Pull, Push, and Expansion of Situational Crime Prevention Evaluation: An Appraisal of Thirty-Seven Years of Research (From Evaluating Crime Reduction Initiatives, P 29-58, 2009, Johannes Knutsson and Nick Tilley, eds. -- See NCJ-227444)

• NCJ Number: 227446
• Author(s): Rob T. Guerette
• Date Published: 2009
• Length: 30 pages
• Sale Source: Criminal Justice Press/Willow Tree Press
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter appraises the current body of situational-crime-prevention (SCP) evaluations by examining 206 evaluations of SCP efforts conducted from 1970 to 2007, reviewing the types of methodologies used, reports on the conclusions of these studies, and the implications for future SCP evaluation.

Abstract

Of the 206 SCP evaluations reviewed, 75 percent concluded that the intervention was effective overall. The most common evaluation design used was a before-after assessment of measured outcome without using a comparison group. The next most common type of evaluation design was the use of a time series. Only 7 percent of the studies used a treatment buffer and a comparison area, which allowed for determining overall treatment effects in relation to displacement and diffusion effects. Three percent of the studies used a randomized experimental design. All but one of the randomized experiments had been conducted since 1993. All of the randomized evaluations concluded that the situational intervention was effective. Of the 206 evaluations of SCP measures, 102 specifically examined or presented data that allowed for determining displacement effects. The most common form of displacement was spatial, followed by target, offense, and tactical. Temporal forms of displacement were examined in only 5 percent of the displacement studies, and none examined perpetrator displacement. Eighty-four studies examined or presented data on the diffusion-of-benefit effects. The overall findings of this review are discussed in the context of a "pull" toward randomized experimentation, the "push" toward "scientific realism," and the expansion of developing technical issues such as crime displacement, diffusion, and anticipatory benefits. It concludes that future trends in SCP evaluations will be constrained by access to organizations, their information, and the resources for collecting and analyzing data, all of which might be outside the scope of the researcher regardless of the best intentions. 1 figure, 7 tables, 5 notes, 62 references, and 1 appendix