Throughout the UK, people worry about crime in their local area. A Home Office poll found nearly half of those surveyed said it was their biggest concern about where they live, with those from more deprived areas worrying most.
Tackling crime and anti-social behaviour is also a key priority for the UK government with its Safer Streets mission.
Over the years, a vast amount of research has been conducted into the effectiveness of different ways to reduce crime. Studies have looked at interventions tackling everything from burglary and shoplifting to domestic violence and assault.
The potential to help police
This huge library of research has the potential to help police, providing them with evidence on what works. However, accessing and analysing the studies can be a complicated and time-consuming task for officers already feeling the pressure of stretched resources.
To address this problem and make it easier for police to make evidence-based decisions about which interventions to implement, a team of researchers developed the Crime Reduction Toolkit.
The team was led by the University College London (UCL) Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science.
Informing decisions about crime reduction
Based on the synthesis of hundreds of studies, the online toolkit summarises the best research evidence on what works to reduce a particular crime.
With a couple of clicks, it enables police and other crime reduction practitioners to see at a glance:
- the impact of different interventions on crime
- how and where those interventions work best
- how to implement interventions and their cost
The College of Policing developed an interactive front end for the toolkit for its website, where it has received more than 500,000 views from practitioners and policymakers in more than 75 countries.
Developing local initiatives
UK police forces have drawn on its evidence to develop local initiatives, including reducing drink driving and shoplifting.
More widely, the framework on which the toolkit was based has helped create a shift towards evidence-based policies within the policing sector both within the UK and internationally.
It has enabled decision-makers to target increasingly stretched police resources effectively and efficiently, making life safer for everyone.
Move towards evidence-based policing
Both the media and public often focus on increasing ‘bobbies on the beat’ but this does not necessarily cut crime.
Gloria Laycock, Emeritus Professor at the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, who led the project with Dr Lisa Tompson, Professor Kate Bowers and other UCL colleagues, explained:
There’s an expectation that police will deal with crime and disorder by catching offenders, but evidence shows it is more effective if they prevent the crimes from happening in the first place.
The aim of the toolkit was to show police and indirectly the public, that treating crime as a problem to be solved, rather than reacted to, can be very effective.
Synthesising high-quality evidence
The project, which brought together the College of Policing with an academic consortium of eight universities led by UCL, contributed to the establishment of the What Works Centre for Crime Reduction.
The centre was established in 2013 and Economic and Social Research Council research funding continued until 2018, all forming part of a wider move towards evidence-based policing.
Dr Tompson, explained:
There was a big push for police to use high-quality evidence from research to inform their decisions, which was great in theory but completely unrealistic in reality.
Journal articles are full of academic language, they are of varying quality and it’s tricky to find the relevant ones. We needed to find a way of synthesising that information, putting it in one place and presenting it in a digestible format, so that it could be quick and easy to use.
Developing a framework
With such a large body of research literature, the first step for the team was to identify and draw together existing reviews, summarising the evidence from multiple studies on a particular intervention.
Dr Tompson, said:
If you’re making decisions about policy and practice on the basis of evidence, then that evidence needs to be of the highest quality and come from a broad base, so that it’s not distorted by a rogue study.
Identifying all the evidence across a field as broad as crime reduction was an enormous task and we looked at more than 300 systematic reviews.
An effective crime reduction tool
With an eye on creating a tool that would be of maximum use to police and other practitioners, the team developed a novel framework for synthesising the evidence.
This took into account elements that are important to consider for effective crime reduction work.
Professor Laycock, said:
Context is particularly important in this field. For example, Neighbourhood Watch might be very effective at reducing burglary in a small, affluent village, but no use at all in an inner-city community where the last thing someone will do if they see a crime in progress is phone the police.
Decision makers need information with more nuance to see whether it’s going to work in their circumstances.
The EMMIE framework
The resulting framework, known as EMMIE, authored by UCL’s Professor Johnson, Professor Bowers and Professor Nick Tilley, rates initiatives against the following five dimensions.
Effect
Whether there is evidence of an increase or decrease in crime.
Mechanism
How the intervention works (the ‘active’ ingredient).
Moderators
The circumstances and contexts where the intervention is likely to work or not work.
Implementation
The conditions that should be considered when implementing the intervention locally.
Economics
How much an intervention costs and any evidence of cost benefits.
Evidence from a wide range of interventions
The EMMIE framework formed the basis of the crime reduction toolkit, which draws together the highest quality, most relevant research.
It presents the research in an accessible online format for decision makers with policing and crime reduction responsibilities.
The toolkit, now maintained and updated by the College of Policing, currently covers 80 interventions, addressing a wide variety of problems, including:
- victim offender mediation
- mental health courts
- criminal sanctions to prevent domestic violence.
Dr Tompson, said:
We designed it in layers so that if people want to dig deeper on a particular initiative, they can click through to the detail of the studies.
In addition, the team developed training material in collaboration with the police to ensure that the toolkit was understood and of practical use to crime reduction practitioners.
Impact of the project
Prior to the project, there was no central UK resource to identify the evidence base for crime reduction initiatives.
The Crime Reduction Toolkit, based on the EMMIE framework, now enables practitioners and decision makers to access this information quickly and easily.
It also facilitates the development of novel approaches to crime reduction in the most cost-effective and efficient way.
Valuable tool for police
The Crime Reduction Toolkit has become an established resource, hosted online by the College of Policing.
Since its launch in April 2015, it has received more than 500,000 hits from policing and crime reduction practitioners, policymakers and researchers in more than 75 countries.
It won a prestigious Best Practice certificate at the European Public Sector Awards 2017, with judges describing it as:
A truly innovative project, providing easy access to the best available research evidence on interventions to reduce crime.
The project is highly relevant and gives answers to problematic questions in many countries.
Helping design successful crime interventions
Police forces are drawing on the toolkit to inform decisions about crime prevention interventions, for example, in 2015, West Midlands Police used evidence on the effective use of sobriety checkpoints.
The evidence was used to design and target the placement of checkpoints in their area to reduce drink driving during the Christmas period.
It has also been used by the Metropolitan Police Service to develop problem solving.
Superintendent Luke Baldock, explained:
The Toolkit has brought together key research into one place to inform our thinking across a range of issues, for instance, for our retail crime operation, Operation Kelleher, which has seen a lot of success and national recognition.
Bringing together the best practice from across a range of research allowed us to design a successful intervention.
Demonstrating the value of evidence-based policy
The EMMIE framework is becoming the standard for reviewing what works in crime reduction. The College of Policing now includes reference to EMMIE elements in its calls for research.
Beyond the Crime Reduction Toolkit, the EMMIE model has reinforced a shift to evidence-based policy in policing more widely.
The Office of the Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner now uses EMMIE as the framework through which funding bids are assessed for rigour and completeness.
Improved evidence-based policing
A senior partnership analyst for Lancashire Constabulary, said:
By using your research we have adapted the grant agreement forms to provide the right information.
This is a first step towards an improved evidence-based policing approach and hopefully will help us better understand ‘what works’ across numerous projects that are encouraged by Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner funding.
The EMMIE framework also has demonstrated use and value in other evidence-based policy contexts and in international settings.
Sharing evidence frameworks
Professor Kate Bowers, said:
Significantly, the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care adapted EMMIE for their own use and have publicly promoted the advantages of government initiatives sharing evidence frameworks.
Additionally, within the last two years it has been used in a review of workplace interventions to prevent suicide, to formulate a model of coastal tourism development policy in Indonesia and to address novel problems or contexts including homicide reduction in Latin America and tiger counter-poaching interventions in a Southeast Asian rainforest.