological concepts! Further, more specific psychological processes can obviously be drawn into understanding criminal perception, decision-making and behaviour, but they are currently not incorporated within this paradigm because they are subject to dispute and contention.

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Both the potential and the current state predispose the offender to react to particular stimuli.12

These include triggering stimuli ranging (proximally) from an open window or an insult to (more distally) a weakness spotted in an auditing procedure; and inhibiting stimuli ranging (proximally) from an 'alarm active' light winking inside an attractive car, to (more distally) knowledge that security procedures in Post Offices have been tightened up.

The crime situation The situation in turn can be divided into three main subcomponents - target, modulators and environment:

* the target13 of the criminal behaviour can be an object, such as a car; or a person, such as a wages clerk. The target has dimensions of its own:

* presence in the situation (it can be removed),* attractiveness to offenders (and/or to modulators), and provocativeness* vulnerability14

* modulators - a term describing several distinct roles people can play in acting upon the situation or against the offender. People can be situation shapers, when they influence the event before it happens by for example leaving their door unlocked, or their leather jacket on the back seat of their car when parking; controlling access to a factory store; keeping themselves out of risky environments; or simply being there, and acting as natural surveillance. They can be interveners, who exercise surveillance; step in during a criminal event to defend property or person; or summon help. They can be reacters (acting after the current event but influencing possible future events), who give chase; report or identify offenders or stolen property; or reinforce preventive measures. These roles can be played by ordinary citizens, by employees going about their business, by police or by private security guards.15 Modulators have:

12    ? These stimuli are part of the situation. More generally speaking, there is a fuzzy boundary between situation and offender. Offenders' perception of the situation may itself be shaped by their dispositional ways of perceiving - eg paranoia leading to subjective perception of threat, or insouciance leading to insensitivity to risk.

13    ? The victim's place in this paradigm is discussed later. In 'victimless' crimes such as drug abuse, there may well be no target as such - just the criminal behaviour in the remainder of the situation.

14    ? Warning signals give offenders advance warning of the invulnerability or unattractiveness of a target, or of the presence of capable interveners: for example, winking lights advertising that a car is 'alarmed' may avoid the costly damage of a failed attempt.

15    ? It is worth pointing out that with progress in information technology, many physical targets or crime environments are increasingly taking on modulator 'roles' (such as the 'situation-shaping' car that reminds the driver to lock up, or the 'intervening' alarm that, having decided that the pattern of sounds and infra-red radiation resembles a burglar rather than the family cat, dials the police). Such functions can be simulated - biscuit-tin burglar alarms, cardboard cutout police constables (the latter-day equivalent of the scarecrow), the mock-up speed camera, or even the life-size companion doll in the car's front passenger seat (an inflatable guardian). As well as acting as warning signals to heighten perceived risk to the offender, these modulator functions can operate through the mechanism of rule-reminders - telling people that what they may be doing is forbidden. Explicit rule reminders can be seen posted on public transport systems the world over ("don't spit, play loud

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* presence (or remote sensing/remote influence), with or without personal modulator tools16 such as a screech alarm or a mobile phone

* motivation to act, * perception (ability to see that a crime could happen/is happening/has happened* resources (knowledge of what to do, strength to act etc)* credibility (in the eyes of the offender)

* the environment in which the criminal event occurs - the rest of the situation; the physical and social context in which the offender and modulators operate with respect to the target. The environment17 has:

* logistical aspects (those physical or social features which make it easier and less risky for the offender to prepare for the criminal event, execute and escape, and which conversely make it harder for the modulators to carry out their roles) including basic sight lines, places of concealment or observation, multiple exits; and environmental modulator tools to tip the balance in favour of the modulator, such as CCTV, lighting or mirrors (of course these may work either way).

* motivating aspects (harder to define but ranging from thin walls which conduct noise between houses, to the presence of peers urging a vandal on)

Taken together, the components of the proximal circumstances just described are basically all that is needed to characterise the immediate causes of the criminal event.18 A criminal event occurs when the right conjunction occurs. To paraphrase and extend Cohen and Felson (1979),19 the term opportunity reflects this conjunction of:

music, eat food, dodge fares.."). Rule-reminders are either stand-ins for human modulators, or supply them with support (it is easier to intervene, for example, when one is able to point to a 'no smoking' sign). Ownership clues, whether centred on targets or territory (as in Defensible Space), also serve to aid modulators and/or deter offenders.

16    ? Adapted from 'prevention tools' (Clarke, 1992).

17    ? In ecological psychology, Barker's (1963) concept of the behaviour setting is a useful way of developing the concept of environment (pointed out by Felson (in preparation)). A behaviour setting is a class of places, or environments, where a particular set of behaviours is routinely likely to occur at particular times - eg filling stations always set the scene for certain types of money transactions, often late at night with relatively few interveners present, and thus also routinely set the scene for robbery and bilking. Felson goes on to distinguish between place (purely a location), setting (location and time with routine behaviour) and facility (assemblage of places/settings).

18    ? Many of these aspects of the components can be further divided (see Figure 5) when greater specificity is required. For example, target vulnerability can be divided into visibility, distinctiveness, passive resistance, passive protest and traceability. Each component has been defined to interlock with the others, rather than overlap, which can make for confusion. For example, 'visibility of target' (such as a concealed safe) interlocks with 'capacity of offender to spot the target (such as the ability of an experienced eye to spot the oddly-placed painting). Altogether, the offender's resources and dispositions are to a large extent outlined in reverse in terms of the aspects of the situation with which they engage (and vice-versa).

19    ? Cohen and Felson's (1979) ecological 'routine activity' approach to crime described the fundamental

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* a ready, willing and able offender, accompanied perhaps by facilitators of crime such as tools

* a vulnerable and attractive or provocative target

* a favourable environment

* the absence of willing, able and credible modulators

Opportunity is not simply a quality of the situation - it is an interaction between properties of situation and offender (an open window 50 feet up is only an opportunity to an athletic cat burglar). Prevention ultimately works by disrupting these conjunctions at some point upstream of the criminal event.

A simple classification of preventive methods Figure 2 shows a classification of methods of prevention in terms of the proximal circumstances that they aim to divert, remove or alter. The one maps quite neatly onto the other, and enables each type of preventive action to receive a systematic and exclusive definition. The key divide is between reducing crime by changing the immediate situation in which offences may occur, and changing potential offenders. On the situational side preventive methods can reflect a focus on i) the target of crime (eg strengthening doors); ii) on modulators (eg 'lock it or lose it' campaigns or installation of security guards); and iii) on the environment (eg clearing shrubs to reduce hiding places, introducing speed bumps or soundproofing walls between flats).

On the offender-oriented side, it is possible to distinguish between two types of activity: i) what could be called 'criminality prevention' or tackling the 'roots of criminality' - influencing people's potential to offend by intervening in their early lives in order to bring about changes in the trajectories of development and 'programming in' of motivations, values, emotions and skills; and ii) remedying the current life circumstances of individuals (such as debt, poor entertainment facilities, bad housing or membership of offending peer groups) which may be influencing their current state of motivation, emotion or decisions to offend.

Bridging the divide between situational and offender-oriented methods is the exclusion of particular potential offenders from particular situations. Exclusion can involve access control such as keys and passes or simple unaided surveillance, such as keeping youngsters out of pubs. Exclusion of crime facilitators such as disarming potential hijackers at airports, or divesting would-be shoplifters of capacious bags on entering supermarkets, can also come here.

Additional aspects of the proximal circumstances paradigm Several further considerations are necessary to complete the proximal circumstances paradigm. (Readers in a hurry can skip to section 4.) These are: additional roles; the terms 'social', 'community' and 'intimate'; the active nature of the components; and the link between one

conjunction of conditions necessary for a criminal event to occur: the presence of a 'likely' offender and a 'suitable' target, and the absence of capable guardians. The 'proximal circumstances' approach described here builds on Cohen and Felson's conjunction, but in a way which enables it to apply to a wider range of offences and circumstances, and is more specific, differentiated and explicit (eg trying to pin down what 'likely', 'suitable' and 'capable' mean).

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criminal event and others.

i) Additional rolesThe victim of the criminal event has not yet been mentioned. The victim has several distinct aspects, being personal target, owner of a physical target and potential modulator.20 These aspects are often confused, rendering so-called 'victim-based' crime prevention an equally-confused category. Helping the victim resist is one class of preventive methods; getting victims to install locks is a way of identifying likely future targets of crime and a method of implementation relying on the extra motivation of the victim.

Felson (in preparation) provides another useful way of distinguishing between modulator roles in terms of the object of their supervisory preventive action. 'Guardians' protect the target; 'handlers' are associates of potential offenders who may dissuade or restrain them from offending; and 'managers' (a term borrowed from Eck, 1993) are responsible for controlling the general environment and any targets and offenders it may contain.21

ii) Social, community and intimate mechanisms However loosely they are defined, it is obviously vital to acknowledge the influence of social and community mechanisms which cause or inhibit crime. At this point, we are only concerned with those social and community micro-mechanisms which operate within the proximal circumstances of criminal events. Those which operate distally are covered in Section 4 when prevention itself is discussed. Social mechanisms that operate within the proximal circumstances are taken specifically to involve interactions between the roles of offender, target (as human victim rather than property) and modulator. Such interactive processes make for uncertain outcomes - a criminal event may or may not happen depending on precisely what A says to B, how precisely B reacts, and so forth.22 The proximal roles may not always involve lone individuals - people may of course operate collectively such as a delinquent gang or a crowd of onlookers - here, group processes play a part.

The concept of community is notoriously elusive both in general (Willmott, 1986), and with regard to policing (Ekblom, 1986) and crime prevention (Rosenbaum, 1988). For present purposes those community mechanisms that operate within the proximal circumstances are taken to involve pre-existing social relationships. Community manifests itself through the 20    ? The first two aspects also have a legal dimension. The other roles in the proximal circumstances have a legal dimension too: with the offender this is obvious; the reacter can be a witness; the intervener can be a witness or legally liable for overzealous defence (indeed with some assaults it is not clear which protagonist occupies the role of victim/target, which the offender); and the situation shaper can be liable for allowing the criminal event to happen.

21    ? Felson adds yet another useful dimension (modified from Clarke, 1992), namely the level of responsibility for controlling crime exercised by each of these roles. For example, the guardian role may be carried out by anyone from a paid security guard to a casual passer-by. Modulators also may have a remit to act in a given situation (following a suggestion from Gloria Laycock) - for example, do they have the authority to intervene in a domestic dispute next door? Combining the dimensions of time (situation-shaper to reacter); object of preventive action (target, offender, environment (place/ behaviour setting/ facility - see footnote 17); and level of responsibility for preventive action gives a powerful way of distinguishing between different modulator roles.

22    ? Game theory processes may occur - for example, A may only feel safe looting if he sees everyone else doing likewise.

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overlapping of these central roles with others (cf Currie, 1988) (eg the offender is also the neighbour of the intervener, or the target person is also the employer of the situation shaper). The occupants of the central roles may have common interest in the targets of crime or in the welfare of the community in general; or joint membership in wider networks.23

Such prior relationships can facilitate or restrain offending. The 'handler' role in particular was mentioned in the previous section. Community (rather than always representing harmony) can bring in conflicts which may lead to violence or damage. Certain community processes such as reputation, stigmatisation and labelling act in ways akin to dispositions: through ecological association they are equivalent to stable properties of the individual. For example, the peers who know an offender's reputation as a fighter and provide a ready influence egging him on, may be present every Saturday night in the local bar.

Distinct from community is another kind of overlapping role relationship which mediates important causes of criminal events - the intimate relationship (eg husband = offender, wife = target or modulator). Social bonds, in control theory terms (Hirschi, 1969), inhibit offending because to do so would spoil valued relationships.24

iii) The active nature of the proximal rolesFigure 1 shows, schematically, long chains of cause and effect leading to the criminal event - but this should not be taken to imply passive offenders, driven inevitably to the fatal conjunction by influences beyond their control. At the very least, the causes on the offender's side are often mediated by decision-making processes (Cornish and Clarke, 1986) both strategic (whether or not to offend) and tactical (whether to attack this car or that one). Offenders may, of course, actively seek or even create opportunities (cf Bennett, 1986).25

If an offence is not inevitable in this sense, then nor should a single preventive intervention be seen as an equally final derailment. If thwarted, offenders may try to circumvent the obstacle by looking for alternative situations - selecting more vulnerable targets, changing time or place to avoid interveners or to find a more favourable environment. They may alternatively change themselves - switching between methods in their repertoire, learning new methods, bringing in extra facilitators such as weapons or false documents, or coming in greater numbers. This is, of course, displacement.

To complement this, potential victims may obviously also try to avoid their property or their

23    ? Community is often equatable with 'locality' - ie geographical relationships - but not always: an ethnic community for example may be scattered spatially.

24    ? Felson (in preparation) draws together social control theory, routine activity theory and the wider community context in which networks enable the emotional 'handles' originating with 'intimate handlers,' such as an offender's parents, to be grasped by a wider and less-intimately-acquainted set of individuals.

25    ? The depiction of the potential offender in the proximal circumstances paradigm allows an unpicking of the differences between the 'amateur' and the 'professional' offender - a distinction widely-used in setting the sights of prevention, but loosely-defined. 'Professionalism' might include the following features: good resourcing in terms of skills, knowledge of risks, targets etc; familiarity with, and possession of, facilitators; strategic decision to offend; strong motivation to offend; active creation of opportunities; emotional coolness in the face of perceived risks.

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persons falling into these same conjunctions26, by steering clear of particular situations or people, locking doors, removing valuables from view or (if the worst comes to the worst) applying interpersonal skills to cool an escalating confrontation. At one remove, there may be a more distal kind of 'arms race' process in which designers of car security systems, for example, evolve infra-red remote central locking controls, the car thieves develop a scanner to pick up and mimic the unique signal for the individual vehicle, and the designers then invent a scan-proof system reminiscent of spies' one-time pads.

The social interactions between the various active components of the proximal circumstances can be highly dynamic and may have to be treated as a holistic system not reducible to its parts. Eck (1993), using a combination of the rational offender and routine activity perspectives, presents an analysis of the choice of sites of drug dealing, in terms of how buyer and seller jointly select suitable environments that enable each to control the risks of arrest and of becoming a target of crime by being cheated or assaulted by the other.27

iv) Between-event processesCriminal events themselves do not of course happen in isolation.28 Figure 1 shows a subsequent conversion event (consumption or resale of stolen goods) which may provide further opportunities for prevention (Sutton 1993); and reaction, involving the exercise of the official CJS or unofficial social control.

There may be 'feedforward' from the outcome of one criminal event to those that follow. With the offender, experience of success, failure or punishment leads, through learning, to changes in all kinds of dispositions. Other potential offenders may also be influenced towards or away from committing a crime - respectively, vicarious knowledge of an easy opportunity and general deterrence and discouragement.29 There will also be feedforward to the affected situation (eg situation shapers blocking vulnerabilities revealed by the previous event - shutting the stable door before the next horse bolts), and perhaps to wider sets of situations (eg redesigning a car lock that has been discovered to be easily defeated).

The paradigm of proximal circumstances has become considerably more complicated than the 26    ? From the victim's perspective, they might be called 'conjunctions of threat' rather than conjunctions of opportunity; the perceived risk of victimisation will influence their decision to incur cost or inconvenience in avoiding these conjunctions (eg leaving the car unlocked whilst popping into a shop). Not all who become victims will have sought avoidance - some may themselves have been 'looking for a fight'... or doing their duty as police officers.

27    ? The drug-dealing transaction also illustrates that the role of offender can be split into collaborative partners in crime, with or without the involvement of a target.

28    ? From a somewhat different angle Cornish (in preparation) has introduced a further refinement, potentially very useful for aiding the development of preventive methods. His concept of 'crimes as scripts' sees offenders having to negotiate their way successfully through a number of linked 'scenes' en route to the final criminal payoff. For example, stealing a car may involve i) prospecting, ii) obtaining duplicate keys, iii) the act of theft itself, iv) arranging a false identity for the vehicle and v) disposal. Each scene may involve a separate criminal event, but all are linked by a common goal. Interventions can be designed to disrupt the conjunction necessary for successful completion of any scene in the sequence.

29    ? Deterrence refers to preventive mechanisms of avoidance of aversive consequences (arrest, punishment, disgrace), discouragement to those involving loss of reward or increase in effort to get it.

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bald 'situation-offender' model that was taken as the starting point, and more complicated even than more sophisticated equivalents like that of Felson (Cohen and Felson, 1979; Felson, 1992). However, the basic framework (as in Figure 1) is still relatively simple. The extra complexity of this framework, and of the additional aspects just discussed, has been entirely necessary. It allows a much more comprehensive coverage of types of criminal events, their causal mechanisms and the potential means of their prevention. It provides a vehicle for describing the behaviour of the various proximal roles, and also their viewpoints. We now have a far better basis on which to describe and classify preventive action. Before doing so (in Section 4), there are two other points to make, setting the proximal circumstances paradigm in a wider theoretical context, and illustrating the breadth of its coverage of preventive action.

The proximal circumstances paradigm in a wider theoretical context The proximal circumstances paradigm has borrowed concepts and causal mechanisms from psychology, law, ecology and sociology - but only at the micro-level. The vast bulk of the subject matter of these disciplines has deliberately been left out of the paradigm. All such omissions concern distal causes; they are, of course important, but only influence crime via the proximal causes already sketched out.30 It is to the meso- and macro-levels of these disciplines that we might look to try to understand why a particular potential offender frequents a particular situation, and how the components of the situation itself have come together, to produce a criminal event.31 From a single-event perspective, we may want to broaden out to consider the geographic pattern of events in an area, or the pattern of events in an individual's criminal career. We might also want to understand how particular social and economic processes have led to commonly-occurring proximal situations such as the vulnerability of the motor vehicle to theft, or city centres which are surrendered to the young at night. Likewise we may want to know how (or indeed, if) changes in employment patterns and welfare benefits, privatisation of public housing, raising of the school leaving age, increases in the divorce rate and the operation of the economic cycle all affect individuals' acquisition of particular dispositions and the current life circumstances which activate them.

This focus on proximal causes will hopefully act as a source of discipline, requiring the more complex theories of crime and crime prevention to come down to earth at some point to define their essential processes in terms of immediate behavioural and ecological realities - or at least make them connect up. Likewise it should require, and help, crime prevention practitioners to be clearer in specifying what mechanisms their planned 'youth work' or 'community development' scheme will engage in the course of implementation, what output measures they will use in monitoring performance and what outcome measures they will ultimately employ in evaluation.

The breadth of the proximal circumstances paradigm In concluding Section 3 we should note the comprehensiveness of the definition of crime prevention adopted, and the range of causes of criminal events identified. In addition to crime prevention as commonly understood, the approach encompasses informal mechanisms of

30    ? Some may think this approach reductionist, but the processes of interest in these wider perspectives can be seen as emergent properties that reside in the patterns of proximal causes and their more distal precursors.

31    ? For an example of a wider model which nevertheless connects with the proximal circumstances, see Wikstrom's (1990) synthesis of how urbanisation has led to the coming together of more strongly-motivated, and more weakly-controlled, offenders with more vulnerable and attractive targets.

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prevention such as are envisaged in Hirschi's Control Theory (Hirschi, 1969), and conflict resolution approaches such as mediation and reparation (and even town planning). It also encompasses all preventive aspects of the formal Criminal Justice System, both sentencing options and policing.32

Through incapacitation, imprisonment is doing no more than keeping known offenders out of particular situations; through correctional treatment, imprisonment seeks to alter the stable dispositions to offend that people bring to situations; through specific and general deterrence, it aims to influence potential offenders' decision-making via their perception of risk and cost of offending. Other sentences available to the courts (such as fines) also seek to prevent through deterrence, whether financial or through the wish to avoid shame. Probation aims to prevent (re-)offending for example by seeking to influence strategic decisions to offend; to help offenders control anger (both aspects of their disposition); and to tackle criminogenic current life circumstances.

Conventional police action operates through a wide range of mechanisms, often in parallel. Patrolling shapes the situation, for example in checking that doors are locked; and supplies willing, able and highly credible interveners and reacters who pose the threat of arrest. Detection and arrest themselves are also of course the lead into the preventive mechanisms of the 'higher' CJS just described. Police-run youth curfews (in some countries) keep particular categories of potential offenders off the streets late at night; they may also serve the situational preventive mechanism of 'target removal' - keeping young people (this time as targets rather than offenders) safe from violent predators or other exploiters. The CJS as a whole aims to underwrite the moral order as a basis for the socialisation of the young and the maintenance of collective moral values across communities and throughout individuals' lives. This ultimately finds its way into individual potential offenders' (dispositional) value systems and beliefs about others' responses to criminal acts.

It may now seem that we have so dissolved the boundaries of crime prevention that the term includes virtually anything and everything. This is not so: the ultimate test is whether a given activity involves intervention in mechanisms which cause criminal events. Having now secured this definition, we no longer have to rely on someone else's boundary fence: it is up to the crime prevention community to set its own limits - to decide, for example, whether or not to include preventive actions which are purely CJS.

4. A paradigm of crime preventionWe now have a basic model of criminal events, and a basic classification of how all crime prevention methods ultimately act to reduce their frequency. But there are more aspects of prevention to unscramble. Considering the examples of preventive action in the introduction, they protect diverse objects at a range of levels in society, using a variety of methods which intervene at different distances from criminal events. Some of the examples are straightforward and direct in implementation; others involve several stages of implementation and hierarchical or multi-agency arrangements.

32    ? The proximal circumstances paradigm can also serve to describe the dysfunctioning of preventive action (both CJS and non-CJS) in terms of making criminal events more likely: labelling, stigmatising ('dispositional' reputation in the community), disruption of stabilising influences such as jobs and family life (changing current states), and teaching criminal skills and attitudes (developing the resources and dispositions of criminality).

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This section aims to identify the key features common to the whole range of preventive action33

in a way that enables practitioners, academics and policy-makers to envisage and communicate that action in consistent and specific terms. To help them, we have to identify the key features common to the whole range of preventive action. All too often, people at the academic end of prevention view it as a detached and abstract set of methods, leaving all the 'messy bits' out. We have to capture the nature of prevention as a 'living thing' in its real-world implementation habitat. It is a challenging task, in which a general framework covering the entire range of conceivable preventive action34 has to be combined with a capacity to represent real-life complexity. The aim is to be as parsimonious as possible in defining a paradigm of prevention, whilst avoiding the procrustean practice of forcing everything into a few oversimple categories.

The focus now has to shift from the mechanisms that cause criminal events, to intervention in these mechanisms, in the service of prevention. The proximal circumstances paradigm is taken as the basic framework; we work backwards from it up the causal chain, adding elements that are specifically preventive. The paradigm of prevention is shown, in Figure 3, superimposed on the paradigm of the criminal event (Figure 1). The terms used are deliberately linked to practice and management concepts, principally the sequence of ultimate and intermediate objectives, although this is not always conducive to elegance.

An overview of the paradigm of prevention According to Figure 3, we start by describing the ultimate objectives of the preventive action - which types of criminal event, committed by which offenders, are to be prevented in which proximal circumstances. Example: reduction of disorder from young people in city-centre.

The ultimate objectives are achieved by the removal, diversion or alteration of the components of the proximal circumstances, to disrupt the conjunction necessary for the relevant criminal events to occur. The achievement of these changes may be the last in a whole sequence of intermediate objectives. As such, they can be called the 'final intermediate objectives'. Example: finding legitimate means to alleviate young people's state of boredom.

The intervention itself, a particular method of prevention applied at some earlier point in the causal chain, acts to achieve these intermediate and ultimate objectives, that is, to disrupt the conjunction of opportunity and reduce the frequency of criminal events. Example: provision of (legitimate) neighbourhood entertainment facilities.

Before the intervention itself may come another sequence of actions designed to gain access to relevant organisations and individuals and then to implement the intervention. These actions are termed here 'insertion'. The sequence of intermediate objectives linking insertion and implementation is called the 'chain of implementation'.

33    ? Excluding purely CJS-based prevention for the sake of brevity.

34    ? It might be argued that to attempt to accommodate all possible types of prevention, including the 'obviously' implausible and silly, leads us into unnecessary complexity. However, at the present state of knowledge, at least, we cannot presume to know exactly what does or does not work. We should not be excluding the loose thinkers but helping them tighten up their ideas so they can be properly implemented and fairly tested. Also, in practice, little if any of the paradigm of prevention about to be described could be omitted, because 'implausible' methods have a great deal in common with 'plausible' ones.

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Example: setting up a multi-agency 'neighbourhood entertainments' working group in the local authority.

These, then, are the bare bones of prevention and they will now be revisited in more detail - where possible, accompanied by illustrative classifications taken from Management Information System records of some 3,000 Safer Cities schemes35.

Ultimate objectives of the scheme The ultimate objectives of the preventive action can be specified in terms of the particular sets of criminal events it seeks to prevent, in particular proximal circumstances.

The criminal events can obviously be specified by legal category, such as theft. But problem-oriented approaches (eg Clarke, 1992; Ekblom, 1988) argue that this is insufficiently precise. The additional focus required has several aspects: the offender involved; the method of offending employed; the target of the criminal behaviour; and the environment in which the target is located. A formal statement of the ultimate objective of a scheme might then read 'the prevention of burglary by young male offenders who break rear windows of dwellings in public housing estates'. The ultimate specification would, of course, go on to name the houses and name the estates. However, what is needed at this point is some way of referring to crimes, relevant offenders, targets and environments, in more general terms. Two ways of doing this can be identified - the scope of the objectives (broad or narrow), and the 'social level' (the entities in society which receive the protection from crime).

Scope of the ultimate objectivesScope is a concept which supports strategic thinking in prevention. It refers here to whether the ultimate objectives, in specifying crime type, offender etc are broad, narrow or in some cases focused on an individual point. Focus can be on:

* a broad set of crime types (as for example with many offender-oriented schemes that aim to prevent criminality in general, or situational schemes that aim to improve overall 'community safety'); or a narrow one (as with treatment to reduce sexual offending, or a situational approach to pickpocketing).

* a broad set of offenders (eg all juvenile delinquents); or a narrow one (eg professional shop thieves).

* generalised methods of offending (eg any kind of walk-in theft); or specialised ones (eg walk-in thefts using con-tricks to gain access).

* a broad set of environments of criminal events (eg a nationwide campaign to improve car park security); a narrow set (eg a particular type of bus shelter whose redesign might reduce jostling and hence pickpocketing); or a single case (eg a specific crime

35    ? The extensive entries for each scheme on the Management Information System - both free-text descriptions and precoded multiple-choice items - were coded using a decision-tree-type menu arrangement to guide the choices made by the coder, which were fed straight into a relational database suitable for handling the hierarchical nature of the material. Considerable efforts were made to train the coder to make consistent decisions; in fact the coder and the author worked jointly to develop the coding system in parallel with the development of the present 'proximal circumstances' paradigm.

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hot-spot).

* a broad set of targets of crime (eg property-marking all valuables); a narrow set (eg a particularly vulnerable make of car); or an individual target (eg a particular house subject to repeat burglary).

Taking all this together it is possible to envisage two extremes. We could have a scheme focusing on a single criminal event in a single environment involving a single target using a specific method of offending (eg preventing the theft of the crown jewels at the coronation by a cunning horseback snatch). By contrast, other schemes are so broadly-targeted in terms of both crime type and situation that they could be said to cover 'everything and everywhere'. These need not necessarily be dismissed as sloppy practice: there are certain aspects of 'capacity building' which are perfectly acceptable as crime prevention. For example, under this heading could come activities such as i) awareness-raising among local professionals about crime and its prevention; ii) developing a local database for collection and analysis of crime incident information in support of the 'preventive process' (Ekblom, 1988); and iii) setting up a residents' association to assist people to identify and tackle crime problems themselves (eg Forrester et al., 1990).

So far the coverage of preventive action has focused solely on crime reduction; but there are sometimes other 'bottom lines' (Ekblom and Pease, in preparation). There may be particular policy reasons beyond the efficient achievement of overall crime reduction for preventing repeat victimisation (Farrell and Pease, 1994). Crime prevention schemes (as in the Safer Cities Programme) may be aimed at reducing fear or improving 'amenity' (eg frequency of going out for leisure) or 'economic life'.

Social level of the ultimate objectivesScope is not enough by itself to capture the rich variety of prevention. It is necessary to have some way of representing the range of 'entities' in society that preventive action seeks to protect as targets or environments for crime, or to control as sources of offending. The concept of 'social level' aims to do just this; these levels include:

* the structural level, involving processes operating within society as a whole, such as employment, manufacturing and distribution or transport;

* community, involving some kind of common interest, with multiple role relationships and networks;

* the area of residence, leisure or work;

* the media;

* institutions, eg schools, work organisations;

* the peer group;

* family and intimates;

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* the individual - individual target, individual environment.36

This schema37 offers a way of pinning down social and community aspects of prevention beyond the very limited elements specified in the proximal circumstances paradigm. Within each level, types of unit can be listed - eg units within the 'institution' level can include school, youth club etc. Even further, we can specify the selection criteria for identifying which of the units are to receive preventive action (eg high-crime schools, youth clubs with vulnerable members, residential areas with a significant criminal subculture). How broad or narrow these selection criteria are determines the scope of the targets, environments and offenders.

The social levels, units and selection criteria identified within the Safer Cities Programme's schemes are shown in Figure 4 (in this and subsequent figures, terms are explained in Appendix 2). The scope and social level concepts can also be applied respectively to the methods of intervention and insertion.

Final intermediate objectives of the method The ultimate objectives of the scheme are achieved by disruption of the conjunction of opportunity through changes in the components of the proximal circumstances. These changes may lie at the end of a long chain of cause and effect which the preventive action began. In management terms, they can be called the 'final intermediate objectives'. These desired changes can be classified in terms of the proximal components they seek to affect - as shown in Figure 2, and the more detailed 'tree of components' in Figure 5.

The intervention The intervention is the means to achieving the final intermediate objectives of the method. There are several distinct aspects:

* the methods and mechanisms of intervention themselves;

* the causes of the criminal event that the intervention interrupts; and

* the entities that receive the intervention - their social level.

These are discussed in turn.

Methods and mechanisms of intervention38

It is not enough to describe methods of intervention simply in terms of the proximal components they seek to change - for example 'reducing vulnerability of target due to its lack of resistance', 36    ? Environment can be taken as place, behaviour setting or facility - see footnote 17.

37    ? The international level could also be added, covering drug trafficking, smuggling endangered species, international terrorism etc.

38    ? A method (eg target-hardening house windows) may work through various mechanisms (eg physical blocking; increasing skill required; increasing effort; lengthening time exposed to risk of discovery; increasing noise of entry). Perhaps the most surprising thing to emerge from lookingat prevention from a mechanisms perspective is just how many possible mechanisms can be hypothesised to underlie a particular preventive method. Formal definitions of scheme, method and mechanism used in the classification of Safer Cities schemes are in Appendix 1.

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'increasing perceptual capacity and motivation of intervener', or 'legitimately satisfying the offender's need for excitement'.39 Nor is it always enough to use loose or very general phrases such as 'youth work' or 'target hardening'. Too many descriptions of preventive schemes leave them at this. The missing ingredient, the method, is captured in a 'by' phrase: 'reducing vulnerability of target due to its lack of resistance, by physical strengthening of lock'; 'increasing perceptual capacity and motivation of intervener by training in detection of suspicious behaviour and rewarding for successful interventions'; 'legitimately satisfying the need for excitement by providing the challenging activity of white-water canoeing'. Common to all these descriptions are the proximal components to be changed; the nature of the changes; and the method of intervention. Specifying preventive action in this way requires the practitioner to be clear as to the mechanisms by which the intervention is supposed to work, suggests outcome measures by which it might be evaluated and the basis on which it could be replicated or adjusted (Tilley, 1993, 1994).

Methods of intervention used in the Safer Cities schemes are shown in Figure 6.40

The causes of the criminal event which are interrupted by the intervention It may be important to consider the causal mechanisms which the intervention seeks to interrupt, and whether the point of intervention is proximal or distal. Situational schemes generally intervene directly on the proximal circumstances - for example, identifying individual vulnerable situations (such as a crime hot-spot (Sherman et al., 1989)) and altering them in situ. As a distal influence on situations, an intervention in the labour market might allow for more home-working, say, resulting in more interveners being at home to protect their property against burglary. On the offender-oriented side, the mechanisms subject to intervention are extremely diverse. Towards the proximal end, the current life circumstances of potential offenders - debt, bad housing, peer pressure etc - influence their current state (eg moods, tactical decisions to offend) prior to the criminal event. Lifestyle and routine activity direct particular offenders into particular situations. More distally, development, learning and socialisation processes obviously contribute to the programming of dispositions and acquisition of resources for crime. Structural processes still further back - relating to patterns of mobility, employment and cultural norms - influence socialisation in their turn.

Generally speaking, the more distal the point of intervention, the wider the scope of the ultimate objectives and hence the greater the number of future individual criminal events that may be knocked off course. Unfortunately, this gain may sometimes be at the expense of the probability of successful impact, there being "many a slip 'twixt cup and lip". However, this is not always the case: early intervention in a child's family or schooling may actually lead that child away from criminogenic influences. Further work in this area might help implementors of crime prevention to think strategically about the best links in the causal chain in which to intervene, trading off cost, scope, risk of failure, and side-effects such as stigmatisation of areas, institutions or individuals.

The entities that receive the preventive action: the social level of intervention The concept of the 'social level' can be used to identify the entities which receive the 39    ? It is really just a restatement of the final intermediate objective of the action.

40    ? To specify the mechanisms they applied would have been too conjectural given the open-ended range of possible mechanisms and the limited scheme descriptions in the Management Information System.

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intervention. The entities receiving the intervention need not be the same as the ones, receiving protection, that are specified in the ultimate objectives. For example, a neighbourhood could receive the intervention, in a scheme whose ultimate objective concerned reducing disorder in the city centre (see Figure 8). On what basis is one unit selected for intervention rather than another - one school, one offender, one area, one community, one situation shaper, one make of car, one hot-spot...? It is here that the Brantingham and Faust (1976) distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary prevention fits in, whether applied to offenders or situations.

Implementing the intervention: methods of 'insertion' To bring the intervention about, access to the relevant institutions and individuals has to be gained, cooperation has to be secured and a sequence of intermediate objectives have to be set up before the intervention itself is implemented. Consider two school-based schemes. Both operate at the 'institutions' level, but in other respects they differ. The first attempts to influence the school ethos to improve the dispositions of pupils. The second involves persuading the school to identify individual pupils at risk of offending and to give them remedial education. In the first, the prevention intervenes in the causal chain at the point of the functioning of the school as a whole; it begins and ends there. In the second, the action also begins with the whole school but ends elsewhere: perhaps in a special classroom with selected pupils.41

To take another example, the crime preventer might take direct action in a car park which is the scene of frequent autocrime; or might alternatively work with a national car park-owning company to get them to introduce the same range of security measures. Once again, the longer the chain of implementation, the less reliable may be the prospects of securing the right intervention in the right place, but the larger the numbers of potential offenders and/or situations that it may be possible to influence.

These chains of implementation describe multiple stages of cause and effect - or in management terms a hierarchy of intermediate objectives. There may be a matching structure in the organisational arrangements behind the commissioning of the schemes. The crime preventer role may involve more than just a single individual or a single multi-agency team - it may involve a hierarchy in which (as with the Safer Cities Programme) there are national team leaders, local coordinators, and implementors of individual schemes (eg a local victim support group receiving money from the coordinator to implement security measures in the houses of existing victims of burglary).42

The units of insertion can also be characterised using the social levels framework. Recalling the previous examples, the levels and units of insertion and intervention may be the same (inserted in school; intervening in school ethos) or different (inserted in school; intervening on individual pupils). Methods of insertion can also be identified - mass publicity; individual persuasion, teaching/training; negotiation; legislation; incentives; defining standards; and rule-setting. Methods of insertion used in the Safer Cities schemes are shown in Figure 7.

41    ? This is a separate and distinct causal chain from the one which originally would have led to the criminal event - the chain of implementation. The point where this chain begins can be referred to as the point of insertion; it ends at the point of intervention, already described.

42    ? The roles operating the chain of implementation may end in the proximal circumstances with the modulators themselves as the final link - eg the situation shaper who decides to use the lock installed by the council.

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This, then, is the paradigm of preventive action. As can now be seen, to systematically describe the multiple facets of a preventive scheme takes a great deal of detail and the making of careful distinctions - but what experienced practitioner would ever argue that prevention was simple?

5. Towards a discipline of crime prevention - the two paradigms in actionAfter demonstrating the conceptual tangle of current crime prevention, this paper put forward a definition of crime prevention, a paradigm of the causation of criminal events and, based on this, a second paradigm of the implementation and structure of crime prevention itself. The end product is not a single, rigid 'take it or leave it' classification, like butterflies in a Victorian collector's cabinet, but a conceptual toolkit. This toolkit can be applied in a number of ways in form and content according to need. Nonetheless all applications will be based on a consistent and interlocking set of concepts. At times, the language and the concepts developed have been abstract and difficult - but this has been necessary for two reasons: first, to get to grips with the slippery concepts of situation and disposition, and the discussion of different aspects of causation; and second, to pull together the immense diversity of actions intended to control behaviour.

Casual users need not be bothered with the complexity of the full schema. All they require is some simplified version adapted to their circumstances. However, practitioners, researchers and evaluators at the 'serious' end of crime prevention may find it worthwhile investing in the effort required to become familiar with the terms, the concepts and the whole perspective. In fact, to return to a theme aired at the beginning of this paper, what is on offer here are some of the foundations of a discipline of crime prevention. Professionals in fields like medicine or architecture make such a collective and individual investment - why not those in crime prevention?

The establishment of crime prevention as a discipline rather than a pretty haphazard and loosely-conceived collection of theory, skills and know-how would have many benefits.43 Apart from the obvious advantage of more professional crime prevention, the greater authority and stronger basis for arguing the professional case in multi-agency groups and on project steering committees will give it a better chance to prevail against simplistic ideas (experience shows that everyone is an amateur criminologist, often with strongly-held views) and the inevitable rush to spend funds before the end of the financial year. This final section carries this argument forward and in particular seeks to demonstrate the potential of the proximal circumstances approach in contributing to a discipline of crime prevention.

Ingredients of a discipline of crime prevention Key ingredients which might form the basis of a discipline of crime prevention include the following, the first two of which are familiar:

1) a much greater precision of terms and concepts, linked by a consistent and comprehensive conceptual framework

2) a focus on the causal mechanisms by which preventive action is supposed to have its effect

43    ? At the very least, if we do not progress as far as a discipline, the proximal circumstances approach will enable us to codify and define the tasks of crime prevention.

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3) a knowledge-base of the nature and causes of crime, criminals and methods of offending4) a knowledge-base (derived from adequate evaluations) of what methods of intervention

work, in what contexts5) a similar knowledge-base of what methods of insertion, both single and multi-agency,

work, in what contexts6) a set of problem-identifying, problem-solving and evaluation methods 7) general skills in project management, obtaining resources and building multi-agency or

'partnership' support8) adequate training9) a professional network and proper organisational support, including links to centres of

expertise

This list includes elements of both 'academic' and 'practice' disciplines - but, as with physics and engineering, and medical science and medicine, these are complementary and feed off one another.44 Up for discussion is the extent to which we should be aiming to develop crime prevention i) as an independent expert profession acting as consultants or in permanent posts such as crime prevention coordinators, versus ii) preparing packages of expertise to extend the horizons of other specialists such as planners, or general managers such as those in charge of metro railways.

The contribution of the proximal circumstances approach The proximal circumstances approach (PCA - comprising both the paradigm of proximal circumstances of criminal events and the paradigm of prevention) can play a significant role in enhancing most of these ingredients. The scope of its likely contributions is briefly reviewed below.

1) and 2) Conceptual framework and focus on causes Obviously, PCA was designed to meet the first two requirements. In particular, it provides both a classification framework45 and a language. These are deliberately focused on causal mechanisms, to make practical connections with theory and research, and designed to support rigorous computerised knowledge bases for storage, entry and retrieval.

1/2.1) A classification framework for preventive action The paradigm of proximal circumstances and the paradigm of prevention can together be used to assemble a framework for classifying crime prevention. The 'components of proximal circumstances' dimension already illustrated in Figure 1 (and extended in Figure 5) is the core. However, every component identified within the two paradigms can be used as a peg on which to hang a separate dimension of classification.

The dimensions can be divided into three principal realms: i) the ultimate objectives of the scheme; iii) the final intermediate objectives of each

44    ? Modern disciplines of science and technology have developed through the coming-together of the academic and craft traditions - in many cases with the latter in the lead. Such a fusion should be equally fruitful for crime prevention.

45    ? The benefits of a good classification framework, the requirements such a system must meet and existing crime prevention classification systems are discussed in detail in Ekblom, 1994.

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preventive method it employs (in other words, the changes sought in the proximal circumstances); and iii) the methods themselves - insertion and intervention. A detailed list of these realms and dimensions is in Appendix 1 and illustrated in Figure A1.

Depending on their purpose, users of this toolkit can select any of the dimensions, and cast them into any suitable format. In all cases, though, underlying this diversity is the unity of PCA.

Users might wish to classify prevention on a single dimension, or employ a combination.46 A broad classification could, for example, serve merely to distinguish between offender-oriented and situational schemes. A specific classification could make rather more subtle distinctions relating, for example, to which sub-components of the situation were affected by the preventive action - interveners, situation shapers, logistical environment, target attractiveness, target vulnerability etc. Only in the compilation of computerised knowledge bases would every last detail be needed.

1/2.2) A language for describing preventionThe proximal circumstances approach could serve as a language formally describing preventive action, in a grant application, a management information system or a knowledge base. Such a language is also vital for facilitating collaborative working. In the multi-agency context, where confusion over terms and concepts between, say, police and probation can be a major difficulty (Sampson et al., 1988), the availability of a common language in which to discuss proposals for prevention is crucial. A fairly exhaustive description of a scheme might take the form shown in Figure 8. While this is ponderous, it is very precise, and a considerable improvement on the kind of ambiguous description one often has to make do with: "Youth work, tackling disorder, town centre."

The language could also be used to give systematic definitions of what are currently vague but important topics such as 'social' crime prevention. One such attempt at definition could be as follows:

Social crime prevention involves methods which are (1) offender-oriented (in their final intermediate objectives); (2) whose point of intervention ranges between very distal ('roots' of criminality, for changing offenders' programmed potential) and moderately distal ('current life circumstances' for changing their current state); and (3) whose method of intervention involves interrupting or diverting those causal mechanisms of criminal events, that operate at the social levels of structure, community or institutions.

Note that this definition excludes a lot of methods which do nevertheless involve

46    ? As with van Dijk and de Waard's (1991) 2-dimensional framework (primary / secondary / tertiary x offender / target / victim-oriented action).

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social processes, such as surveillance of situations or psychotherapy of offenders - these are methods which proponents of social crime prevention often acknowledge but say 'yes, but that's not what I really mean by social'. Perhaps here is an opportunity to force out positive, explicit and consistent definitions. The whole area of social, ecological, community and lifestyle-oriented approaches to prevention could greatly benefit from being pinned down, defined and differentiated in this way.

3) A knowledge-base of the nature and causes of crime, criminals and methods of offendingPCA, focusing on causes, can help to organise relevant criminological facts and theories and direct them towards practical prevention. It can help to direct the questioning in offender interviews to elicit guidance for preventive methods (Ekblom, 1991), which can cover motivation, logistical considerations, perceived risks and opportunities. Likewise, methods of offending can be described in PCA terms (for example 'this MO exploits target vulnerability and poor perception on the part of interveners, by using a quick, quiet and easily-concealed centre-punch to break cars' side windows').

Provided the relevant knowledge-bases exist, PCA offers the prospect of more rigorous crime risk assessment (such as in the design of shopping centres or chemical process works) and provides a firmer basis for making 'crime impact statements' (a predictive approach which might involve saying, for example 'if you locate that pub here then you will get a lot of disorder'; or 'if you enact that legislation on homelessness, then you will reduce offending by this group of people, but may exacerbate offending in this other group').

4/5) Knowledge-bases of what methods of intervention and insertion work, in what contextsPCA, as already said, supplies a multi-dimensional classification of intervention and insertion methods around which these knowledge-bases can be structured, and provides for standard descriptions of schemes. Descriptions of the contexts in which the methods were shown to work are vital for replication - see Tilley (1994). Such contexts may also be specified partly using PCA terms (social level/unit/selection criteria of intervention; aspects of target, environment and modulators). 6) A set of problem-identifying, problem-solving and evaluation methods The paradigm of prevention can contribute to the application of the preventive process (Ekblom, 1988) that is at the heart of professional crime prevention activity. PCA can provide a language for articulating the various stages of the preventive process in greater detail:

6.1/ Collecting crime data and crime pattern analysis 6.2 These first stages involve identification of the crime problem and the setting of

ultimate objectives. PCA gives a template for formal statements of the ultimate objectives in terms of scope and social level of crime problem, offenders and methods of offending, targets and environments of the criminal events to be prevented - all of which can be sought during exploration of the crime patterns. PCA also gives clues as to the kind of information to seek (in site visits, observations, discussions with people familiar with local conditions) in exploring, interpreting and extending the statistical information with which

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analysis begins.47 Such fleshing-out is important for the next stage.

6.3) Devising preventive measures This stage involves deciding on methods of intervention and insertion. This necessitates several tasks conducted not in any fixed sequence but in a number of 'orbits' until satisfactory solutions to the problem appear to have been created. Cast in PCA terms, they include:

6.3.1) detailed consideration of the particular conjunction of opportunity which enables the criminal events in question to occur - and the possibilities for disrupting it

6.3.2) selection of which component/s of the proximal circumstances to influence, and the changes to make to them, in order to achieve this disruption (that is, setting of final intermediate objectives)

6.3.3) specification of intervention in terms of point, scope, social level, method and the causal mechanisms by which it is supposed to work; and likewise for insertion

6.3.4) checking candidate proposals against the possibility of displacement (taking the offender's perspective and thinking one or two moves ahead); ensuring proposals are set cost-effectively to deal with offenders at an appropriate level of resources and motivation (that is, design against 'professional' criminals only when these pose a known threat; otherwise design merely against 'amateurs')

6.3.5) checking candidate proposals against a series of practical constraints imposed for example by public acceptability, cost, safety and aesthetics

6.3.6) devising suitable implementation structures in terms of: methods / schemes / packages; sequence of intermediate objectives and hierarchy of management; multi-agency or single-agency implementation

6.4) ImplementationTo a large extent the planning of implementation has been covered in the previous stage. In the actual implementation of the scheme on the ground, monitoring and adjustment can be guided with reference to the specified intermediate objectives in the chain of implementation, and placed clearly on the shoulders of the relevant agencies or individuals.

6.5) Evaluation, adjustment and replicationEvaluation is best achieved if there is a clear picture of the causal mechanisms of intervention and its context. This informs the collection of the appropriate data

47    ? Obviously, statistical skills and the ability to interpret tabular data are also required in analysis, interpretation and evaluation.

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in advance, and guides the interpretation of the subsequent pattern of outcomes.48

A preventive scheme which has been devised and formally-specified along PCA lines should be both easier to evaluate49 and more likely to merit the effort of evaluation. This applies equally to evaluation of implementation (were the right environments, offenders etc selected? Were the right insertion and intervention actions delivered to them? What were the problems at each stage of implementation?) and evaluation of impact (was there a real fall in crime? to what extent can this be attributed to other causes?). The clearer setting of intermediate objectives in PCA terms (and their measurement by reliable and valid means) should facilitate learning from success or failure, and intelligent adjustment, replication and generalisation to other contexts.

7) General skills in project management, obtaining resources and building multi-agency or 'partnership' supportManagement works best with a framework for distinguishing the strategic from the tactical and a clear idea of what the various intermediate and ultimate objectives should look like. This also provides for tighter quality control of management information systems in large-scale preventive programmes and better retrievability and usefulness of the information stored. A clearer specification of proposed preventive action of the kind PCA offers is more likely to secure funds and other resources (and conversely, the grant-giver is in a better position to decide whether or not to award them, and what details to negotiate). In the multi-agency context, such greater precision in planning preventive action can make it easier for members of the multi-agency group to obtain support from colleagues in their own organisations.

8) Adequate trainingThe development of organised and retrievable knowledge-bases, the teaching of the concepts of PCA, the pursuit of the preventive process, and the general ways of thinking it encourages together amount to a curriculum for professional crime prevention training. This should enable the creation of a wider corps of crime preventers than at present - currently, it often seems that we go to the same small group of 'star' police officers or others time and again (or that we have to rely on involving academics). The training could either create fully-rounded crime prevention experts (in a kind of 'major'); or comprise modules which could be imparted to professionals in other relevant fields, such as planning or industrial design.

This has only been an illustration of future possibilities, but hopefully one that has demonstrated the potential of PCA to further the discipline of prevention. In its present state PCA is a long way from the humble crime prevention practitioner toiling away on some housing estate. Ways and means can be found of simplifying and communicating its ideas to practitioners - but that comes after getting the central ideas right.

6. Conclusion: where next?Beyond the immediate purpose of feeding ideas into the Cropwood conference, this paper is 48    ? This follows the Scientific Realist approach of Pawson and Tilley (1992, 1994).

49    ? Evaluation is, however, rarely simple and free from uncertainty, even with the best-conceived, best-implemented and best-evaluated schemes (Ekblom, 1990; Ekblom and Pease, in preparation).

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intended to stimulate debate and constructive criticism - not just on the fine detail, say, of the components of the proximal circumstances, but on the definition of prevention, the paradigms and so forth. In so doing the intention is to foster the development of the discipline of crime prevention as a collective and cumulative effort. In this connection, it is perhaps worth re-stating that most of the concepts incorporated within the paradigm of proximal circumstances have a clear pedigree from the ideas of Felson, Clarke and others. Despite its origins being more on the situational side it is hoped that the approach will serve as a bridge between situational and offender-oriented perspectives - to get them on the same conceptual map.

There are several ways forward. First, the proximal circumstances approach should develop through further, more quantitative analysis of the Safer Cities schemes (in the course of getting to grips with the quite awesome diversity of the 3,000-odd schemes, it has already undergone several revisions). Multivariate techniques such as cluster analysis can be applied to the collection of features by which the schemes are classified, to identify commonly-occurring types. Second, PCA can be put to immediate practical use to inform the information, management and training needs of Safer Cities Phase 2 (the next 40 cities). In this connection it is hoped that the information taken from the Safer Cities Phase 1 schemes (imperfect though that information often is) will constitute the beginnings of a cumulative body of organised and easily-retrieved knowledge of preventive activity. Third, a useful avenue of exploration can be opened up through the study of methods of offending - enabling further detailed features of the components of proximal circumstances to be dissected. (For example on the situational side, this could illuminate additional features of the target - con-artists might rely on aspects such as the difficulty of discriminating between US banknotes of low and high value. On the offender side, it could focus on necessary aspects of offenders' resources - skill and knowledge.) Fourth, there is a need to look more closely at the offender side in general, to try to bring it up to the same level of detail as the situational (although we are quite soon likely to hit the limits of reliable psychological knowledge and concepts).

We now have at least fifteen years' experience in practical crime prevention on which to consolidate and build - and some ideas as to the way forward. To a large degree, the vision of crime prevention as a fully-fledged professional discipline is a Grail for the future - but this is surely an irresistible challenge to practitioners, researchers, evaluators, and policy-makers. The alternative vision ahead is one in which we do not take up the challenge - and risk wasting the next fifteen years on loosely-conceived, poorly-implemented and weakly-evaluated schemes, with little accumulation of knowledge. Do we really want to condemn ourselves to continually re-inventing the flat tyre?

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References

Barker, R. (1963). The Stream of Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Bennett, T. (1986). "Situational Crime Prevention: the Offender's Perspective" in K. Heal and G. Laycock (eds), Situational Crime Prevention: from Theory into Practice. London: HMSO.

Brantingham P.J. and F. Faust (1976). "A Conceptual Model of Crime Prevention." Crime and Delinquency, 22:130-146.

Clarke, R. (1992). Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies. Albany, NY: Harrow and Heston.

Cohen, L. and M. Felson (1979). "Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: a Routine Activity Approach." American Sociological Review 44:588-608.

Cornish, D. (in preparation). "Procedural Analysis of Offending and its Relevance for Situational Prevention." Crime Prevention Studies 3.

Cornish, D. and R. Clarke (1986). The Reasoning Criminal. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Currie, E. (1988). "Two Visions of Community Crime Prevention" in T. Hope and M. Shaw (eds), Communities and Crime Reduction. London: HMSO.

Eck, J. (1993). Drug Places: Drug Dealer Choice and the Spatial Structure of Illicit Drug Markets. Dissertation draft, University of Maryland (cited in Felson, in preparation). Ekblom, P. (1986). "Community Policing: Obstacles and Issues." In: P. Willmott (ed), The Debate about Community: Papers from a Seminar on Community in Social Policy. PSI Discussion Paper 13. London: Policy Studies Institute.

Ekblom, P. (1988). Getting the Best out of Crime Analysis. Home Office Crime Prevention Unit Paper 10. London: Home Office.

Ekblom, P. (1990). "Evaluating Crime Prevention: the Management of Uncertainty" in C. Kemp (ed), Current Issues in Criminological Research. Bristol: Bristol Centre for Criminal Justice.

Ekblom, P. (1991). "Talking to Offenders: Practical Lessons for Local Crime Prevention" in O. Nel.lo (ed), Urban Crime: Statistical Approaches and Analyses.Proceedings of International Seminar 1990. Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Metropolitans de Barcelona.

Ekblom, P. (1992). "The Safer Cities Programme Impact Evaluation: Problems and Progress." Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 1: 35-51.

Ekblom, P. (1994). "Proximal Circumstances: a Mechanism-Based Classification of Crime Prevention." Crime Prevention Studies 2:185-232.

Ekblom, P. and K. Pease (in press). "Evaluating Crime Prevention." Crime and Justice 19.

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Ekblom, P., M. Sutton and R. Wiggins (1993). Scoping, Scoring and Modelling: Linking Measures of Crime Preventive Action to Measures of Outcome in a Large, Multi-Site Evaluation. Talk to Royal Statistical Society, London, December 1993 (available from author).

Farrell, G. and K. Pease (1994). Once Bitten, Twice Bitten: Repeat Victimisation and its Implicatios for Crime Prevention. Home Office Crime Prevention Unit Paper 46. London: Home Office.

Felson, M. (1992). "Routine Activities and Crime Prevention: Armchair Concepts and Practical Action." Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention 1:30-34.

Felson, M. (in preparation). "Those Who Discourage Crime." Crime Prevention Studies 4.

Forrester, D., M. Chatterton and K. Pease (1988). The Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Demonstration Project. Crime Prevention Unit Paper 13. London: Home Office.

Forrester, D., S. Frenz, M. O'Connell and K. Pease (1990). The Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project: Phase II Crime Prevention Unit Paper 23. London: Home Office.

Goldstein, H. (1979). "Improving Policing: A Problem-Oriented Approach." Crime and Delinquency 25:236-260.

Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem Oriented Policing New York: McGraw Hill.

Graham, J. (1990). Crime Prevention Strategies in Europe and North America. Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI).

Hirschi, T. (1969). The Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pawson, R. and N. Tilley (1992). 'Re-Evaluation: Rethinking Research on Corrections and Crime'. Yearbook of Correctional Education 1-31.

Pawson, R. and N. Tilley (1994 in press). "What Works in Evaluation Research?". British Journal of Criminology. Rhodes, W. and C. Conly (1981). "Crime and Mobility: an Empirical Study." In: P. Brantingham and P. Brantingham (eds), Environmental Criminology. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Rosenbaum, D. (1988). Community and Crime Prevention: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature. Justice Quarterly 5:323-395.

Sampson, A., P. Stubbs, D. Smith, G. Pearson and H. Blagg (1988). "Crime, Localities and the Multi-Agency Approach." British Journal of Criminology 28:478-493.

Sherman L., P. Gartin and M. Buerger (1989). "Hot Spots of Predatory Crime: Routine Activities and the Criminology of Place." Criminology 29:821-850.

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Sutton, M. (1993). "From Receiving to Thieving: the Market for Stolen Goods and the Incidence of Theft." Research Bulletin 34. London: Home Office Research and Statistics Department.

Tilley, N. (1993). Understanding Car Parks, Crime and CCTV: Evaluation Lessons from Safer Cities. Crime Prevention Unit Paper 42. London: Home Office.

Tilley, N. (1994). After Kirkholt: Theory, Method and Results of Replication Evaluations. Crime Prevention Unit Paper 47. London: Home Office.

van Dijk J. and J. de Waard (1991). "A Two-Dimensional Typology of Crime Prevention Projects: with a bibliography". Criminal Justice Abstracts 23:483-503.

Wikstrom, P-O. (1990). "Delinquency and the Urban Structure" in P-O. Wikstrom (ed), Crime and Measures Against Crime in the City. Stockholm: National Council for Crime Prevention.

Willmott, P. (ed) (1986). The Debate about Community: Papers from a Seminar on Community in Social Policy. PSI Discussion Paper 13. London: Policy Studies Institute.

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APPENDIX 1 A classification framework for preventive action

This framework is also illustrated in Figure A1.

Defining preventive action Before presenting the classification, the 'units' of preventive action have to be defined. This is a surprisingly slippery task: terms like 'scheme', 'method', 'project' etc are used with abandon by practitioners and academics alike. More precise and consistent definitions are needed. The following seem to work in characterising Safer Cities action and earlier initiatives.

* A scheme is a unitary piece of preventive action with a common ultimate objective - ie targeted on a particular crime problem in a particular situation or set of situations. It may involve the implementation of more than one method, but these are closely integrated; and operationally, it usually involves one group of implementors, one budget and one start date.

* A method of intervention is an element of preventive action which operates through a particular and indivisible set of causal routes, ending up as influences on one or more components of the proximal circumstances of criminal events.

* Causal mechanisms of intervention describe the ways in which the methods actually have their effect, whether directly upon one or more of the components of the proximal circumstances, or more distally via a longer chain of causation.

* A package is a collection of several schemes aimed at the same situation or set of situations, the same crime problem, or both - ie unified by the same ultimate objectives. However, implementors, budgets, start dates and methods may all differ considerably.

To illustrate the distinctions between the units, the Kirkholt Project in the North of England (Forrester et al., 1988, 1990) introduced, over several years, a package of schemes aimed at reducing burglary on a particular high-crime public housing estate. One scheme involved setting up mini-neighbourhood watches comprising burglary victims and their immediate neighbours, and implemented through the local victim support group. The method of intervention of the scheme was surveillance and the mechanisms of intervention involved, for example, improving the motivation of interveners and reacters by heightening their commitment to help one another. Another scheme concerned the method of target removal - replacing coin-operated domestic gas meters with token-operated ones; obviously the gas company was involved. These schemes together employed situational methods; yet another set of schemes involved the local probation service in implementing several offender-oriented methods of reducing local burglars' motivation to offend: a job club, a credit union and action in support of those with a drugs/alcohol dependency. These methods focused partly on changing offenders' current states (influencing their current life circumstances by intervention mechanisms involving alleviation of needs by legitimate means), and partly on changing their programmed potential (by mechanisms of dependency treatment).

It is worth pointing out the 'one-to-many' relationships between these units, which reflect the real complexity of preventive action that practitioners and researchers have to address. A package will by definition contain several schemes; a scheme may employ more than one method; a method may operate by several mechanisms simultaneously. As an example of the last, a locked security door may operate by physically blocking offending, by heightening the perceived risk of arrest (through time taken, noise of effort, symbolisation that owners care and may otherwise intervene). Covering successively wider sets of situations, it can also contribute to an offender's general perception that this is a secure neighbourhood and not worth prospecting (Rhodes and Conly 1981); that burglary is getting harder to accomplish; or even (to stretch a point) that offending in general is getting too difficult and risky. Tilley (1993) gives a real-life example of 9 possible mechanisms underlying the impact of CCTV cameras in car parks.

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The Ultimate Objectives of the Preventive Scheme: What Crime Problems Does it Seek to Reduce and Where?

(1) targeting of criminal events by the scheme can be specified by

(1.1) crime type/s

(1.2) method of offending

(1.3) type of potential offender

(1.4) being broad or narrow in scope

(2) targeting of the proximal situation, in which reductions in the frequency of criminal events are sought, can be specified

(2.1) by situation type/s (type of target of criminal behaviour and type of environment) in terms of social level /unit /selection criteria

(2.2) as broad, narrow or individual in scope

The Final Intermediate Objectives of the Method/s Employed by the Scheme: Which Components of the Proximal Circumstances does it Seek to Change, and in What Ways? The entire hierarchical tree of components identified in Figure 5 can be used in classification. The method can seek to influence the situation or the offender's disposition: within the former, via the target, the environment or modulators; and within the latter, via programming (criminality-reduction approaches) or via current state-setting (roughly equivalent to changing current life circumstances). (Conjunctional combinations (eg situation x offender) can also be incorporated within a classification, but are not listed here as the possible combinations of components are many.)

The Method of Prevention Itself: What are the Methods and Mechanisms of Intervention and Insertion and How are They Implemented?

(1) Where is the point of intervention in the causal chain?

(1.1) proximal or distal?

(1.2) at which social level are the units of intervention?

(1.3) what are the units of intervention?

(1.4) how are the units of intervention selected?

(2) What method is used in intervention; which hypothesised preventive mechanisms are engaged; which hypothetical causal mechanisms of criminal events do they interrupt or divert?

(3) Where is the initial point of insertion?

(3.1) proximal or distal?

(3.2) at which social level are the units of insertion?

(3.3) what are the units of insertion?

(3.4) how are the units of insertion selected?

(4) What method is used, and which hypothesised mechanisms are engaged, in insertion?

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(5) What is the chain of implementation connecting insertion and intervention? In particular, is the implementation direct (straight to the point of intervention) or indirect (via a chain of implementation)? And if indirect, what are the intermediate objectives at each link of the chain?

This is, of course, a 'skeleton' classification only, with little tangible content. The important thing to note at this point is that, despite the blandness that comes from its presentation in an abstract form, each element refers to a different aspect of prevention that is significant in its own right. For the classification to be fleshed out it would need lists of methods, social levels and their units, and so forth. One realisation of the possibilities for classification, currently being developed for use in the Safer Cities evaluation, is illustrated in Figure A1 (due to space constraints the illustration only goes down a limited number of levels). The actual exemplars of methods, social levels etc found in the Safer Cities schemes are shown in Figures 4-7.

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APPENDIX 2 Description of terms used in classification of Safer Cities schemes

Note: those terms which are obvious are omitted.

1. SOCIAL LEVEL Figure 4(most terms apply equally to social levels of ultimate objectives, intervention and insertion; some, however, apply only to one or two)

RESIDENT AT RISK - individuals who are identified as at risk offenders because of where they live, not their prior behaviour

AUTHORISATION - an individual who is denied entry due to lack of authorisation AT RISK ALCOHOL/DRUGS - individuals who are at risk of offending due to addictions

MULTIPLE VICTIM - used for ongoing (eg harassment) cases, also when target is selected for action (eg security hardware) due to victim status, although number of times as victim may be unspecified

PEER GROUP - used largely when outreach worker makes contact with 'deviant' groups

COMMUNITY BUILDINGS - buildings for the use of the general public - cultural, religious, day centres

UNIVERSITIES - includes colleges, polytechnics

HOSTELS - special accomodation - refuges, hospices, homeless, mentally ill

VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS - recognised services/bodies

COMMUNITY GROUPS - less structured, more organic than above

COMMUNAL AREA - parks, public land

FORUMS - multi-agency groups, panels, strategy groups

2. PROXIMAL COMPONENTS Figure 5

OFFENDERCRIME-AVOIDING - used when offender is given contacts/way of life which takes him/her out of potentially criminal situation

PHYSICAL - used when offender's excessive energy is defused in safe physical activity

OFFENDER PRESENCE - offender diversionary activities where no 'correctional' objective is detailed or implied

MODULATORRESOURCES FOR RESPONDING - used to refer to material resources as well as personal resources (ability, knowledge), when these are localised, eg personal telephone, help lists of local services

ENVIRONMENTVANDALISM - when the appearance of an area encourages illegal behaviour

ACCESS BLOCK - when entrance is blocked, rather than controlled or made more difficult (roller shutters cf locks)

WEAPONS - AD HOC - removing the potential for everyday items to be used as weapons

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3. METHODS OF INTERVENTION Figure 6

OFFENDERRUNNING GROUPS - differs from running activities in being more permanent and established

COUNSELLING - includes advice, day centre work

TEACHING - in a broad sense, including workshops, guided discussions

REMOVAL OF AUTHORISATION - includes non-granting of authorisation ie where specified individuals are given id to gain entry, thereby excluding others

COMMUNITY REINTEGRATION - enabling ex-offenders to be accepted; includes the training of others in dealing with ex-offenders

INFLUENCING SCHOOL, FAMILY - operates on the environment in which potential offender develops

SITUATION - ENVIRONMENT/TARGET (some difficulty in distinguishing the two - is the front door part of the environment of the target (eg the family silver), or part of the target itself?

GATES - includes barriers

CLEARING UNDERGROWTH - removing bushes etc to clear view

CLEARING AREA (as above)

HARDENING ENTRANCE - includes roller shutters, entrance halls, heavy doors

SITUATION - MODULATORFACILITATING COLLECTIVE ACTION - enabling networking (eg watch schemes), preventing crime through passing of information etc without relying on one individual modulator

ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING - engendering a particular attitude, way of being, as opposed to specific skills

4. METHODS OF INSERTION Figure 7CONFERENCES - includes seminars, workshops etc

EXHIBITIONS - includes mobile information centres

GAINING ACCESS - when working within schools, organisations etc

CO-OPT ORGANISATIONS - when a separate organisation runs a project on behalf of Safer Cities

INTEGRATE SECTORS - bringing different sectors of society together, eg old and young

CONSULTATION - employing consultants or holding policy discussions

EXTERNAL TRAINING COSTS - enabling individuals to attend outside conferences etc

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Figure 8 Example of a formal description of a preventive scheme

ultimate objectives:offencetargetoffendersenvironment

social level: area unit: city centre selection criteria: high disorder

public disorder and criminal damage against street furniture by young people, in entertainment district

final intermediate objectives

and

possible mechanisms of intervention

i) removal of potential offenders from crime situations by attraction elsewhere and occupation of timeii) meeting potential offenders' needs for entertainment legitimately by providing attractive activitiesiii) altering potential offenders' attitudes by providing role models, exploiting group processes etc

method of intervention

social level: unit: selection criteria:

running summer activities

peer groupstreet gangsliving in deprived, criminal-subculture estates

chain of implementation securing commitment to proceedworking partyproduction of planobtaining funds, premises, volunteers

method of insertion

social level: unit: selection criteria:

setting up and pump-priming city-level working group by holding a small conference

institutionspolice, voluntary groups, local governmentall who are thought to be willing and able to contribute