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Foreword | Few well designed evaluations have found strong support for neighbourhood watch (NW) schemes; in fact there have been no formal, published, peer reviewed evaluations of NW in Australia. This paper argues for a change in focus in what is examined to determine success. Overseas evaluations suggest such schemes are ineffective because they looked at whether NW prevented and reduced the fear of crime, and improved information flows between the community and the police.

The formation of partnerships between communities, government agencies and/or business groups is frequently a powerful approach to the prevention of crime. However, the establishment of crime prevention partnerships should not be an automatic response to all crime problems. Furthermore, partnerships need to be carefully planned and managed and their ongoing effectiveness monitored. This is because even appropriate partnership arrangements can be difficult to implement and costly to maintain (Homel 2005).

Foreword | This paper presents up to date figures on the costs of a range of offences and crime as a whole in Australia. The costs assessed include medical costs, lost output, and intangible costs, which set a monetary value on pain, suffering and lost quality of life.

Foreword | This paper considers the potential application of social marketing principles to crime prevention. Social marketing has been a significant force in the public health field in Australia for more than two decades. It is a key component in the promotion of engagement in health protection behaviours, early detection programs and the promotion of individual health behaviour change. It is built on the application of evidence-based strategies and often, dual consumer/provider communication strategies.

"Crime reduction" and "crime prevention" are essentially the same things - combinations of actions designed to eliminate and/or minimise the occurrence of crime and the harm associated with it. There is no empirical basis for the use of one term over the other.

Note: Second edition of this title published in 2000.

On 16 October 2023, 9 projects were recognised for their contribution to the prevention of crime and violence in Australian communities.

The winners were presented with their awards at a ceremony in Canberra by Dr Tracey Green, Chief Executive Officer, Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency (ANZPAA).

Foreword | The public tends to assume that trafficking in persons is associated with the forced recruitment of women for sexual exploitation by highly organised, criminal gangs. In reality, the modus operandi and individuals involved in trafficking crimes are diverse. Trafficking in persons can and does occur in a range of industries and sectors, and it affects women, men and children. Furthermore, this crime can and has been perpetrated by relatively unsophisticated offenders, including individuals acting alone or with one other person, such as a spouse.

Foreword | As part of the Australian Institute of Criminology's commitment to building
an evidence base on the effects of Australian policing initiatives this paper
explores the impact of a targeted policing operation to reduce property crime.
By comparing property crime data for the ACT and surrounding areas of NSW, the
paper finds no evidence for displacement, either spatially or by crime type
following a significant burglary reduction strategy conducted in the ACT in

Effective crime prevention is any action that causes a reduction in the level of criminal activity and the resulting harm, or in the number of criminal offenders and their victims:

• the focus is on the causes of crime rather than its effects;
• the goal is to significantly reduce or eliminate the factors that can to lead crime.

Crime prevention can be described in terms of three stages or levels - primary, secondary and tertiary prevention.

National Crime Prevention Framework - Overview

National Crime Prevention Framework - Bibliography

Foreword | There has recently been renewed interest in place-based approaches for targeting crime prevention, such as justice reinvestment. This project linked research from life course and place-based criminology to explore whether some communities generated chronic and costly offenders. The Semi-Parametric Group-based Method was used to identify non-normative or chronic offenders in the 1990 Queensland Longitudinal Dataset (n=14,171).

Foreword | Transnational crime constitutes a challenge for even the most advanced industrial nations. The Pacific Islands are culturally, educationally and socially diverse, geographically isolated and sparsely populated. There is a degree of heterogeneity in their respective levels of governance, corruption and law enforcement capacity. Economic weaknesses and their impact upon infrastructure, poverty and general instability may increase the attractiveness of the islands to transnational crime.

Introduction

Not all graffiti are written by alienated teenagers, and not all vandalism constitutes wilful damage. Graffiti and vandalism are complex, multi-faceted problems requiring a range of responses for their solution.

If beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, nowhere is this more evident than in the response to graffiti. To many train travellers they are ugly, anti-social daubs, while for their practitioners they represent an expression of individuality in an impersonal world.