ABSTRACT
The past decade has seen a dramatic shift in emphasis towards crime prevention rather than the detection of crime and the treatment of offenders, and burglary reduction programmes have lain at the heart of this development. Rising crime rates and increased public concern together with low detection rates, and a minimal relationship between alternative sentences and recidivism rates (the so-called ‘nothing works’ philosophy of the 1970s) have contributed to this redirection of emphasis. However ‘crime prevention’ means different things to different people (Bright 1991; Clarke 1980; Gilling 1994; Pease 1997). On the one hand, a distinction may be made between primary, secondary and tertiary crime prevention; primary, where the emphasis is placed upon eliminating criminogenic environments; secondary, where the focus is on changing potential offenders; and tertiary, where preventing reoffending is prioritised.
