Tim Hope

Community crime prevention

Community crime prevention refers to actions intended to change the social conditions that are believed to sustain crime in residential communities. Different approaches have evolved, which can be best understood as a succession of policy paradigms emerging as responses to changing urban conditions: community organizing; tenant involvement; resource mobilization; community defense (both intentional organizing and environmental modification); preserving order; and protecting the vulnerable. Prevention in high-crime areas presents particular difficulties for community approaches. Community approaches have foundered mostly because of insufficient understanding of the nature of social relations within residential areas and of how community crime careers are shaped by the wider urban market.

Pretend it works Evidence and governance in the evaluation of the Reducing Burglary Initiative

This article is about the use of evidence from evaluation research undertaken on, and as part of, the Home Office Reducing Burglary Initiative. More generally, it is a case study about the uses and status of ‘scientific’ evidence in politics. The article reports methods and findings regarding burglary reduction projects evaluated by the ‘Midlands Consortium’ of academic researchers. These are compared with interpretations derived from re-analysis of the data presented in reports published by the Home Office. Specifically, it illustrates what might happen when responsibility for validating policy - that is, for establishing ‘what works’ - is placed in the hands of (social) science, but the evidence produced is not, apparently, congenial to the particular ‘network of governance’ that is responsible for the policy. The outcome for evidence-based policy making in these circumstances is that scientific discourse and method itself falls victim to policy pressures and values. The concerns of this article are placed in the context of Ulrich Beck’s (1992) discussion of ‘reflexive scientization’ in the governance of risk society.

Are repeatedly victimized households different

Much recent victimization research has concentrated on predicting who will be victimized, with relatively little concern for the number of events suffered. This study turns to the latter issue by focusing attention on the prediction of repeat victimization. A statistical methodology is employed which allows for the explicit recognition that an initial victimization must occur prior to any repeat event. When applied to property crime information from the 1984 British Crime Survey, we find little evidence that repeat victims have distinctive characteristics compared with single victims. Nevertheless, households with characteristics which protect from victimization, in the sense of giving rise to a low initial risk, have this protection reduced for a subsequent event. Moreover, comparing two households with different risk characteristics, their repeat victimization probabilities are more similar than were those for the initial occurrence.

The illusion of control: a response to Professor Sherman

There was once a sharpshooter, whose fame was renowned throughout all of Texas. Folk would come from miles around to marvel at the accuracy of his shooting. One day, a young cowboy visited the sharpshooter’s ranch hoping to learn the secret of his success. Peering around a corner, he saw the sharpshooter firing blind-fold at the side of his barn, and then, picking up a piece of chalk, draw targets around those spots where the bullet-holes happened to have clustered.1

The Local Politics of Inclusion: The State and Community Safety

While the tendency for low-income groups to become economically marginalized may be a structural feature of the globalizing, post-Fordist economy, the degree to which they are allowed to become socially excluded is arguably a political issue. In many of the polities of the Western world, debate has focused not only on whether the State could or should intervene economically to ameliorate the causes of the “new poverty” but also on how the State should address the increasing rates of “social dislocation”—including youth crime, interpersonal violence, and drug misuse—which have been associated with its emergence. The postware welfare settlement produced a particular institutional nexus of welfare, justice, punishment and citizenship (Hay 1996; Garland 1985); yet the pressure of increasing social dislocation has also placed great strain on the institutions of the welfare state, particularly at the local level, notwithstanding the ideological commitment of differing governments to continue with the social welfare project. In this paper, we explore some circumstances in which the politics of the “local state” might mediate—in one way or another—the consequences of economic marginalization. In particular, we draw attention to the role which might be played by local state agencies—as intermediaries between the individual and the national State—in deploying policies which could offset the social exclusion of minorities and youth. By comparing the responses of local agencies to youth crime in two communities in Britain and France we highlight the “vertical” dimension of political relations which links marginalized communities with the wider resources of the State. And while many economies are experiencing similar social dislocations within disadvantaged communities, the vertical dimension may prove crucial in preserving the linkage between their residents and those of the wider, more privileged, society.

Things can only get better

We did not want to enquire too closely when the Government announced its support for ‘evidence-based’ policy-making. After the long years of having criminological research ignored, under-valued and under-funded by the Conservatives, we were not inclined to be picky. So, like drifting mariners, many of us succumbed to the siren call of the Home Office for independent evaluation of its Crime Reduction Programme. I like to think we had some honourable motives: a desire to support the application of knowledge to social progress, perhaps? I also like to think we trusted our Government, whose promises of reform appeared to merit support. Along with some of my academic colleagues, we have published our various accounts of our evaluation experiences in a special issue of the journal Criminal Justice (Volume 4 (3), 2004). For my part, it was with sadness and regret that I saw our work ill-used and our faith in governments use of evidence traduced.

Building Design and Burglary

As burglary involves illegal entry into buildings, it is worth enquiring whether building design enables burglars to carry out their offences and, if so, whether anything might be done about it. This chapter reviews some of the ways in which the design of buildings might influence burglary and assesses the prospects for implementing a policy of preventing burglary through the re-design of buildings.

The distribution of crime victimisation in the population

This paper addresses the question of how best to determine the appropriate theoretical model for explaining the frequency distribution typically observed in self-report crime victimisation surveys of general adult household populations. The contemporary, prevailing approach is characterised as a ‘double-hurdle model’ of exposure to victimisation risk mat focuses, separately, upon the transition initially from a non-victim to a victim state (the ‘lifestyle-exposure’ hypothesis), and thence upon the transition to a subsequent, specific level of risk (the ‘repeat victimisation hypothesis’). An alternative model — the ‘immunity hypothesis’ — is proposed with the aim of addressing some of the theoretical and empirical difficulties identified in the current approach. This model takes the form of a compound-Poisson generalisation of the Negative Binomial statistical distribution. Its chief difference from the current approach is its assumption of a general tendency in the population towards ‘immunity from’ rather than ‘exposure to’ crime victimisation risk. An outflow table of data on household property crime victimisation from a longitudinal panel survey is analysed. The results provide support for the hypotheses derived from the immunity model.

The crime drop in Britain

International trends indicate that the rate of crime has declined in the developed world over the past decade. The reductions have had little impact upon the fear of crime. The impact of victimisation falls disproportionately on the disadvantaged. There is little understanding of this phenomenon beyond obvious correlations. It may be compounded by the ability of the middle classes to insulate themselves from crime.

Dodgy evidence — fallacies and facts of crime reduction

We are told that ‘evidence’ should lie at the heart of crime reduction – tacticsand strategies ought to be ‘evidence-based’, and projects and programmesshould be evaluated to discover ‘what works’ in community safety. But evidenceis not simply the publication of ‘facts’. The meaning of facts is rarely self-evidentand, even if they are presented as evidence, how do we know they are true?How do we know whether research and statistics are reliable? Likewise, how dowe know whether researchers, or the government, are drawing the correct orvalid conclusions from their research; or worse, pulling the wool over our eyesto support their proposals and policies? In short, can we trust the evidence thatis presented to us?This series aims to help community safety practitioners evaluate the ‘evidence-base’ of crime reduction. Clearly, we can’t replicate the research or re-collect thestatistics, so we usually have to trust what we are being told. But we ought not tobe gullible. If social scientists have any expertise at all (I’m not using the term‘academic’ here since it seems to have become a term of abuse in governmentcircles), it lies not just in carrying out groundbreaking experiments that reveal theanswer to crime but also in a critical faculty about research evidence. The purposeof this series is to share some of that expertise with practitioners. If you are beingtold to take evidence on trust, we, the social scientists, have a responsibility to helpyou, because there’s a lot of nonsense out there, standing on rather tall stilts.