This report presents a systematic review, including a statistical meta-analysis, of the effects of initiatives to prevent repeat victimization

Farrell, G

Farrington, DP

Grove, LE

Johnson, SD

In any given year, most crimes occur against targets that have already
been victimized. The crime prevention strategy deriving from
this knowledge is that targeting repeat victimization provides a
means of allocating crime prevention resources in an efficient and
informed manner. This report presents the findings of a systematic
review of 31 studies that evaluate efforts to prevent repeat victimization.
Most of the evaluations focus on preventing residential burglary,
but commercial burglary, domestic violence, and sexual victimization
are also covered.
The main conclusion is that the evidence shows that repeat victimization
can be prevented and crime can be reduced. Over all the
evaluations, crimes decreased by one-sixth in the prevention condition
compared with the control condition. The decreases were greatest
(up to one-fifth) for programmes that were designed to prevent
repeat burglaries (residential and commercial). There were fewer
evaluations of programmes designed to prevent repeat sexual victimization,
but these did not seem to be effective in general.
There are indications about what factors increase the success of
prevention efforts. Appropriately tailored and implemented situational
crime prevention measures, such as target hardening and
neighbourhood watch, appear to be the most effective. Advice to
victims, and education of victims, are less effective. They are often
not prevention measures themselves and do not necessarily lead to
the adoption of such measures.
The effectiveness of these crime prevention measures increased as
the degree of implementation increased. There were many problems
of implementation, including poor tailoring of interventions to crime
problems, difficulty of recruiting, training and retaining staff, breakdown
in communications, data problems, and resistance to tactics
by potential recipients or implementers

Louise Nicholas (1257672)

Graham Farrell (7153256)

David P. Farrington (3821173)

Shane D. Johnson (7187930)

Loughborough University Institutional Repository

English

Preventing repeat victimization: a systematic review

White Rose Research Online

Preventing Repeat Victimization: A Systematic Review

https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/Preventing_repeat_victimization_a_systematic_review/9471593/files/17096009.pdf

Preventing Repeat Victimization: A Systematic Review

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Loughborough University Institutional Repository

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White Rose Research Online