Blog 22: Article 5

Last night I read the article, “Evidence-Based Crime Prevention: Conclusions and Directions for a Safer Society.” To be honest I don’t think I am going to use any of the information from this article. I chose it for one of my preliminary sources because at the time I was just reading the title of the article and skimming through it quickly.

The article was about how we need to choose the crime prevention programs of today based on what has been proven to work, or what they refer to as evidence-based crime prevention. It was more scientific than I would have guessed, and talked about the different ways of scientifically proving if a so called prevention is actually preventing anything or just soaking up our tax dollars. The example they used was the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in schools that has a very minimal effect.

The article discussed what has been proven to work for children, offenders, victims, and in high crime areas. One of the things I found most interesting was how well increased street lighting works at preventing crime. They reported a 22% decrease in the experimental area compared to the control area. Another thing dealt with in the article, was how getting what does work to be put into action and getting what has failed out of here, is one big political game. They said that convincing the politicians is one of the hardest parts because there is so much else on their plate. While this information was interesting, I don’t believe it will be something I use in my paper.

Welsh, Brandon C., and David P. Farrington. "Evidence-Based Crime Prevention: Conclusions and Directions for a Safer Society." Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice 47.2 (2005): 337-354. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 21 Jan. 2011.