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What Works in Public Awareness Campaigns? A Scoping Review

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Evidence-Based Policing and Community Crime Prevention

Abstract

How effective are public awareness campaigns focused on criminal justice? The objective of the review was to locate and briefly summarize the range of empirical studies relevant to this question but not to extract detailed information and identify effective methods, but simply to outline the range of work in the field. Seven electronic databases were searched and the contents tables of four journals inspected, identifying a set of 551 potentially relevant records. After screening, 52 items were retained for fuller analysis. The retained studies and reports were divided into three categories: (1) general crime prevention materials and research studies, (2) a smaller group of reports describing responses to specific crime prevention initiatives or exercises and (3) research reports focused on prevention of specific types of offences. There is evidence that public awareness campaigns work better when they are aligned with changes in the law and accompanied by effective enforcement. Campaigns are more likely to be effective when a range of methods is used to ensure publicity. The relationship between policing and criminal justice awareness campaigns has been compared with analogous work in the field of public health, and the relation between the two is briefly discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    James McGuire

  2. Institute for Global Innovation, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Emily Evans

  3. Centre for Health and Justice, University of Nottingham, Notttingham, UK

    Eddie Kane

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  1. James McGuire
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  2. Emily Evans
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  3. Eddie Kane
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McGuire, J., Evans, E., Kane, E. (2021). What Works in Public Awareness Campaigns? A Scoping Review. In: Evidence-Based Policing and Community Crime Prevention. Advances in Preventing and Treating Violence and Aggression . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76363-3_11

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