What prevention really means
EMPAC’s Professor John Coxhead presented at the national Public Policy Exchange Conference on the 15th October (https://www.publicpolicyexchange.co.uk/event.php?eventUID=OJ15-PPE) reporting on the key research that shows prevention works better than reaction. Given budgetary pressures on all public services, including policing, different ways of doing things is now an imperative. Although there has been value input from the Police Foundation (Muir, 2024) much of the current context concerns the volume, and costs, of demand, and consequently is as much about what the police should do, as about what the police simply cannot do.
There has been extensive policing adoption of research (Weisburd, 2012) concerning reactive tactics (such as hotspotting), which can aid some temporary alleviation of a problem already in its crisis state (a ‘hotspot’). Problem solving (for example, as developed by Eck and Spelman [1987] using the SARA model) is also essentially reactive because it is a response to an existing problem, to seek to reduce its reoccurrence.
These things, of course, all make sense – but only to an extent – as these represent Tier 2 (responsive) prevention. There will always be the need for a fall back situation where agile problem solving capability will be required, but the greater ambition and more affordable pragmatism would be to invest in Tier 1 (proactive) prevention, meaning to actually prevent, thereby removing the need to react.
Tiered policing
Response is tiered from immediate to delayed and scheduled, but is very expensive because of its resourcing requirements, and the demand upon it. This means the tiering of response has become triaged not only for capability considerations but also capacity. There is not enough reactive police capacity to respond to all the needs placed upon it. That is a fact within existing budgetary allocations, and these are likely to slip, meaning response as a sole model is unsustainable and at some point, unless other approaches are adopted, will simply collapse.
A collapsing reactive capacity will further dent public confidence, which is already at an all time low, and could well lead to private civil prosecutions against the police for a failure to protect, more negative coroner inquests, a further delegitimisation of policing meaning less intelligence, less co-operation and overall falling performance which (monitored by HMICFRS) will result in more police organisations in special measures. A cycle of demand failure and collapse will impact public outcomes and confidence but also working conditions, morale, attrition and recruitment.
More together
The Home Office in 1991 commissioned James Morgan to chair a national enquiry about how to make policing more effective by working in partnership. It has been recognised for some time that the police cannot, alone, stop crime by arresting their way out of it. If it could, given the number of arrests made over the years, we wouldn’t be facing the crime levels and prison crisis of today. Hence policing, alone, no matter how hard it tries, does not work. The Morgan Report (1991) advocated greater holism (working together across partnerships) and local democracy (using the insights of public end users more to inform priorities) to both enhance productivity but also public confidence.
The insights were adopted in the main within the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), particularly in the creation of Section 17 of the Act. Chambers (2009) reviewed the empirical evidence of prevention to conclude that less crime equated to reduced costs, which could be best achieved through upstream (proactive) preventative partnerships. Such conclusions remain true across all crime, but specifically to particular types such as violence (knife crime, VAWG etc), including anti-social behaviour.
We cannot afford a reactive model
Policing costs and productivity benefit analysis are affected by demand, much of which is not traditional crime enforcement. Positioning an organisational relationship based upon demand places it in a precarious reactive function, which it neither wants, nor can cope with. Of course, efficiencies can be sought through automation, but as the reactive model itself is unsustainable this simply amounts to doing the wrong thing, better.
Tier 1 (proactive prevention) is the better alternative by coalescing partnership collaboration focused upon common mission-based goals which prevent trouble rather than having to then continually respond to it. Tier 1 approaches can involve designing out crime. But at the psycho-socio-political level (such as easing poverty vulnerabilities), not just target hardening (put a lock on it).
Target hardening presumes rational choice theory opportunism as the key motive to offending behaviour (Cohen & Felson, 1979; Clarke, 2018), but despite this having become a traditionally favoured choice for policy makers, has been shown not to work over time. For example, shoplifting nowadays rejects all of the previously presumed target hardening tactics as simply irrelevant.
Tier 2 (reactive prevention) focuses upon an existing identified situation and seeks to problem solve out of it to prevent a re-occurrence, then moves to the next problem. Tier 2 prevention, whilst better than Tier 1-3 reactive, is still reactive in nature; at its worst problem solving can deteriorate into Groundhog Day Whac-a-Mole.
Prevention Hubs
Tier 1 and 2 thinking was evident at the first Crime Prevention unit formed in the UK, initially at Staffordshire Police HQ by then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Now, new research from the University of Staffordshire, is refreshing thinking to drive a 21st century future-fit iteration that prevention is indeed better than cure; something needed now more than ever given the national budgetary context.
Prevention Hubs need a capacity and capability for Tier 1 and 2 prevention, with an understanding that Plan A needs to be Tier 1 (to enable long term ‘cold spots’), whilst still possessing the dynamic agility to deliver Tier 2, if hotspots fall through the net. Tier 1 is a form of longer term strategy, Tier 2 is a form of ‘here and now’ coping mechanism tactic: but both are complementary and mutually supportive, as relying on just one, without the other, will result in unsustainable failure demand overload.
Aligning Tier 1 and 2 prevention
Tier 2 development has been substantial, thanks in the main to Professor Lawrence Sherman (2020), but there is a need to upscale Tier 1 investment to balance this vital relationship. Methods used to establish the evidence base to Tier 2 (including counter predictivity factors) now need to be more equally applied to Tier 1, mapped against cost benefit return efficacy, for a contemporary contextualised toolkit for partners and communities. This would create a stronger collaborative partnership that will be sustainable: cutting crime, cutting costs and growing public confidence in being safe through the valuable contribution of policing and partners.
New research (Coxhead, Pancholi and Uduwerage-Perera) is being published by Springer (New York) in 2025 and a working group, led by Dr Roy Bailey, is currently promoting policy adoption by the new Labour Government, aided by Professor Stan Gilmour’s Evidence Based Policing 3.0 Toolkit at Oxon Advisory Recent Publications (oxonadvisory.com).
Comments