Book Reviews
| Author | Dave Phillips |
| Pages | 91-100 |
Book Reviews
91
CRIME PREVENTION: FACTS,
FALLACIES AND THE FUTURE
Henry Shaftoe. Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. pp. 257; –18.99pbk.
ISBN 0-333-92128-3
EVIDENCE-BASED CRIME
PREVENTION
Edited by Lawrence W. Sherman, David P.
Farrington, Brandon C. Welsh and Doris Layton
MacKenzie. London, Routledge, 2002. pp 456; –
85 hbk.
ISBN 0-415-27047-2
These two books indicate that crime prevention has ´gone to scale`. Henry Shaftoe
provides an introductory undergraduate text on ´Crime Prevention: facts, fallacies and the
future’ and Lawrence Sherman et al develop their 1997 report `Preventing Crime: What
Works, What doesn`t and What`s Promising` for policy makers, academics and
community leaders. If these books were accidentally read by each others audiences there
may be some benefit. Shaftoe points to the complexity of the field and Sherman et al
illustrate that the best interventions often involve people and projects that are well
thought out and build in a research-based approach. Undergraduates may therefore come
to realise that good academic learning is an excellent preparation for making a difference
in the world and politicians/researchers may start to appreciate that an abstract vision is
difficult to realise in concrete practices, especially in the social and human domain.
The undergraduate text on `Crime Prevention` is suitable for a wide variety of courses
including traditional and more vocational ones. Students on first or second year
criminology courses may find that definitions of crime, measurement and basic theories
are covered elsewhere but this is unlikely to be the case for youth and community workers
or social science/urban studies students. Offender managers and students on foundation
degrees for the police service will benefit from the interdisciplinary and multi-agency
focus to the book. For all students and professionals in this area it is crucial to understand
how the different strands and currents of policy swirl around a variety of organisational,
community and societal contexts. Understanding where other professionals are positioned
in the discourse of crime prevention may help `join-up´ the multiplicity of new projects
and practices in this area.
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