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people with these features are criminals. In fact most of the people in these categories
are not only handicapped by one or more of these features but have higher levels of
victimization and often discrimination by the rest of the population, leading to low
self-esteem and poorer health. Rather the issue here is that these factors may pro-
duce a heightened risk of criminal behaviour in members of these groups, especially
children brought up in environments characterised by one or many of these features,
who may believe that many activities are acceptable and not really criminal, creating
a contagion effect on their friends. In addition, Sampson and Groves (
1989
) have
shown that high levels of crime also characterise areas with low 'collective efficacy',
meaning there is a low social cohesion between people in an area, as well as an un-
willingness to report crime out of fear of retribution.
Initially, the search for effective policies focused on attempts to reduce the inci-
dence of these social correlates through traditional policing or areal policies involv-
ing various social services. Both are still needed. But increasingly it is recognized
that such policies are not enough and attention moved first to understanding and
reducing the effect of the social institutions that underlie and reinforce many of
these features, such as poor schools and limited support systems from the state,
and more recently to policies based on the factors involved in social cognition and
social learning which predispose some individuals towards crime and delinquency.
In this respect Beck's (
1999
) insights into what he called the primal information
processing are useful, the automatic, unthinking reaction to perceived slights or
insults that leads to hostility, anger and often aggression. This occurs before any
rational review, or considered response, which explains why many violent acts and
assault occur. The thesis is starting to form the basis of
new cognitive strategies
to
reduce anger and violence by therapies that modify such behaviours, before they
can turn into violence. Another trend is through similar
evidence-based
policies to
those described in policing, where pioneering empirical research on the outcomes
of various anti-crime and violence policies, as well as reviews of previous work,
leads to the identification of the best programmes for reducing crime (Tolan and
Guera
1994
; Sherman et al.
1997
) and violence (Elliot
1993
). The Centre for the
Study and Prevention of Violence, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, is es-
pecially important in this regard. Its on-going Blueprints Model Programme (BMP)
has evaluated over 900 violence prevention programs. Perhaps one of the surprising
conclusions of evaluations of behavioural approaches by the Boulder Centre is that
many familiar programmes designed to reduce teen and young adult delinquency
and future violence and crime were shown to have limited effectiveness. For ex-
ample, rigorously evaluated by carefully designed studies, the following popular
programmes were considered as being of limited effectiveness: 'boot camps' for
young offenders, gun buy-backs, peer-counselling, summer jobs for 'at risk' teens,
and house detention devices using electronic tags (which can be removed). The re-
search centre even concluded that familiar and well established programmes such as
Neighbourhood Watch were of limited effectiveness, for they are rarely established
in high crime areas.
More targeted and positive behavioural policies come from new understand-
ings of the life-course development of children that steer some to delinquency and
crime. Researchers in this field have shown that two critical phases occur, one in
