ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that reorientation of crime prevention research and policy from criminals to criminal contexts provides much promise. It reviews the factors that have hindered the development of a situational approach to crime prevention, and those that have contributed to its growing influence. The chapter analyses the relative strengths of this approach with more traditional approaches to crime prevention. It discovers areas where situational crime prevention has generated new insights about the crime problem and potential responses to it. The chapter discusses the strength of the evidence that has been brought in support of situational crime prevention strategies. It suggests that researchers must critically explore the assumptions of situational prevention, by improving evaluation methods and expanding the boundaries of study of the context of crime beyond applied crime prevention problems. Crime prevention research and policy has traditionally been focused on offenders or potential offenders.