Johnson, SD;
Davies, T;
Murray, A;
Ditta, P;
Belur, J;
Bowers, KJ;
(2018)
Evaluation of Operation Swordfish- a Near Repeat Target Hardening Strategy.
Journal of Experimental Criminology
, 13
(4)
pp. 505-525.
10.1007/s11292-017-9301-7.
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Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This paper reports an evaluation of a police-led target-hardening crime prevention strategy inspired by research concerned with space–time patterns of burglary. METHODS: A total of 46 neighbourhoods in the West Midlands (UK) were randomly allocated to treatment and control conditions. Within treatment areas, resources were delivered to recent burglary victims and their close neighbours. Resources included inexpensive target-hardening measures as well as the delivery of dedicated police advice. The evaluation consisted of both a resident survey and a statistical outcome analysis. RESULTS: Results suggested that residents in treatment groups were slightly more satisfied with the police and more likely to have been contacted by the police concerning burglaries. Although they had more awareness of burglary, their fear of crime was not heightened. Statistical analysis suggested a very modest positive effect of intervention on crime and rates of re-victimisation. In particular, a survival analysis revealed that homes in low-crime treatment areas were less likely to be re-victimised than were those in similar control areas. Effects were more evident in low- than high-crime areas. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that a low-intensity target-hardening intervention which adopted a near-repeat victimisation targeting strategy had a modest positive effect on residential burglary without increasing residents’ fear of crime.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Evaluation of Operation Swordfish- a Near Repeat Target Hardening Strategy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11292-017-9301-7 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11292-017-9301-7 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2017 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Keywords: | Near-repeat victimisation; Burglary; Target-hardening; Random allocation; Survival analysis; Time series |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Security and Crime Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1569448 |
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