Topic: What Methods of Crime Prevention [discussed in the Accompanying Texts] Are Most Likely to Be Effective, and Why?

Crime has been a growing problem throughout the world while it is already costing the community millions of dollars. Therefore, finding effective and moral ways to reduce crime and to improve community safety is as top priority. It is clear that a well-planned crime prevention strategy not only obstructs the offence, but also promotes community safety and contributes to the sustainable development of countries. However, not all crime prevention methods are totally effective and indeed economical. Among these methods, the following approaches are claimed to be the most persuasive ideas to prevent crimes: intervention, national publicity campaigns and law strengthening.

Crime is often caused by individuals, and each individual in this society can help prevent crime effectively. This is the reason why early intervention - the common measure dealing with individuals - is supposed to be the key to reducing criminality. Serious social problems such as inadequate parenting, family neglect, poverty, poor education or bad physical and mental health may lead a person of whatever age to crime. And because children have a flair to copy exactly what happened around them, those in risk factors are five times more likely to offend than those who are not. Accordingly, an effective long-term crime prevention strategy must focus on early intervention with at-risk young children and their parents. Another reason for intervention having had "an increasingly recognized and accepted role" (text A) is that investing in removing the opportunity for committing a crime is more effective, more efficient than handling the financial and social costs of a crime after it has been committed. In many developed countries, the criminal justice system is traditionally seen as the main method for tackling crimes which has been perpetrated; but in practice, many breaches of law have been never detected and a large proportion of crime have never become criminal convictions (table 5.1 text G). Since the criminal justice system is quite expensive and limited, spending more money on mentoring people regarding crime is more beneficial.

Beside the consciousness of every individual, the collaboration and participation of the whole community can encourage the national crime prevention. The effectiveness may be found in some national publicity campaigns, for instance the Crack Crime campaign launched in England, 1988 (text G). With the support of many Government Departments as well as various business organizations, local agencies and residents were able to improve the management of housing estate or could institute preventive measures to remove the offenders' prime targets in the most efficient way. Because the police force seemed to be unable to supervise all the wide inhabitant areas anytime, local crime panels involved with neighbourhood watch were such important schemes to ameliorate local public security and environment and foster community spirit. Now every