Investing to Deliver: Reviewing the Implementation of the UK Crime Reduction Programme

• NCJ Number: 207584
• Author(s): Peter Homel; Sandra Nutley; Barry Webb; Nick Tilley
• Date Published: December 2004
• Length: 100 pages
• Corporate Author: Great Britain Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate
• Sale Source: Great Britain Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate
• Publication Format: Document (Online)
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Home Office Research Study 281; downloaded September 30, 2005.

Annotation

This report presents and discusses findings from a detailed systematic review of the processes through which the United Kingdom’s Crime Reduction Programme (CRP) was implemented and forms part of the overall evaluation of the CRP.

Abstract

In 1999, the United Kingdom government embarked on the most ambitious and innovative program for attacking crime in England and Wales. The Crime Reduction Programme (CRP) attempts to achieve a sustained reduction in crime, to improve and mainstream the knowledge base for crime reduction practice, and identifies ways of maximizing the implementation of cost-effective crime reduction programs into the future. This report reviews the implementation of the United Kingdom’s CRP. It provides guidance for strengthening the CRP’s successor program, the Safer Communities Initiative. In addition, the review sought to distinguish those implementation problems that were unique to the CRP from those common to other equivalent social policy initiatives currently operating in the United Kingdom. Aspects of the review that were distinctive include: (1) an approach that was exclusive to the review of the CRP implementation process; (2) looking at how the programme was developed and organized, what resources went into delivering it and how these resources were deployed; and (3) focusing on the experience of implementation from the central and regional perspective, rather than the experience of local project implementation. What was found in the review includes: (1) the use and growth of the evidence-based; (2) innovation as one of the major casualties of the problems associated with the CRP’s implementation process; and (3) increased crime reduction activity. Five lessons learned and identified in the review include: (1) invest to deliver; (2) organize centrally to deliver locally; (3) separate research and evaluation from program delivery; (4) build and maintain a knowledge management system; and (5) create flexible fund management models. Appendixes 1-2 and references