Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Burglary

Crime Reduction: Reducing Burglary Initiative: Evaluation

Finding out what works most cost-effectively in which circumstances is an important part of the Crime Reduction Programme.

Under Round 1 of the Reducing Burglary Initiative (RBI), 63 Strategic Development Projects were funded (click here for details of projects). These projects have been evaluated in detail to identify which crime reduction methods work, and are most cost-effective, in reducing domestic burglary in particular circumstances. Three consortia of universities were contracted to evaluate 21 projects each. Each of these projects has received a detailed process and impact evaluation and an evaluation of cost effectiveness.

The consortia consist of:

  • South Bank University with Goldsmiths College (London University), Bristol University and University of Wales, evaluating projects in the London, South East, South West, West Midlands government office regions and in Wales.

  • Keele University with Manchester University and Leicester University, evaluating projects in the Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands and East government office regions.

  • Liverpool University with Huddersfield University and Hull University in the North East and North West government office regions.

Five further projects from rounds 2 and 3 - those that have some innovative or unusual element - are also being separately evaluated, involving researchers from both the Home Office and external organisations. The outputs of this evaluation will include a series of reports examining burglary reduction practice, which are due to be published during 2002 and 2003.

In addition to these detailed project level evaluations, an overall programme evaluation has been produced. This consists of collecting generic measures of interventions, outputs and outcomes from other projects funded under the RBI in order to assess how effective the initiative has been overall in combating burglary. This work was performed by a team of in-house Home Office evaluators. A publication applying the lessons learnt from this process - to produce a general practitioner guide to project monitoring - was published in January 2002, titled Working out what to do: evidence based crime reduction.

The Initiative has already generated some useful lessons, both for the Home Office and those interested in running burglary reduction projects. Publications and briefing notes include:

Although it does not derive from the Reducing Burglary Initiative, the following report may also be of interest to those seeking to reduce burglary:

Tackling Theft with the Market Reduction Approach PDF 387K

Last update: 12/03/03

Related Links