Are Police-Led Social Crime Prevention Initiatives Effective? A Process and Outcome Evaluation of a UK Youth Intervention

• Author: Jonathan Hobson,Kenneth Lynch,Brian Payne,Liz Ellis
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1057567718814891
• Subject Matter: Additional Articles on Police

Additional Article on Police

Are Police-Led Social Crime

Prevention Initiatives Effective?

A Process and Outcome

Evaluation of a UK

Youth Intervention

Jonathan Hobson

1

, Kenneth Lynch

1

, Brian Payne

2

,

and Liz Ellis

1

Abstract

Police-led interventions with “at-risk” young people raise a number of debates around policing in

society including the allocation of resources at a time of fiscal austerity, the extent to which the

police should prioritize the safety and well-being of young people, and the role that the police should

take in preventing youth crime. This article explores the impact and effectiveness of a police-led

social crime prevention initiative in England. It adopts the QUALIPREV approach by Rummens,

Hardyns,Vander Laenen, and Pauwels on behalf of the European Crime Prevention Network to

analyze the data allowing for a detailed and replicable analysis of core aspects including police

engagement, risk management, offending rates, and police–community relations. Drawing on

comparisons between the UK case study and previous studies on police-led social crime prevention

projects in Australia and Canada, this article identifies a number of common challenges for schemes

of this nature including problems with multiagency working, developing a clear project identity,

unequal resources across different locations, and the difficulty in recruiting and retaining volunteers.

However, there were also significant benefits to such schemes, including positive impacts on

offending rates, engagement of at-risk young people, and wider benefits to the communities within

which the young people live, including participation, volunteering, and reduction in risks of com-

munity harm. A cost–benefit analysis also shows such schemes have the potential to offer significant

savings to the criminal justice system as a whole.

Keywords

social crime prevention, police-led intervention, working for reward, youth offending

1

School of Natural and Social Sciences, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

2

School of Criminology, Politics, and Social Policy, Ulster University, Jordanstown, Northern Ireland

Corresponding Author:

Kenneth Lynch, School of Natural and Social Sciences, University of Gloucestershire, Francis Close Hall, Swindon Road,

Cheltenham GL50 2RH, UK.

Email: klynch@glos.ac.uk

International CriminalJustice Review

2021, Vol. 31(3) 325-346

ª2018 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/1057567718814891

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Introduction: Police Engagement With Young People

Waller and Weiler (1984) argue that persistent and serious criminals often come from socially

disadvantaged backgrounds, an d while this reflects a particular soc ial reading of the nature of

criminal activity (cf. Garland, 2001), Waller and Weiler go on to claim that any attempts to respond

to such actions with more coercive and punitive sanctions are likely to be ineffective. Instead, they

contend that greater resources should be directed toward providing stronger, more accessible tar-

geted social programs that focus on the underlying issues of family, school, and life experiences for

children and young people that so often predict future criminal behavior (Waller & Weiler, 1984).

Police-led interventions with “at-risk” young people are at the center of a number of debates

around the nature of policing in society. These debates include issues such as the allocation of

resources at a time of fiscal austerity (Barton, 2013), the extent to which the police should prioritize

the safety and well-being of young people, and the role that the police should take in preventing

youth crime (Bateman, 2014). Although youth crime in the UK has fallen in recent times, it is still

recognized that young people are more likely to commit offenses than adults and senior citizens (see,

e.g., Loeber & Stallings, 2011). Therefore, the ways that police interact with young people are a vital

component of police–community relationships. For instance, Hurst and Frank (2000) discuss the

extent to which young people are overrepresented in terms of police contacts and arrest; Herlitz and

Hough (2016) demonstrate that suspects under the age of 18 are more likely to receive sanctions

from local police officers than their adult equivalents; and Loader (1996) describes how young

people are also more likely to come into contact with the police in heightened situations of conflict,

in part, due to their greater use of shared outdoor space.

Addressing issues of poor police–youth interactions requires a way of thinking about police-led

interventions with young people that emphasizes the experience of young people as members of

communities and also understands the unique social circumstances that they inhabit. Lyons (2015,

p. 101), for example, outlines the role police can play in building an identity that can “strengthen

young people’s ties to the community.” Similarly, Bradford (2012) discusses the role policing styles

can play in encouraging positive views from the community toward those that police them. He

argues that the “police are a highly visible representation of the state, a concrete instantiation of its

(often failed claim) to protect and represent all its citizens” (Bradford, 2012, p. 3). Despite this,

Foreman (2004, p. 3) finds that young people are often excluded from police interventions at a

community level and argues that young people should be placed alongside other community mem-

bers in police community-level interventions, as this would “increase law enforcement legitimacy in

their eyes by increasing their respect for the process of police decision making.”

This article explores the impact and effectiveness of a modern police-led social crime prevention

initiative that attempts to contend with such issues. There is a rich history of programs that seek to

divert young people away from the criminal justice system, particularly in countries such as Canada

and Australia (see, e.g., Grekul & Sanderson, 2011; J. Wood, Fleming, & Marks, 2008). However,

evaluations of such programs are limited. The example explored in this article is a police-led scheme

that works with what it deems to be “at-risk” young people in the United Kingdom. The data are

organized and analyzed through a series of key process and outcome review indicators taken from

the QUALIPREV crime prevention evaluation tool, developed by Rummens, Hardyns,Vander Lae-

nen, and Pauwels (2016) on behalf of the European Crime Prevention Network. The process and

outcome criteria used in this evaluation illustrate that, while there are some significant concerns over

how such schemes are run, not least the role of “police as youth workers,” there are potentially

significant benefits to both the young people who are supported individually and encouraged to

actively participate and engage with their communities. There are also potential cost benefits to such

approaches which reduce the entrance of young people into the formal criminal justice system and

which contribute time and energy into local communities.

326 International Criminal Justice Review 31(3)