ABSTRACT
No research project stands alone. Each inquiry is influenced to some degree by prior work. There are always antecedents, though origins are often shrouded in mystery, and, like Darwinian evolutionary processes, as one gets further and further back in time, the connecting linkage becomes more and more attenuated. Relating current research and theory to its past is difficult but may be rewarding because of the nature of the research process. The path from the past to the present is never direct or simple. In fact, there seem always to have been branching networks and chance factors which led to the current theory or practice. Some of the byways which were not examined earlier may later suggest developments for the future and occa sionally be well worth taking time to explore. That is the reason for this chapter, which seeks to show (a) that some of
the roots of situational crime prevention, as developed in the Home Office, may derive from British wartime operational research, and (b) that some of the methods are worth revisiting in relation to situational crime prevention.The founders of the operational research (OR)1 teams formed in World War II adopted new techniques of science management and, perhaps as a result, OR grew into a multidisciplined problem-solving strategy with many spe cial characteristics of its own. That is not to say that the politically appeal ing metaphor of warfare against crime is in any way appropriate. It is the methods of problem solving, not the nature of the problems, which remain of interest. However, much current situational crime prevention research,
because of its theoretical focus on very specific crimes, seems to require a problem-solving approach. It is as though the particular theory also de mands a particular method.
