Violent Crime: Risk Models, Effective Interventions & Risk Managment

[Jedburgh]

RAND, 21 Mar 08: Violent Crime: Risk Models, Effective Interventions & Risk Managment

In the context of overcrowded prisons that have been shown to be ineffective at reducing reoffending, policy makers and practitioners face increasingly pressing questions about what works in reducing offending. In the case of violent crime, answers to this question have significant and immediate implications for individuals who may experience violence or reduced quality of life due to fear of crime, as well as for communities and societies for whom all crime is costly and damaging. The core concern of the National Audit Office (NAO) in commissioning this review was to find examples of risk management practices and interventions to prevent violence such as through better tracking of violent offenders and reducing violent reoffending. The effectiveness and cost-benefit of early interventions for preventing crime have been emphasised in a previous RAND Europe report commissioned by the NAO. Those findings hold true for violent crime as well. This review moves on to focus primarily on what works in reducing reoffending and preventing crime in areas affected by high rates of violence.....

[davidbfpo]

Try this long term viewpoint, from a unusual direction and very well argued. Even an American police colleague commended it.

http://www.thirdway.org/data/product...ime_Report.pdf

davidbfpo

[Sergeant T]

Stanton Samenow started working on this in the '70s. The problems with what the Rand report calls Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT) are twofold. First, you can't compel participtation so it's voluntary, hence low turnout. (California has had pretty good success with it's Amity program, but look at the actual participation numbers.) Second, it takes a long time to get results.

I remember reading somewhere in college that years ago Oklahoma had a novel idea. They offered free college tuition to inmates & designed a program allowing people to get degrees while incarcerated. Among program partcipants the recidivisim rate dropped to 4%. Needless to say the program didn't last.

Agreed with the ThirdWay paper. Feds are largely MIA.

[bismark17]

Yea, that third way paper is really interesting. It has spurred me to hook up with our local Department of Corrections and get up to speed with what we are facing in terms of numbers of releases and I will check into that screening methodology for the violent offenders. I hate to admit it but I had no clue about the raw numbers of released offenders that are coming up. Once I get through this paper, I will check into the Rand paper that was suggested.

As for the Feds, there has been a shift in targets in this post 9/11world but they are still helping out in Task Force type partnerships like the JTTFs. They just bring so much more to the table in States that restrict 3rd Party Consent on audio recording and in technical investigations.