Preventing Crime ― A Holistic Approach

Traditional "schools" of crime prevention, like the criminal justice model, social crime prevention or situational crime prevention, have proved to be too narrow and do not combine well with other approaches. However, each of these models provides important insights and contributions for reducing crime. By extracting the main preventive mechanisms of these diverse approaches, this book develops a more holistic, general model that consists of nine preventive mechanisms: building normative barriers to crime, reducing recruitment, deterrence, disruption, incapacitation, protecting vulnerable targets, reducing benefits of crime, reducing harm, and facilitating desistance.

The measures to activate the preventive mechanisms may differ according to the type of crime, as may the actors in charge of implementing the relevant measures. However, Tore Bjorgo demonstrates how his model of crime prevention can be effectively applied to diverse forms of crime, from domestic burglaries to criminal youth gangs and driving under the influence to organized crime and terrorism. In doing so, this important book will be of interest to scholars and students of policing, security studies and criminology, as well as practitioners and policy-makers.

Tore Bjorgo is Professor of Police Science at the Norwegian Police University College and adjunct research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. A social anthropologist by training, he received his doctoral degree from Leiden University, The Netherlands. His main fields of research are crime prevention, political extremism and terrorism, youth gangs, disengagement from violent groups, and policing.