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Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice pp 1318–1329Cite as

Effectiveness of Situational Crime Prevention

Overview

This entry summarizes the evidence on the effectiveness of situational crime prevention measures. It uses existing reviews of the evaluation literature to draw broad conclusions about the types of situational measures that show promise and identifies some of the mediating factors in determining levels of effectiveness. It also defines and summarizes evidence on other outcomes that evaluations sometimes considered such as cost-effectiveness, sustainability, anticipatory benefit, and displacement/diffusion of benefits. The principles behind process evaluation, which examines how a scheme was implemented, are also outlined. The second part of this section discusses two different approaches to synthesizing evidence on what works – the approach taken by those who advocate detailed consideration of the validity of the evaluation research design and synthesis through meta-analysis (e.g., the Campbell collaboration) and those advocating a realist approach, which uses all relevant...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London, 35 Tavistock Square, London, UK

    Kate J. Bowers

  2. School of Criminal Justice, Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33199, USA

    Rob T. Guerette

Authors
  1. Kate J. Bowers
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  2. Rob T. Guerette
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kate J. Bowers .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  2. VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  3. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    David Weisburd

  4. Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

    David Weisburd

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Bowers, K.J., Guerette, R.T. (2014). Effectiveness of Situational Crime Prevention. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_553

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