Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

5Is is organised as a sequence of stages which emphasise the bringing together of evidence and experience – of the crime problem, the context, what works and how to realise it. This often requires the involvement of a range of different people. The 5 stages, and illustration of the kinds of 'good practice' knowledge which can be captured under each, are listed below.

INTELLIGENCE – gathering and analysing information on

• crime and disorder problems and their consequences

• offenders and modus operandi

• causes of crime and (with longer-term, developmental prevention) the 'risk and protective factors' in young children's life circumstances associated with later criminality

INTERVENTION – blocking, disrupting or weakening those causes. The interventions cover the entire field:

• acting through both civil prevention and traditional justice/ law-enforcement

• addressing both situational and offender-oriented causes

• and tackling causation at different levels – immediate 'molecular' causes of criminal events, higher-level causes in communities, networks, markets and criminal careers, and remote 'upstream' causes influenced by manipulation of risk and protective factors in children' early lives

IMPLEMENTATION – converting the intervention principles into practical methods that are:

• customised for the local problem and context

• targeted on offenders, victims, buildings, places and products, on an individual or collective basis

• planned, managed, organised and steered

• monitored and quality-assured, with documentation of inputs of human and financial resources, outputs and intermediate outcomes

• assessed for ethical issues

INVOLVEMENT – mobilising other agencies, companies and individuals to play their part in implementing the intervention, or acting in partnership, because crime prevention professionals must often work through or with others, rather than directly intervening in causes of crime. In both cases specifying:

• who were involved

• what broad roles or specific tasks they undertook

• how they were alerted, motivated, empowered or directed (eg by publicity campaigns, financial incentives)

• how a broadly supportive climate was created in the community and how hostility was reduced

IMPACT

• nature of evaluation (how the project was assessed, by whom; whether this was a reliable, systematic and independent evaluation; and what kind of evaluation design was used)

• impact results (what worked, how)

• cost-effectiveness, coverage of crime problem, timescale for implementation and impact

• process evaluation (what problems/ tradeoffs faced in implementation, how they were resolved at each stage)

• replicability (which contextual conditions and infrastructure are helpful, or necessary, to successfully replicate this project – or particular elements of it – at each of the 5Is stages)

• learning points – both positive and negative (what to do, what not to do)