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What Works in Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation pp 77–109Cite as

Community Interventions

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Part of the book series: Springer Series on Evidence-Based Crime Policy ((SSEBCP))

Abstract

Community-based crime prevention embraces a number of strategies, from civic engagement in response to crime and disorder issues, to interventions for at-risk youth and community correctional and reentry programs for adjudicated offenders. Although there is strong meta-analytic evidence for the effectiveness of individualized treatment delivered in a community setting, we know less about the conditions under which community resources can be mobilized more generally to control crime. This chapter takes stock of what has been learned from reviews of community-based interventions, including neighborhood watch, mentoring and diversion of youth, intensive probation, electronic monitoring, and restorative justice.

Overall, despite its broad scope, research on community interventions is surprisingly limited. However, there is good evidence that community programs designed to strengthen and restore positive social ties with at-risk youth are effective. In community corrections, research quality is strong but results are mixed at best. The most effective programs target specific risk factors or directly reengage the offender with the community, but general deterrence and punishment programs are at best ineffective and at worst harmful. We know much less about the most effective strategies to mobilize communities against crime, but emerging findings suggest that proactive engagement with the police and other civic partners to enhance legitimacy and build social cohesion may produce the best results. Finally, before we can conclude “what works” in community-based crime prevention, we need to better define the community’s role in crime prevention and the mechanisms by which it can be effective.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/library.php.

  2. 2.

    See Table 3.3 for a full list of excluded reviews and the reasons for exclusion.

  3. 3.

    http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews/.

  4. 4.

    The search string was modified as needed to meet the specific requirements of each database.

  5. 5.

    Because these two databases produced an unmanageable number of hits, I only examined the first 500, sorted by relevance.

  6. 6.

    Google Scholar does not support the Boolean OR operator, so two separate searches were performed (community crime “systematic review”; community crime “meta analysis”). The first 500 hits for each search were reviewed.

  7. 7.

    One review (Makarios & Pratt, 2012) is listed twice in the results section because it included separate analyses of two different eligible strategies; however, it is the same report.

  8. 8.

    Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software was used to convert the effect sizes to odds ratios and produce the forest plot. Where studies reported odds ratios where OR < 1 indicated a favorable effect, the direction was flipped by taking the inverse of the odds ratio and its confidence intervals. Tables 3.1 and 3.2 report the odds ratio effect size as well as each effect size in the same format and direction in which it is reported in the original review.

  9. 9.

    There were several other cases in which insufficient information was given in the report to convert the effect size to an odds ratio (for example, the standard error of the standardized mean difference (SMD) was missing). These cases were all handled using one of the following methods, in order of preference: (1) if the sample sizes for each study, separated by treatment and control groups, were provided, the SMD and total sample size for treatment and control were used to estimate the odds ratio; (2) if the sample sizes were not provided, but the z-score and confidence intervals for the SMD were available, I used these values to estimate the standard error of the SMD assuming an alpha level of 0.05; (3) if the z-score was not reported but a p value was available, I estimated the z-score associated with the p value using Stata (assuming an alpha level of 0.05) and proceeded as (2).

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  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Charlotte Gill

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  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    David Weisburd

  2. Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    David P. Farrington

  3. Department of Criminology, Law & Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    Charlotte Gill

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Gill, C. (2016). Community Interventions. In: Weisburd, D., Farrington, D., Gill, C. (eds) What Works in Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation. Springer Series on Evidence-Based Crime Policy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3477-5_3

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