Safe Cities and Communities - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 458

and sense of belonging that is absent from their parents or neighbours, together with
a sense of excitement and willingness to take risks, such as by engaging in criminal
actions to gain money. Many of the violent acts come from excessive responses to
some personal insult or some minor conflict. Most teens have learned to resolve
such problems. But those without positive development histories often carry out
impulsive crime and take offence at what is seen as a lack of respect, because of the
type of primal processing behaviour identified by Beck ( 1999 ). So cognitive modi-
fication is needed for individuals to resolve their impulsive behaviours. Some high
crime cities with large numbers of gangs, such as Glasgow, have implemented poli-
cies that target gang members with heavy surveillance which restricts their abilities
to engage in crime, as well as trying to get individuals to leave their group through
re-location procedures if necessary, to avoid retribution from the gang.
Many different approaches to violence prevention have been used in Safe City
and other crime prevention programmes, such as those focusing upon individual of-
fenders, their families, schools or communities. But Greenwood ( 2004 ) has argued
that relatively few of the huge array of prevention programmes have been properly
evaluated in a scientific sense, especially in terms of their relative cost-effectiveness
and community-based programmes in particular have had few rigorous evaluations.
In the case of delinquency, which is often the precursor for more serious subsequent
crime, Greenwood presented a rather pessimistic view of the policies normally ap-
plied, although the opinions may be applied to the wider issue of crime.
Today, there is a growing mismatch between delinquency prevention practice and rapidly
accumulating knowledge of the life-course patterns of delinquent behaviour. Many existing
prevention efforts fail to integrate accumulating knowledge about the processes of desis-
tance from anti-social behaviour at each stage of development that might be utilized in pre-
vention programs to hasten the termination of delinquent careers. Instead, current practice
reflects a vigorous but undisciplined marketplace of competing ideas, often without sound
foundations in either theory or research. (Greenwood 2004 , p. 202)

Despite this pessimism, reviews of the effectiveness of various behavioural pro-
grammes are providing policy makers with a series of strategies that can improve
outcomes (BMP). Three different types of policy can be recognized, sometimes de-
scribed as primary, secondary and tertiary treatments: those that apply to the whole
population; those that are targeted at the population that is judged to be 'at risk' of
being involved in criminal activity; and those that apply to previous offenders in the
hope that they will not subsequently engage in crime.

12﻽6﻽3﻽1 Primary Behavioural Treatments

These apply to the population as a whole, where is a pressing need for more qual-
ity pre-schooling , with small classes and caring teachers who enhance cognitive
development and positive socialisation skills, not just traditional educational skills.
Unfortunately relatively few countries have effective and universal programmes in
this area, a need made more apparent now so many young families do not have a
stay-at-home parent, given the dramatic increase in the rates of female participa-