How to reduce the crime rate

24 ways to reduce crime in the world’s most violent cities

Violent crime is deeply entrenched in some developing countries, particularly in Latin America. Our experts offer these solutions to bringing down high rates

A focus on certain groups such as young males between 10-29 years old can help to reduce violence. Photograph: LUNAE PARRACHO/REUTERS

A focus on certain groups such as young males between 10-29 years old can help to reduce violence. Photograph: LUNAE PARRACHO/REUTERS

Treat violence as a public health concern: We need to use campaigns and technology to reach every child and family in these countries. We need to develop those tools to make sure that everybody feels important and cared for through parenting interventions, family interventions, wellbeing campaigns, and early childhood education. Anilena Mejia, research fellow, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Localise programmes: During the 90s in Rio we had rates of homicide that would go beyond epidemic levels (over 100 per 100,000 citizens). It took a really costly but comprehensive programme in Brazil called Pronasci to tie up a lot of elements that were drivers of violence in the country, building local frameworks, gun-free zones and fostering civic culture to reduce violence, which has been the case in Bogotá, Medellín in Colombia and Santa Tecla in El Salvador. Natasha Leite de Moura, project adviser, public security programme, United Nations, Lima, Peru

Focus on hotspots: We’ve got scientific evidence that a focus on hotspots and ‘hot people’ can prevent or reduce violence. But we need also accompany this with other measures – urban upgrading, better urban planning, situational prevention – especially early childhood intervention. Robert Muggah, research director of Igarapé Institute, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the SecDev Foundation, Canada

Look at the whole picture: While people are aware that there are high levels of lethal violence in Brazil, this is often misrepresented by national and international media as a simple cops vs robbers dynamic – a misrepresentation that more often than not criminalises poverty. Much more work needs to be done on understanding the official and unofficial social, political and economic structures that sustain these high levels. Damian Platt, researcher, activist and author, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Create well-targeted programmes: If the goal is to reduce homicides, then programme selection should be located in hotspot areas and focused on the population group most likely to commit violence crimes, often young males between 10-29 years old. The risk factors for why these young men get involved in criminality also needs to be clearly diagnosed and complemented with a treatment plan that involves the family and community. Enrique Roig, director, citizen security, Creative Associates, Washington, DC

Focus on prevention: Prison populations are overflowing, crime is high and violence is a culture in South Africa. The focus needs to be on preventing the conditions that draw people into violent or criminal behaviour. In order to do this we need a systematic, integrated, coordinated approach combining the responsibilities of a wide range of state and non-state actors. Venessa Padayachee, national advocacy and lobbying manager, Nicro, Cape Town, South Africa

Avoid repressive policies: Many countries have approached the problem of violence from a crime and security angle, focusing their action on law-enforcement only. Unfortunate examples of this are the ‘mano dura’ tactics in Central America. While justice and police have an important role to play, repression only is counter-productive if not combined with development interventions that look at the drivers of violence, and tackle things like skills and education of youth, socio-economic inequalities, and access to communal services. Luigi De Martino, senior researcher, Small Arms Survey, Geneva

Be proactive: You have to systematically invest in protective factors. Supporting proactive community associations and schools to activate their involvement has also demonstrated positive results in places such as Cape Town, Chicago and New York. In addition, promoting links between neighbouring communities that adjoin each other is also important. John de Boer, senior policy adviser, United Nations University, Centre for Policy Research, Tokyo, Japan

Don’t forget about male violence: There are lots of interventions that are focused on women’s rights. These are noble. But the vast majority of killings I have seen around the world are by men on men. I think this needs to be addressed. The international community focuses a great deal on the impact of violence against women. If you address the male drivers of violence, you reduce the female harm of violence. Iain Overton, author, Gun Baby Gun, London

Officers from the CORE police special forces patrol during an operation to search for fugitives in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

But treat male and female violence as the same issue: Male and female dimensions of violence are connected. We need to look at these issues comprehensively rather than a divide and conquer approach. Research has shown it is not just about single risk factors (i.e. being a male is a risk factor) that determines violence – rather it is the accumulation of risk factors that produce violence. John de Boer

Move away from the focus on poverty: Criminalising certain areas or groups makes it harder for people to actually coexist, and the emphasis on poverty is a misleading one. Latin America proves as long as history of studies that show poverty and violence do not have a direct correlation. Countries are overcoming extreme poverty and becoming more violent, so it is now part of our job to look beyond those solutions and what other factors may be driving those rates. Natasha Leite

Focus on gun control: Where there are no guns, there are no gun deaths. A simple and practical way to start impacting armed violence is to try to stem the flow of illegal guns. I believe in the gun control approach as a first step. Iain Overton

Understand that violence is going virtual: Cyberspace is a new domain for violence. This ranges from the use of social media to project force (videos showing assassinations, torture, threats), to recruit would-be members of extremist groups (digitally savvy marketing campaigns, online chat sites), for selling product (deep web), and also for more banal but no less important forms of intimidation and coercion (bullying). Violence is going virtual, and we need to get a much better handle on all of this. Robert Muggah

How to Reduce Crime in Your Neighborhood

This article was co-authored by Saul Jaeger, MS and by wikiHow staff writer, Eric McClure. Saul Jaeger is a Police Officer and Captain of the Mountain View, California Police Department (MVPD). Saul has over 17 years of experience as a patrol officer, field training officer, traffic officer, detective, hostage negotiator, and as the traffic unit’s sergeant and Public Information Officer for the MVPD. At the MVPD, in addition to commanding the Field Operations Division, Saul has also led the Communications Center (dispatch) and the Crisis Negotiation Team. He earned an MS in Emergency Services Management from the California State University, Long Beach in 2008 and a BS in Administration of Justice from the University of Phoenix in 2006. He also earned a Corporate Innovation LEAD Certificate from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 2018.

There are 21 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, several readers have written to tell us that this article was helpful to them, earning it our reader-approved status.

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There are plenty of easy steps that you can take to help make your community a better place. By building a relationship with your neighbors and your local police department, you’ll raise awareness and make it easier to enact change in your area. Just remember, you are not going to find success if you go out trying to fight crime yourself. The goal here is to build your community up to make it less welcoming for criminals, not to confront strangers or call the police every time you see something vaguely suspicious.

How to Reduce Crime

Thursday, March 1, 1984

Morgan O. Reynolds

Morgan O. Reynolds is Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A & M University. This article is based on Crime by Choice, to be published by the Fisher Institute in 1984.

Crime remains a silent contender for the number I domestic ill. It won’t go away. Criminal experts are prone to explain this by saying that crime is “intractable,” that there is little we can do. This claim is false. Crime is complex, to be sure, because it involves factors beyond law enforcement such as the strength of the family, neighborhoods, schools, and churches. But crime is simple in the sense that government officials can reduce crime by doing their job, namely, by making crime too unprofitable to practice.

No added resources are needed by the criminal justice system in order to accomplish this. Government finds it easy enough to spend money, but difficult to spend it productively. Between 1960 and 1982, for example, the number of serious crimes known to the police jumped from 3.3 million to 12.8 million, while government spending on police, courts, and corrections was doubling as a share of GNP, rising to one per cent of total output. Furthermore, victimization surveys show that only about one-third of crimes are reported to the police.

The key to making our cities less dangerous is to change the rules of the game. We must reduce the enormous daily waste of time and effort that makes it so expensive to arrest, convict, and punish the guilty. [1] While the machinery of government and its bureaucrats is always plagued by weak accountability and inefficiency, the law enforcement problem has increased dramatically over the last twenty years. Since 1961 the criminal justice system has been transformed from a law enforcement system into a thicket of criminal rights and make-work projects for nearly 2 million lawyers, judges, social workers, psychologists, criminologists, prison officials, and other bureaucrats. More people now produce less justice.

The quadrupling of crime over the past twenty years is due to a top-down revolution, as all revolutions in public policy are. Friedrich von Hayek points out that political opinion over the long run is determined by the active intellectuals. That is why in every country that has moved toward socialism, there was a long preceding phase during which socialist ideas governed the thinking of most intellectuals. Expanded rights for criminal defendants, sociological theories of crime, theories of rehabilitation, and dubious legal processes have followed the same path.

The Short Run: Rebuilding External Constraints

Suppose that we had a carte blanche on crime policy and a mandate to reduce crime. What changes would be prudent and effective? I do not claim that my recommendations are feasible in short-run political terms, only that they are sound ways to reduce crime. The basic short-run strategy is to raise the criminal’s chances of arrest and conviction and increase the effectiveness of punishment, all without added burden on the taxpayer. This is far from impossible, provided these five recommendations were followed:

1. Avoid worsening the problem through increased community “rehabilitation” and other “therapeutic” treatments instead of prison terms.

2. Repeal the laws which make the crime problem worse than necessary, such as drug laws, gun control laws, rules restricting the use of prison labor, and those granting coercive privileges to organized labor.

3. Revise the exclusionary rules, suppression of evidence, inordinate delays, technical reversals, instability in criminal procedures, bias in favor of criminal defendants, and disregard for the rule of law by Supreme Court majorities.

4. Make greater use of private incentives and private contractors for police, prosecution, and corrections work, so that the taxpayers get more for their money.

5. Make sentencing fit the crime, not the criminal: Punishment should be usual, even-handed, determinate, prompt, shorter, more severe (though not cruel) and served in full.

The cardinal rule for any physician is “First, do no harm,” and recommendations 1 and 2 reflect this philosophy. The likely prospect is that things will get worse before they get better because criminal policies are still dominated by unsound ideas and unsound advisers. Legislatures are losing their earlier resolve and bowing to public pressure over the last few years. The people selling therapy for criminals are succeeding once again based on the argument that prisons are crowded and there is no sense in spending more money on failed policies. The legislature in Texas recently accepted this idea, pulling up short just as more plentiful and longer prison terms were beginning to make a dent in-crime rates. So the first order of business is to fend off more of the same policies which caused the crime epidemic in the first place.

Perhaps the most controversial recommendation is to repeal the criminal drug laws (and laws against other victimless crime), cases in which the cure is worse than the disease. Over 20 per cent of criminal arrests are for drug violations and these clog up the courts, preoccupy police resources, sustain the infrastructure of organized crime, raise the price of opiates so that as much as 30 per cent more street crime occurs, promote corruption, and have failed miserably in every respect. Similarly, gun laws are misguided attempts to control crime “on the cheap” which never have worked and cannot work in America. They are counterproductive and reduce citizen protection. [2] The numerous restrictions on the use of prison labor have reduced the output of the economy, raised the prison bill for taxpayers, and denied prisoners wider employment opportunities. [3] Even the prospects of rehabilitation have been harmed by these protectionist mea sures. Another labor policy adding to the crime problem is the tacit right of labor unions to use “the weapons of labor” in order to create artificial scarcities of labor via violence and threat of violence. The special privileges of labor unions, both by statute and common law, should be re voked. Not only would this directly reduce violence, it would also reduce the close association between organized crime and organized labor. [4]

In addition to discontinuing some things, the public sector should do some things that presently are not being done. The most important step is to rebalance our biased criminal procedures. It is no exaggeration to say that the Warren Court has the blood of thousands of crime victims on its hands. Without the ability to convict the guilty promptly and conclusively in fair if less-than-ideal procedures, nothing can substantially reduce crime. With all of the privileges granted to the accused in today’s courts, we are fortunate to have as little crime as we have. [5]

The techniques of the marketplace can improve the productivity of the public sector. Police departments, for example, should be at least partially rewarded on the basis of gains in reducing crime rates. The crime data should be checked by independent auditors. Private security agencies should be allowed to bid for contracts to supply police services where it is legally feasible. Based on experience, these measures can emerge on a piecemeal basis around the country, learning as we go. [6] Similarly, private incentives and contractors can be more widely used in prosecution and corrections. When the duty of protecting a citizen from criminal harm is left solely to government, there are times due to neglect, malice, or political intrigue that prosecutors fail to act on behalf of the victim. If criminal law were amended to allow wider private rights of enforcement in the courts, then the citizen can protect himself if the government does not, and enforcement will be much more energetic. Prisoners should have more productive opportunities, with the profit motive allowed wider scope on both the demand and supply sides of the highly restricted market for prison labor services and in prison-made products. The ingenuity of the marketplace and competition should be harnessed to serve the cause of crime reduction.

Recommendation 5 is to change sentencing policies. We should eliminate false advertising: make sentences shorter but served in full. Sentences should fit the crime, not the criminal. The present philosophy about the appropriate procedures for determination of guilt and assignment of punishment basically should be reversed. Evidence about the accused’s criminal background, for example, should be allowed in weighing the probability of guilt or innocence, but should be ignored for sentencing. We do it for traffic fines or tax evasion and should do it for criminal offenses as well. Perhaps juveniles should receive special consideration but punishment basically should fit the act, not the age nor the criminal record of the guilty party. One of the tragedies of the current arrangement is that juveniles initially receive tender-loving-care at the hands of the criminal system and are almost seduced into a criminal life. Not taking the system seriously, some of them end up serving long sentences as habitual criminals for crimes so old that nobody can remember them.

Severity of punishment can be humanely increased through greater use of solitary confinement. This serves the cause of justice because anti-social individuals and criminal bands destroy social cooperation, so let them bear the logical results of their actions. The English penal system used this technique with great success in days gone by, and their abandonment of the procedure has been a factor in the British crime epidemic. Solitary confinement also has the virtue of decreasing schooling in criminal skills and criminal contacts. Prisoners also should work, but I favor the carrot of productive, remunerative employment opportunities rather than the stick of breaking rocks all day.

And what about the death penalty? I personally favor its reinstitution to administer just deserts for the absolutely worst crimes. Life imprisonment in an era of color TV and coed prisons cannot do justice for the acts of a Richard Speck. We terminate vicious animals, and if we believe that society is worth protecting we should be willing to execute the vicious killers that spring up among humans. Our present unwillingness to execute the most grotesque evildoers speaks loudly to criminals about our society and its ideological climate. [7] As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it Sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. [8]

The Long Run: Rebuilding Internal Constraints

The rise of crime has not been an isolated social phenomenon. For instance, there is a striking parallel with the demise of discipline in the schools. Why? The basic reason is that a large, influential segment of public opinion came to believe that students should not be punished—made unhappy, reprimanded, scorned—for doing things that are wrong. As a substitute we ended up with “special counseling programs” and other non-answers. Those opposed to punishment share Rousseau’s view of man, feeling that social constraints inhibit healthy human development, that people are born friendly and considerate. Pro-punishers believe that man is a mixture of good and bad, but that our basic instinct is to look out for number one and trample anyone who gets in the way of what we want. Under the weight of painful experience, our schools may be shifting away from Rousseau’s views, but it can only be effective if adults are willing to face up to things, to show some backbone. Without serious steps to restrain the law-breaking minority, of course, the reversion to savagery is never far away.

The breakdown of the personal qualities of self-restraint, honesty, integrity, foresight, self- reliance, and consideration for others is indissolubly linked with the welfare state. For what is the redistributive state but a glorification of envy? There is an irreconcilable conflict between the rule of law, which depends on limited government, and the welfare state, which depends on a limitless government. As government has passed more and more laws and regulations, individual liberty has shrunk and disorder has grown. The rule of man has been substituted for the rule of law.

Crime and the Welfare State

The welfare state does not respect private property. It takes from the politically uninfluential and gives to the politically influential. Redistribution by government is not called stealing, though the same act is if performed by a private individual rather than a government official. Neither shoplifters nor more serious criminals think of themselves as stealing; they say that they just “take” things. In a way, they are right because crime and most of what takes place under the heading of politics amount to the same thing.

Changing the incentives faced by criminals is relatively easy from a technical point of view. Just make punishment swift, sure, and severe. It requires a firm but limited government. But if government is to restore the rule of law and protect private property, government itself must abide by the law. And this is not consistent with the welfare state.

Collectivists like to say that a war on poverty is also a war on crime. I agree with this statement but not in the sense that collectivists mean it. Collectivists mean more coerced re distribution, generous welfare benefits, more social workers and bureaucrats. The consequences of these programs have been family dissolution, illegitimacy, mass unemployment, demoralization, and non-existent work skills. Redistribution perpetuates poverty, intensifies it, and therefore increases crime. The real war on poverty occurs daily in the marketplace. Capitalism, entrepreneurship, commerce, and the creation of new wealth is the real war on poverty. Capitalism encourages independence, self-reliance, honest dealing, expanded employment opportunities, and therefore less crime. [9]

Robbery and tyranny by the state is a reflection of the general breakdown of moral law, as it was in ancient Rome, when people had lost all respect for the sanctity of private property. If the lights go out in any major American city, many thousands of people will go on a crime spree, as they did in New York City in the blackout of 1977. The intellectuals have spent decades telling people that they are underdogs in an unjust and decaying society, and that violating the laws against theft or rape is a form of social protest, a form of higher morality.

The long run problem of producing more considerate people means greater reliance on the private market and less on government. It is no surprise that a decline in criminal behavior occurred with the growth of capitalism, and that greater criminality has been associated with the rise of the welfare state and socialism. Reviving internal constraints means gradually reversing the growth of Leviathan. If we are to solve the problem of crime, as with other ills of the welfare state, we must work toward a society where economic and social policies are determined by free markets, not centralized coercion.

The underlying problem is to change the intellectual climate in this country toward liberty and justice and away from collectivism and injustice. No one can avoid this intellectual battle in our politicized era. The purpose of the criminal justice system must become the pursuit of justice once again. []

1. Also see Ernest van den Haag, “Making Crime Cost and Lawfulness Pay,” Society, 19 (July/August 1982), p. 22.

2. For evidence, see David T. Hardy, “Gun Control: Arm Yourself with Evidence,” Reason (November 1982), pp. 37-41.

3. For a dramatic example, see Jeffrey Shedd, “Making Goods Behind Bars,” Reason (March 1982), pp. 23-34.

4. See Morgan O. Reynolds, “Unions and Violence,” The Freeman (February 1983), pp. 98106, and “Contradictions of Unionism,” Journal of Political, Social, and Economic Studies (Winter 1982), pp. 387-409.

5. For the arguments, see Steven R. Schlesinger, “Criminal Procedures in the Courtroom,” especially pp. 192-200 on the exclusionary rule in Crime and Public Policy, edited by James Q. Wilson (San Francisco, CA: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1983).

6. Theodore Gage, “Cops, Inc.,” Reason (November 1982), pp. 23-28.

7. Walter Berns, For Capital Punishment (New York: Basic Books, 1979).

8. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage, 1966), sec. 201., p. 114.

9. For corroborating views, see Christie Davies, “Crime, Bureaucracy, and Inequality,” Policy Review, 23 (Winter 1983), pp. 89-105; James Q. Wilson, “Crime and American Culture,” The Public Interest, 70 (Winter 1983), pp. 22-48.

6 proven policies for reducing crime and violence without gun control

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On a night of the Republican convention focused on «making America safe again,» one question, strangely, went unanswered: How exactly could policymakers make America safer? Although Americans are in fact safer than they were decades ago, this seems like a pretty crucial question to answer given the first day of the convention’s theme.

I previously reached out to criminologists and researchers across the country about this issue. My question: What nonpartisan policies can America use to reduce crime and gun violence without going after the guns themselves? I started with the assumption that gun control laws would not happen, since that issue is too politically fraught — and it’s certainly not something Republicans seem likely to support.

After all, although there’s strong evidence that America’s uniquely high levels of gun ownership cause the US to have more violence than other developed countries, guns aren’t the only cause of violence and crime — there are other factors, from cultural issues to socioeconomic variables to even smaller issues like alcohol consumption, that drive these problems.

What follows are six of the promising ideas I heard to reduce crime and gun violence in particular. This is by no means a comprehensive list — there are great websites solely dedicated to that kind of catalog. But these policy ideas give some perspective on how many options are left to local, state, and federal lawmakers as long as they don’t want to do anything about guns — or maybe even if they do.

1) Stricter alcohol policies

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Alcohol has been linked to violence. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, alcohol is a factor in 40 percent of violent crimes. And a 2010 study found a strong relationship between alcohol stores and gun assaults. These statistics and research are one of the big reasons that possessing a gun while drunk is largely illegal.

«It’s a disinhibition theory,» Charles Branas, one of the 2010 study’s authors, said. «So it’s not so much aggressiveness, but that decisions and judgment that would normally be held in check are suddenly disinhibited under consumption of alcohol.»

This doesn’t mean America should ban alcohol — prohibition in the 1920s was a disaster. But there are other policies that America could take up to limit alcohol-related problems:

Notably, the NRA, the biggest gun rights group, already agrees alcohol and guns don’t mix. Its website says, «Never use alcohol or over-the-counter, prescription or other drugs before or while shooting.» The question, Branas said, is how to make that «operational» — and some of these policies could move in that direction.

2) Hot-spot policing

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Yes, police practices have run into increasing criticism over the past couple years — with the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement and its protests against racial disparities in the criminal justice system and police use of force.

But police can, obviously, play a huge role in reducing crime, especially by adopting evidence-based tactics like hot-spot policing.

The idea, explained to me by famed criminologist David Kennedy: In many cities, a very small subset of places, down to the street and block level, drive most of the crime. So deploying police, intelligently, in these specific areas can have a big impact on fighting crime and violence.

In many cities, a very small subset of places, down to the street and block level, drive most of the crime

«It can be as simple as making sure your police presence is increased there, or it can be much more complicated,» Kennedy said. «You can get partnerships of police, residents, families, parents, shop owners, building managers, and school officials.» He added, «The more those interventions involve partnerships, the more effective those interventions can be.»

The research strongly backs up the practice: Not only does it reduce crime, but it does so without displacing it to other areas and generally to positive reactions from locals. And as Kennedy said, the research suggests that bringing in community partners and focusing on the community’s needs can boost the crime-fighting effects further.

3) Focused deterrence policing

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One of the hot new phrases in criminal justice today is «community policing.» But quite honestly, nobody seems to have any idea what it means. Experts and law enforcement officials will give all sorts of definitions and strategies for the practice.

But Kennedy did explain a strategy — «focused deterrence policing» — that sounds a lot like what I would expect real community policing to look like, and it works.

Focused deterrence hones in on specific problems in a community, such as drug dealing, generally violent behavior, gangs, or gun violence. It then focuses on the individuals and groups who drive most of that activity, particularly those with criminal records and those involved in gang activity.

«The national annual homicide rate now is between 4 and 5 per 100,000,» Kennedy said. «If you’re in one of these street networks, your homicide rate can easily be 3,000 per 100,000.» He added, «Add in the nonfatal woundings, which can be multiples of the homicide rate, and suddenly you’re in unimaginable risk.»

«The community itself needs to convey extremely strong and clear standards against the violence»

The strategy brings together law enforcement and community groups to clearly signal the major legal and community consequences of violence, especially in relation to an individual’s previous criminal record. And to provide alternatives to violent or criminal lifestyles, the community should also offer social services and other forms of help.

So if someone has a long history of drug or even violent crimes, police could let him know about the legal consequences of violence — decades or life in prison — and the community could voice, through personal interactions, how it would directly damage his family, friends, church, school, and so on. And the groups should also offer help through, for example, accessible job and education programs.

«The community itself needs to convey extremely strong and clear standards against the violence,» Kennedy said, describing it as a form of informal policing that comes from within someone’s community.

The idea is that a would-be shooter, now knowing the full consequences of his actions, will be deterred from acting out in the future. And he’ll have alternative options if he wants to pursue a different kind of life.

The research shows this works. Focused deterrence is one of the changes in policing strategy credited with what’s known as the «Boston miracle,» in which the city saw violent crime drop by 79 percent in the 1990s. And other research has found that it can work in many other places.

This policing strategy can involve retraining cops, getting them more involved in the community, hiring more officers to carry it out effectively, and boosting spending on social services. That can be very expensive — as such services and police departments already make up a sizable chunk of many municipal and state budgets. But if local lawmakers and officials want to reduce crime, these changes can go a long way.

4) Raise the age or grade for dropping out of school

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Another way to reduce crime and violence could be to keep kids in school longer.

The research is quite clear that kids who don’t drop out and complete school are less likely to commit crime.

But this can get into tricky questions over correlation versus causation: Does keeping kids in school longer stop them from committing crime later on by keeping them off the streets and giving them the education they need to find a legal job? Or are the kids who decide to stay in school longer simply better behaved, and therefore less likely to commit crimes?

A recent study published in the American Economic Journal took an ingenious approach to cut through this question — by tapping into data for students in North Carolina, their birthdays, when they enroll in kindergarten, their dropout rates, and their crime rates. It found that keeping kids in school longer likely reduces crime.

The study looked at data based on when children begin their education and whether the older children in a class — those who were enrolled into kindergarten at an older age — were more likely to drop out and commit crime. The idea: These kids are generally enrolled at a later age due to a technicality in North Carolina rules about birthdays and cutoff dates, so there’s no inherent reason to think their behavior should be different — unless their time in school influences it.

The study strongly suggests keeping kids in school will reduce their crime rates

The study found that these older kids were more likely to drop out — and they were more likely to commit a felony offense by age 19.

Phil Cook, one of the study’s authors, told me his findings strongly suggest keeping kids in school will reduce their crime rates.

So what could policymakers do with these findings? Well, many states, including North Carolina, set the dropout age at 16. They could raise the dropout age to 18 or older.

«If North Carolina raised its age to 18, there would be some seniors in particular who’d cross that threshold and would be legally entitled to drop out,» Cook said. «But that prospect would look different than it does at age 16 — they would be closer to the finish line, so presumably it would not be as enticing.»

Another option: Lawmakers could adopt Denmark’s model, which requires students to complete a certain number of grades. (Presumably there would be exceptions, such as for children with extreme disabilities.) This would be less arbitrary than an age cutoff, but it could run into some politically tricky territory if it forces adults 18 and older to stay in high school.

Whatever method policymakers use, keeping kids in school longer appears to reduce crime rates. And it doesn’t involve guns at all.

5) Behavioral intervention programs

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The University of Chicago Crime Lab has done a lot of great work into many different policy proposals to fight crime. One of those ideas, Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man, is emblematic of how specific these policies can get — it targets youth who are at risk of getting into violent encounters, perhaps because of the neighborhood they live in or what school they go to.

The program then uses once-a-week interventions, based on cognitive behavioral principles, to teach youth how to react in encounters that can turn violent.

«It helps kids understand and slow down the scripts that they use to get by,» Harold Pollack, co-director of the Crime Lab, said. «They have exercises that the kids do where they get to practice self-regulation, skills, and slowing down and negotiating with other people — the kinds of things that young boys growing up particularly in a tough environment haven’t had enough of a chance to practice.»

It works: Randomized control trials by the Crime Lab found it reduced violent crime arrests by 30 to 50 percent during the time of the intervention.

«It helps kids understand and slow down the scripts that they use to get by»

One example of the exercises the program uses: One kid is told to get a golf ball from another kid. Typically, they get in a physical fight within seconds, because they simply don’t know any better. But when they’re walked through the situation, they learn to resolve it much more peacefully.

«So many of the confrontations that kids get into are almost over nothing in one sense,» Pollack said. «But in another sense, kids are in a situation where they’ve learned over a period of time a set of reactions that are pretty important for them so that everybody knows not to mess with them.»

The problem, Pollack said, is that many of these kids simply haven’t learned the right behaviors over time — and they’ve actually learned to resort to violence quite quickly. Pollack gave an example:

For example, I’m walking down the hallway and somebody steps on my foot in school. If Harold Pollack is doing that, walking around the University of Chicago, I figure that it’s just another colleague that was playing with his iPhone and stepped on my foot — and I ignore it and move on.

If I’m a 17-year-old kid in Fenger High School, I can’t afford to have people punk me. I got to get home. And I got a nice jacket, and my mom has told me that if somebody comes and takes my jacket, she can’t get me another one. So when somebody does something like that, I might respond in a way that to the middle-aged white professor seems really excessive, but in the life of that kid is really human — there’s an incentive to reacting really harshly.

Pollack emphasized that these kids are not in any way bad or evil. They have rational incentives for behaving in the way they do: In the tough environments they grow up in, sometimes it is important to fight.

But, Pollack explained, «What we want to tell them is, ‘You may have to fight as a last resort. But you got to have other things in the toolkit that you go to first. And many of the situations where you might jump to escalate, you have more options, and the long-term consequences for you if you can avoid that confrontation are much better than if you react instinctively.'»

6) Eliminate blighted housing

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One of the more unexpected ideas I heard from policy experts: Clean up and repair blighted buildings.

But it seems to work: A 2015 study from Branas, who’s part of the Urban Health Lab, and other researchers found fixing up abandoned and vacant buildings in Philadelphia led to significant drops in overall crimes, total assaults, gun assaults, and nuisance crimes. There was no evidence that crime shifted to other areas, although there were signs that drug dealing, drug possession, and property crimes went up around remediated buildings. Still, net gains overall.

Branas characterized the findings as proof of a big gain for a pretty small investment.

«It makes the space appear cared for, and suddenly criminal activity doesn’t want to happen there»

So what explains this? «It makes the space appear cared for, and suddenly criminal activity doesn’t want to happen there,» Branas said. «Also, the neighbors get more invested in the space and look after it — more of an informal policing mechanism.»

Another potential explanation, according to Branas: Some would-be shooters may stash guns in vacant or abandoned spaces, since they want to avoid getting caught with illegal firearms. So when those vacant or abandoned spaces go away, they may decide to forego at least some guns — and may not be able to carry out some violence.

It’s certainly one of the more exotic ideas I heard from researchers. But combined with the other proposals I heard from experts, it helps show that there are many varied policies lawmakers could embrace to combat crime and gun violence in the US — yet perhaps haven’t to the extent that the evidence suggests they should.

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Crime Prevention: What can The Government do to Lower Crime Rate?

In ordinary language, a crime is an illegal/unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. Blackstone defined crime as an act committed or omitted in violation of a public law either forbidding or commanding it. The term ‘crime’ does not, in present day criminal law, have any basic and universally acknowledged definition, in spite of the fact that statutory definitions have been given for certain purposes. The people who get involved into criminal acts belong to different categories such as, they may be educated or uneducated, may be wealthy or impecunious in dejected and poverty stricken conditions, they are engaged completely different sorts of occupations such as, white collar jobs, blue collar jobs, minority jobs such as manual work or may be unemployed. They vary on the premise of family backgrounds, religious groups, ethnicity, caste, gender, socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. In most cases, individuals who get involved into criminal and violent acts belong to distraught, disadvantaged and marginalized segments of the society, they are not taught sufficiently and are ordinarily engaged in minority employments. The predominance of crime is frequent in all the societies, whether it is rural or urban societies. It has been observed by many people that a society without crimes and criminals could be a paradise.

It is therefore fundamental to find out techniques/methods to avoid crime, at all costs if possible. The method of prevention ought to begin from the early childhood and continue till adolescence and youth. It is vital to execute crime prevention techniques, there are certain points that have to be compelled to be understood when the government is observing crime prevention techniques. These are, all the levels of the government ought to contribute a leadership role. The following article portrays the need of strong responses of government, NGOs, corporate sectors, citizens of the country and national commitment to a common cause i.e. the prevention of crime.

The crime rate in India has increased drastically over the years with the capital being the centre of the chaos. As per the National Crime Bureau Report 2019, New Delhi had the highest crime rate at 1049 per 1 lakh persons. [1] Between 2016-2018, the total number of First Information Reports/Complaints registered throughout the country was as high as 2.39 crores. [2] These figures indicate that there is large number of criminal activities taking place in the country and also makes us question the role played by the government and other state authorities to curb it.

One group may advocate, the best way to reduce the criminal incidents can be simply by giving stringent punishments to the offenders, because these punishments will act as a deterrent and create a fear in the mind of the felons before they think of committing an offence. If one introspects and look into the various legislations that penalises criminal activities (Indian Penal Code, 1860 and special enactments), it becomes clear that we already have harsh punishments in place for commission of grave offences, but then again, why is it so crime still seems to be rampant in our the society?

Other group may support, we need speedy justice system and to clear the backlog of cases so that the justice can be served within due time without any inordinate delay. One should not forget that it nearly took eight years to punish the culprits of Nirbhaya case. It is because our legal system works on the principle that an accused is innocent unless proven guilty. And even after conviction by the court, the convict will still have the right to file an appeal, revision, review, curative petition and mercy petition (as per the nature of offence). Since our legal system seems to recognise and protect a large number of rights, is the sole reason why it takes years and years altogether for the justice to be served. And this in turn makes the offenders think that, there is no one to hold them accountable and they can easily escape from the shackles of justice.

What we need today, is small measures and initiatives taken by the government and concerned State authorities that can help us reduce the criminal activities throughout the nation. Many people have suggested the youth employment, creation of job opportunities, providing more recreational outlets, and enhancing a sense of togetherness as measures to prevent crime at the community level. Through this article, the author would like to throw light on how to State can prevent crime, some of the suggestions are discussed as under:

1. Overcome the Rich and Poor Divide:

The divide between the rich and the poor has increased over the years, while the poor do not even have access to basic necessities like food, clean drinking water, shelter, sanitation, etc., the rich seems to enjoy their luxurious lives. Various studies have indicated that, poor people who are not able to meet their basic ends are the ones that indulge into petty criminal offences like theft. The government should take up initiatives to bridge the gap and make sure the resources are available to everyone and to reduce the income inequalities and classism.

2. Understand That Violence Is Going Virtual:

Cyberspace is a new domain for violence. This ranges from the use of social media to project force (videos showing assassinations, torture, threats), to recruit would-be members of extremist groups (digitally savvy marketing campaigns, online chat sites), for selling product (deep web), and also for more banal but no less important forms of intimidation and coercion (bullying). Violence is going virtual, and we need to get a much better handle on all of this. We have cyber security cells but they don’t function properly and report offences, it is important for the government to address this issue.

3. Restore The Faith Of People:

The government should try to restore the faith of general public in the justice system. This can be done by making it easier for different members of the society to approach the police and to register a complaint against any wrong done to them. Moreover, the government should come up with laws and legislations that will give proper police protection to the whistle-blowers, the witnesses of criminal cases and other who report offense. With help of such initiatives people will be able to report the crime fearlessly and without facing any unnecessary repercussions.

4. Punish The Culprits Of White Collar Crimes:

In in the opinion of the author, the government has done very little to catch the culprits off white collar offences and bring home the justice, this includes various monitory default committed by Vijay Mallya, bank fraud committed by Nirav Modi etc. Though the government has enacted Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018 but so far not even once the provision of these acts have been invoked to punish those who have committed money laundering, bank frauds, theft etc. and escaped the country. The government needs to be more proactive and catch the offenders who fall in this category.

5. Create Awareness Among The Youth

The government and especially Ministry of Law should take up initiatives to educate the younger members of the society and to teach them to be good citizens. We need to educate the youth how not to become victims of cyber bullying and other prevalent offences.

6. Create Harmony Among Various Religious Groups:

India is a secular nation and treat every religion equally. In the past, there have been numerous incidents where one religion or ethnic group has suffered and the state has failed to protect their rights. The state shall take a neutral approach to safeguard the rights of all the people belonging to various cultural and ethnic groups. This in turn will help in harmonising and creating brotherhood in the society and reducing crime.

The author would like to conclude by saying that the government plays an important role in reducing the criminal activity in the action and they should take small steps towards the same and play and proactive role. The strategies, guidelines and approaches that are defined in order to lead to the prevention of crime should be particular and the most focus ought to be that each person should follow them as law.