ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is threefold. First, it is intended to raise certain comparative questions and highlight challenges of comparison in order to inform and frame the subsequent country-specific accounts and trajectories of development that follow in later chapters. It poses the question, how might we understand comparative differences and similarities between jurisdictions? In this light, connections will be made with the emerging literature on comparative penal policies. Second, the chapter explores the conceptual parameters of policy convergence and divergence with regard to crime prevention. Implicitly, it poses and responds to the question, is there a common European direction of travel evidenced by the jurisdiction-specific journeys? In so doing, it explores the extent to which particular crime prevention-related policy ‘ideas’ may have been the subject of diffusion across Europe in recent years. Finally, it considers the extent to which the different experiences of the countries outlined in this collection corroborate or counter a number of dominant assertions that abound within the literature about the origins, nature and implications of the ‘preventive turn’. Throughout, in reference to crime prevention policies, the focus deliberately seeks to include both strategies and structures: the content of policies and the mechanisms elaborated for their delivery.
