Eds.
Marc Coester and Erich Marks
with contributions from:
Klaus Beier, Frank Buchheit, Marc Coester, Petra Guder, Rita Haverkamp, Claudia Heinzelmann, Harrie Jonkman, Wolfgang Kahl, Ruža Karlović, Daniela Köntopp, Patricia Martin, Richard Ross, Wiebke Steffen, David Stucki, Jörg Ziercke
Forum Verlag Godesberg GmbH 2015
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nātionalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nātionalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
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The German Congress on Crime Prevention is an annual event that takes place since 1995 in different German cities and targets all areas of crime prevention: Administration, the health system, youth welfare, the judiciary, churches, local authorities, the media, politics, the police, crime prevention committees, projects, schools, organizations, associations and science. The desired effect is to present and strengthen crime prevention within a broad societal framework. Thus it contributes to crime reduction as well as to the prevention and the reduced risk of becoming a victim as well as fear of crime. The main objectives of the congress are:
Since its foundation the German Congress on Crime Prevention has been opened to an international audience with a growing number of non-German speaking participants joining. Because prevention is more than a national concern and should be focused internationally this step seemed crucial. Bringing together not only German scientists and practitioners but also international experts in crime prevention and therefore developing a transnational forum to foster the exchange of knowledge and experience constitutes the main focus of this approach. To give the international guests a discussion forum, the Annual International Forum within the German Congress on Crime Prevention was established in 2007. For non-German guests this event offers lectures in English language as well as other activities within the German Congress on Crime Prevention that are translated simultaneously. International guests are able to play an active role by presenting poster or displaying information within the exhibition.
This seventh edition of “International Perspectives of Crime Prevention” includes the outcomes of the 8th Annual International Forum which took place within the 19th German Congress on Crime Prevention on the 12th and 13th of May 2014 in Karlsruhe and gathered together more than 4.000 people from the field of crime prevention in Germany and worldwide. All articles in this book reflect worldwide views on crime prevention as well as the current status, discussion and research in crime prevention from different countries.
We hope to find a broad audience, interested in the upcoming events of the Annual International Forum as well as the German Congress on Crime Prevention. For more information please visit our website at http://www.gcocp.org.
Marc Coester and Erich Marks
Prevention requires practice, policy, and science
Crime prevention requires prevention practice, prevention policy, and prevention science
Wiebke Steffen
Heiligenberg (Baden) / Munich
Content
In the last quarter of a century, crime prevention has been developed and established in Germany in many ways: in the meantime, a new field of action and policy has been created.
As a consequence of this development, the familiar original prevention protagonists (police and justice system) are now supported by additional protagonists such as schools, children’s and youth organizations, and civil society organizations. Cooperation commissions have been instituted at all levels – local, regional, national, international – in order to live up to the understanding of crime prevention as a social responsibility which requires cooperation between protagonists and institutions.
The drivers of this development are the numerous programs and projects of the respective specialized practices, i.e. the organized practice of governmental and nongovernmental instances and institutions. However, crime prevention not only requires practice if it is to establish and develop.
Crime prevention also requires prevention policy, especially a wide socio-political consensus that crime should be primarily counteracted with preventive strategies and concepts. A consensus that creates the necessary (legal) framework and provides the needed personnel and financial resources.
Crime prevention also urgently needs prevention science as a supplier of the theoretical and empirical foundations, as consultant in the planning, implementation, and spread of preventive programs, and for the verification of projects for their practical suitability and effectiveness.
In crime prevention, practice, policy, and science are the central work areas. For this reason, the 19th German Congress of Crime Prevention has moved its tasks in and for crime prevention into focus with the demand “prevention requires practice, policy, and science”. The Report on the emphasis topic “crime prevention requires prevention practice, prevention policy, and prevention science” poses the following questions for the three areas of work:
In the last quarter century, crime prevention has been established and developed in many ways in Germany.1 In the meantime, this task has created a new field of action and policy at the level of municipalities, states, and the federation. Crime prevention as the active cooperation of many social forces and disciplines with the goal of preventing crimes requires practice, policy, and science. These are its central areas of work which each must contribute its own performance for crime prevention and should act in relation to each other and in cooperation as much as possible.
Definition and goals of crime prevention
Crime prevention is an alternative, non-punitive response to the challenge of preventing crime as a social phenomenon or as an individual event, reducing it, or minimizing its consequences.
Compared to repression, prevention takes precedence in terms of content and timing: the negative impact of the crime and the victim’s suffering are avoided, it is more effective, material and immaterial costs are lower.
Crime prevention also has risky aspects, e.g. due to the tendency to blur the boundaries of crime and prevention terms and forward shift preventive actions.
For this reason, crime prevention should be understood in its narrow sense:
Only those strategies, measures, and projects should be considered crime prevention which have as goal the direct or indirect prevention / reduction of crime and from which one can reasonably expect that they are targeted towards preventing / reducing crime with a reasonable and plausible connection – either on the basis of convincing empirical evidence or based on plausible assumptions.
Generally supportive measures of social or universal prevention are indispensable and the responsibility of many policy areas but must be understood and used as what they are, namely social policy and not crime policy / crime prevention.
Crime prevention specified in this way is a general social responsibility which must be fulfilled and implemented in a networked and interdisciplinary cooperation spanning departments and institutions at several levels: at the local / communal level, state level, federal level, and the international / global level. It requires specialized knowledge and should be evidence-based.
Central areas of work in the field of action and policy “crime prevention” are thus prevention practice, prevention policy, and prevention science. Areas of work which must each make its own contribution to crime prevention and should act in relation to each other and in cooperation as much as possible.
Prevention practice
With its numerous programs and projects, the organized crime preventing specialized practice of governmental and non-governmental institutions was and is without a doubt the driver of development in the area of crime prevention. The focus of crime prevention programs and projects was and is on the communal / local level. It makes sense to influence and prevent crime and fear of crime in those places where they arise and are enabled.
The most important protagonists of prevention practice are the police, children’s and youth organizations, schools, and – with reservations - penal law and/or the justice system. In the meantime, the police as first responder and probably still most important protagonist of crime prevention sees itself as one protagonist in local problem resolution processes. Children’s and youth organizations hesitated for a long time to deal with delinquency but in the meantime pedagogical crime prevention has established itself. Schools also fulfill their role in the area of crime prevention as part of their information and education responsibilities through a variety of prevention and intervention programs. Crime prevention is also the subject of penal law and the justice system, but their preventive effects are limited to what is possible within the framework of crime repression – and it has been shown that these effects are very small.
The concept of communal crime prevention has had an extremely positive effect on the development of crime prevention. Since the start of the 1990s, cooperation and communication networks have arisen in many German cities and municipalities between communal administration and policy, police, justice, schools, associations, churches, economy, social institutions, children’s and youth organizations, and other protagonists.
Summary and conclusions
Communal crime prevention provides some of the most pressing indicators and evidence to what extent crime prevention requires practice, policy, and science:
It requires practice for “on-site work”. However, practitioners should be specially selected for this task and receive training and education which meets today’s requirements for professionalism and competence. For this, science must develop and provide corresponding training and educational programs.
It requires policy, both on the communal and the state level. Nothing can be achieved without policy support, at least not anything effective and sustainable.
It needs science to provide the theoretical and empirical basis of prevention work, consulting and supervision for the implementation and evaluation of projects, for the development of training and education programs, for the development and maintenance of databases and information systems.
Even though it has been around for a long time and developing continuously, the practice of communal crime prevention still has a lot of potential for optimization. However, since this concept still is “a just plain common sense idea”, everything should be tried to realize this idea for the long term.
Prevention policy
While crime prevention is considered an important goal of criminal policy, the increased orientation of policy towards crime prevention and its sustained development which is demanded by science and practice has not taken place to a sufficient degree. This is at least true for criminal policy at the federal level, i.e. for policy which is responsible for penal law, i.e. repression – and thus really also for prevention, which precedes repression in both time and content. However, at the federal level, crime policy not only sticks with its criminal-law reaction patterns, it has even enhanced them. The trend towards a control-oriented preventive penal law supports the prevention state, into which Germany has been turning for a few years now.
This criminal policy is deaf to theoretical and empirical knowledge which criminology and other scientific disciplines have developed a long time ago and provided to policy makers because this knowledge goes against the trends of criminal policy as it is practiced today. Empirical criminology and other scientific disciplines have never produced as much knowledge as today – and have never had as little influence on criminal policy as today. Even the two Periodical Security Reports commissioned by and submitted to the federal government had and have practically no impact on criminal policy in Germany – its political convictions are apparently impervious even to the best knowledge available. We can certainly not speak of evidence-based criminal policy at the federal level.
This is underlined by the fact that, until now, the federal level has not exhibited any will to support crime prevention by installing a “National Center for Crime Prevention” with sufficient organizational, personnel, and financial equipment. The foundation Deutsches Forum für Kriminalprävention [German Forum for Crime Prevention] (DFK) is unable to even begin to meet its goals and core responsibilities and has remained alive only thanks to the commitment of its participants.
While the local / communal levels and the state levels are bound to federal criminal policy in terms of penal law and penal law practice2, it still looks better here in terms of policy support for crime prevention. For communal crime prevention this can be seen in the – often applied – demand “prevention is the responsibility of the mayor”. At the state level, this can be seen by the initiation and implementation of preventionoriented programs and in particular the installation of state prevention councils and comparable commissions which not only have the responsibility consulting for crime prevention policy but also strengthen and support communal crime prevention.
Summary and conclusions
In view of an overall favorable development of crime, the municipalities and states should not ease up on their crime prevention efforts but at least keep them at the same level if not increase them. In this sense, all levels should (again and again) create a wide social consensus in terms of facing crime primarily with preventive strategies and concepts.
At the local level, the concept of communal crime prevention definitely has a future and should be implemented and developed (in an area-covering manner), for instance in the direction of a communal security policy, institutionalized for instance in an “Office for crime prevention”.
Due to the tight budget restrictions in many communities, financial support is urgently needed, also so that the other actors at the communal level can continue their outstanding and indispensable work in crime prevention and possibly even expand it further.
State prevention councils should be installed in all states and suitably equipped with organization, personnel, and finances. The integration of councils into the government and not a ministry should also be studied, as should the creation of an “Office for crime prevention” at the state level. One should strive for the development of crime prevention into a systematic prevention strategy and/or prevention policy.
At the federal level it is urgently necessary to create a “National Center for Crime Prevention” with sufficient organizational, personnel, and financial resources, possibly by expanding the foundation Deutsches Forum für Kriminalprävention (DFK) into such a center and integrating the Kriminologische Zentralstelle [Central Criminological Office] (KrimZ). This center should also not be connected to a ministry but to the Federal Chancellery.
Even if the crime policy impact of the two previous Periodical Security Reports (PSR) were hardly noticeable, the creation of – actually – Periodical Security Reports based on a legal regulation or decision of the German Bundestag is urgently necessary. These reports should be compiled by an interdisciplinary scientific commission on a regular basis, for instance once in every legislative period.
It should be checked at all levels whether 5% of the current expenses for crime response – by police, justice, and penal system – should better be invested into effective crime prevention.
Prevention science
Crime prevention should be based on evidence, i.e. on the basis of theoretical and empirical scientific insights. Prevention practice and prevention policy thus require science and research.
The fact that prevention policy looks different in reality, at least on the federal level, has already been discussed. At the communal and state levels, policy makers appear to be more open to evidence. In the meantime, this is also the case for prevention practice.
This is not lastly due to science having performed numerous “services” for practice and having increasingly and systematically supported prevention practice.
This not only provides prevention practice with the necessary theoretical and empirical scientific insights, but the planning, implementation, and effect of prevention measures and programs (implementation and evaluation) is scientifically monitored and verified. In particular the evaluation of projects has become much more frequent and standard in the meantime and implementation research is gaining in significance.
Evaluation should be a core goal of prevention policy, in particular in form of lasting regulatory impact assessment, evaluation of the usefulness of a law, and monitoring of the parameters originally targeted by the law. Not just in terms of legislative activities but especially also for practical prevention policy up to the level of cities and municipalities.
The time that research takes in general can become a problem. Practice and policy want to – must – act as quickly as possible in order to remedy recognized problems. But science needs time to be able to make well-founded statements about effects or lack thereof. It is likely as difficult in prevention practice as in prevention policy to perform empirical studies and collect data before a prevention measure has started and/or a law passed.
Problems could arise from the current position of criminology as relevant reference science: while Germany has a highly developed theoretical and empirical science of criminology, it is apparently seriously endangered due “structural depletion”. A lot of criminological research takes place outside of the criminology of law schools and is significantly dispersed over various scientific disciplines. However, this also means that criminological questions enjoy widespread scientific interest.
Summary and conclusions
Many scientific disciplines are and have been involved in developing the knowledge about what works and what doesn’t, what makes sense for of crime prevention and what doesn’t; however, at the center there was always criminology whose existence is at risk at German Universities. Something similar applies to neighboring disciplines.
Since this could have effects on crime prevention, Universities should intensify the instruction in particular in sociological and juristic faculties and bundle, coordinate, and thus promote the diverse criminological activities by developing interdisciplinary Central Criminological Offices.
We welcome the 2012 foundation of the endowment chair “Crime prevention and risk management”. In order to give crime prevention the necessary weight in the research spectrum of criminology and other disciplines, it is necessary that this Chair should be financed past 2017 and be made permanent.
But in particular, the close association between criminology and penal law should be dissolved and criminology established as an independent social science. A wellpositioned criminology department is a necessary (if not sufficient) prerequisite for the implementation of the requirement for interdisciplinary prevention science.
Crime prevention requires prevention practice, prevention policy, and prevention science
The German Congress of Crime Prevention (DPT) is probably the best example for how far the demand that crime prevention requires prevention practice, prevention policy, and prevention science has already become a reality. This can be seen not only in its development from very humble beginnings – 1995 in Lübeck with 168 registered congress participants and a very manageable program of this “work conference” to the last 18th DPT 2013 in Bielefeld with almost 2,000 congress participants from 17 specified work areas, a comprehensive program (169 speakers for presentations and project spots), informational booths, special exhibits, etc.
The evaluation results (of DPT evaluated since the 13th DPT) find: “Overall, the evaluation results show that the 18th German Congress of Crime Prevention can be considered a successful event. Almost 92% of the surveyed visitors thought that the 18th German Congress of Crime Prevention was very good or good.” The German Congress of Crime Prevention has without a question developed into an important forum for the discourse between practice, science, and policy in the field of crime prevention.
In 2013 another field of work started with the “DPT institute for applied prevention research” (dpt-i) in order to strengthen this development and develop it systematically. An important task of this institute could be to develop a systematic strategy for crime prevention to handle their tasks for crime prevention and the demands and challenges for these areas of work based on the findings on performance and deficits of the areas of prevention practice, prevention policy, and prevention science.
In the last quarter of a century, crime prevention has been developed and established in Germany in many ways: in the meantime, a new field of action and policy has been created at the municipal, state, and federal level. As the active cooperation of many social forces and disciplines with the goal of preventing crime, crime prevention requires practice, policy, and science: these are its central areas of work which must make their own contributions for crime prevention and should act in relation to each other and in cooperation as much as possible.
Prevention practice with its numerous protagonists, the governmental and nongovernmental instances and institutions with its many programs and projects, was and is the driving force of the development of crime prevention. However, without the support of the prevention policy, this “engine” may easily run out of steam. Crime prevention needs “fuel”, especially a wide socio-political consensus that crime should be primarily counteracted with preventive strategies and concepts. Such a consensus is the prerequisite for creating the required (legal) framework conditions for prevention practice and providing the necessary personnel and financial resources. Prevention policy will only achieve this (at least in the long term) if prevention practice is evidence-based and has an effect (“success”). That means that crime prevention urgently needs the prevention science as a supplier of the theoretical and empirical foundations, as consultant in the planning, implementation, and spread of preventive programs, and for the verification of projects for their practical suitability and effectiveness.
It would be optimal for crime prevention if its three areas of work would not only provide these contributions but also work together in this process. However, this cooperation is still “in its infancy” (Marks 2014) – and this not lastly because crime prevention has not been systematically planned and implemented at either the communal, state, or federal level in the sense of a prevention strategy or even a prevention policy but has instead more or less “grown organically”.
In addition, the three areas of work each have their own action objectives and action logic which generally makes cooperation difficult. Even within the respective areas of work, the network that overarches cooperation, protagonists, department, and disciplines is not easy to create.
In the following, we will discuss the three areas of work in crime prevention, based on available knowledge
First, however, we specify what understanding of crime prevention this discussion is based on.
Crime prevention includes all governmental and private efforts, programs and measures which use to prevent, reduce, or alleviate the consequences of crime as a social phenomenon or as an individual event.4
In general, crime prevention deals with the development / strengthening of protective factors and the elimination / reduction of risk factors.
Crime prevention is an alternative, non-punitive response to the challenge of preventing or at least reducing crime and the fear of crime. Crime prevention is thus not part of the criminal justice system but basically another “pillar” in the area of crime control, next to the pillars police, justice, and penal system. Crime preventive action does not assume already perpetrated crimes but attempts to prevent crimes from happening in the first place (Welsh/Farrington 2012, 128; Waller 2011, 2013).
In terms of perpetrators, situations, and victims, it is still usual to distinguish between primary, secondary, and tertiary crime prevention (PSR 2006, 667 et seq.; Schwind 2013, Section 1 marginal note 42, each with further evidence).
This distinction should be forgone since it leads to misunderstandings which do not help the idea of crime prevention (Steffen 2013 b, pp. 492 et seq.):
More meaningful and clearer is the distinction between universal or social prevention, between selective or situative crime prevention and indicated crime prevention.6
Universal or social (“primary”) prevention
targets the general public and/or overall groups with general supportive, non-occasion-related programs and measures without the need for specific risk factors in these groups.
Without the need for “specific suspicions”, consistent social, work, youth, family, economic, education, and cultural policies are supposed to create optimal conditions to prevent deviant behavior and crime in the first place. Universal prevention is the responsibility of many protagonists and institutions, from family and schools all the way to youth support, community, and politics, but less frequently police and justice system.
Due to its very unspecific “universal” orientation, it is debated whether social prevention should even be labeled and understood as crime prevention – even if there is no doubt that socialization and education, individual and social life conditions etc. have a significant impact on the development of crime. But it is not possible to find direct connections between such “global framework conditions” and crime.7 In order to counteract the risk of blurring crime and prevention terminology and focusing more on preventive action, crime is not the suitable frame of reference for strategies of universal prevention.8
Measures of universal prevention, such as the restoration of social justice through the reduction of income, education, and integration disparity with the goal of equal economic, political, social and cultural participation of all population segments are indispensable but must be understood and used as what they are, namely as social policy and not as criminal policy and/or crime prevention,9 even if they can without a doubt have a crime preventive effect. But this is not their objective, and certainly not their primary objective, and for this reason they should not be instrumentalized for the purpose of crime prevention – especially since this does not live up to the significance of these measures.
Especially since the protection of social state from the different social risks can help counteract (the increase of) crime and fear of crime, especially because crime prevention work can only be successful if it is embedded in a fair social policy – life circumstance policy11 - one must clearly distinguish between social preventive and crime prevention strategies, programs, and measures, at least as far as this is possible: because there are always overlaps and mix-ups, at least the terminology should be clear.12
Selective or situational (“secondary”) crime prevention,
like universal prevention, it wants to prevent crimes before they happen but has a more specific approach by focusing on risk situations and attempting to influence potentially delinquent persons and criminogenic situations. Selective prevention targets specific sub-groups, individuals, or situations which are characterized by greater exposure to risk factors and thus are subject to increased perpetrator and victimization risk (“persons at risk as perpetrators and victims”) and/or, in situations, are at risk because crime can occur (“opportunities for crime”).
Selective crime prevention directly or indirectly aims at preventing and reducing crime and fear of crime and/or improving the safety situation and feeling of safety.
It tries to remove personal and social deficits as possible causes of crime, reducing opportunities for crime, and increasing the risk of discovery (Steffen 2013 b, 494).
The important aspects here are
Indicated (“tertiary”) prevention
begins after crimes have already been committed. Suitable measures, if necessary special therapy, is supposed to prevent recidivism as effectively as possible; this includes support in finding employment and reintegration of the offenders (PSR 2006, 668).
Indicated prevention also includes programs and measures for situations in which crimes have occurred with greater frequency (“crime hot spots”).
(Governmental) control and intervention measures are supposed to counteract crimes and re-socialize persons with criminal tendencies with the goal of preventing and/or reducing further delinquency and crimes, reducing the crime rate, and reducing the victimization risk of the population (Steffen 2013 b, 495).
Indicated crime prevention also includes help for victims of crimes with the goal of preventing repeated victimization and especially secondary victimization due to reactions of the instances and the social environment.
Positive aspects of crime prevention
Especially the following considerations speak for crime prevention:14
crime prevention is more humane than crime repression. This not only applies to the perpetrator side in terms of punishment but in particular also to the victim side. It makes more sense to prevent crimes from every happening than to have to pursue them subsequently at great expense. In addition to material and physical damage, crimes often lead to severe psychological consequences for the victims. No matter how successful criminal prosecution is, it cannot repair or even reverse damage already done.
Crime prevention-oriented action can reduce potential conflicts and opportunities for crime, reduce fears, improve communication, defuse disintergrating situations. Criminal prosecution always comes too late: individual and social problems which are expressed by crimes have already occurred. In addition, the criminal justice repertoire has only very limited crime-reducing effects.
Where crime prevention is effective, it usually also pays in terms of the personnel and financial resources that are used. Investment in effective prevention means fewer victims, fewer damage, lower costs for tax payers, and the reduction of the work load for police, justice, and penal system.
Risky aspects of crime prevention
However, crime prevention also has risky aspects. Crime prevention has an effect15 – and thus may also have risks and side-effects. It is not automatically good for the mere reason that it wants to prevent bad things from happening (see Steffen 2012 a, 108 et seq.):
Prevention is an operation fraught with assumptions and ambivalence (Holthusen et. al. 2011, 25). For this reason, one should definitely take precautions against the trend for blurring and shifting of preventive action and understand crime prevention in a narrow sense:
Only those strategies, measures, and projects should be considered as crime preventive that directly or indirectly prevent / reduce crime and from which one can reasonably expect that they are targeted towards preventing / reducing crime with a reasonable and plausible connection – either on the basis of convincing empirical evidence or based on plausible assumptions.17
This requirement for “tightening” the prevention idea is rarely met by universal crime prevention, but is generally met by selective and indicated crime prevention.
Apart from that, one should avoid taking over standardized programs without verifying their necessity and suitability first. Rather, crime prevention programs, projects, and measures should take into account the local, social, and cultural conditions and contexts of crime, be based on a thorough analysis of problems and causes on site, be implemented carefully, and of course be evaluated for their effectiveness. All this should happen in close cooperation of the areas of work of practice and science, supported by politics.
“Crime prevention as the sum of precautions and measures used to prevent the occurrence of crime and to prevent recidivism in case a crime does occur has a long tradition as idea and commitment, but only a short history as practical reality ... Until recently, the significance of crime prevention has always been emphasized for criminal policy and practice, but the specific implementation has been somewhat neglected” (PSR 2001, 470 and 455).
“When looking ... at the development of the current ‘landscape’ of prevention of delinquency and crime, including the prevention and/or at least effective reduction of all kinds of risks which may contribute to deviant behavior, then one can fix the targeted discussions and plans for the ‘start’ of current crime prevention movement that slowly spread all over Germany to the period between 1970 and 1980.” (Kerner 2012, 38).18
However, a clear “prevention pioneering spirit” only arose in the 1990s:19 the first state prevention councils in Germany are founded – Schleswig- Holstein (1990), Hesse (1992), Lower Saxony (1995); already in 1988 the first permanent work group for interdisciplinary prevention efforts had convened in the City of Neumünster, named “Council for crime prevention” since 1992 – the beginning of communal crime prevention as a (new) general social responsibility; in 1995, the Federal Ministry for Justice created the first expert department “Prevention” in a Ministry in Germany and the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) [Federal Office of Criminal Investigation] starts with the “Infopool Prevention”, a collection of recommended projects from the area of crime prevention; in 1997, the Deutsches Jugendinstitut [German Youth Institute] installs the still existing Office for Children’s and Juvenile Crime Prevention and the police restructures its prevention-related commission work: the Kriminalpolizeilichen Vorbeugungsprogramm (KPVP) [Criminal Police Prevention Program] becomes today’s Programm Polizeiliche Kriminalprävention (ProPK) [Program for Police Crime Prevention]; in 1995, the first German Congress of Crime Prevention is convened, in 1999, the legally independent “Association of Shareholders of the German Congress of Crime Prevention” is founded; in 2001, the foundation Deutsches Forum für Kriminalprävention (DFK) [German Forum for Crime Prevention] is founded.
In the meantime, crime prevention as a new field of action and policy (Kahl 2013, 39) has formed as the active cooperation of many social forces from practice, policy, and science with the goal of preventing crime.20 “Crime prevention develops strategies to keep the crime load as low as possible. Its significance and value for criminal policy and practice are undisputed in the meantime” (PSR 2006, 665).
Today it is not disputed that “crime prevention attacks long before penal legislation, penal law, (police-based) criminal prosecution, criminal justice, sentencing, and implementation (enforcement and execution with alternatives) and/or goes far beyond them” (PSR 2001, 456). “In terms of criminal policy, the guiding principle ‘precedence of prevention over repression’ is therefore not disputed” (Heinz 1998, 18).
Also undisputed, if by no means completely implemented everywhere, is the following understanding of crime prevention:
This is because the causes of crime cannot be remedied merely by means of police and penal law. This can already be seen in the variety of these causes but also from the experiences made with the limited effect of penal law measures on behavior and behavioral changes,22 as well as the theoretical considerations and practical insights into the causes of fear of crime: A majority of the factors recognized and shown to be causes of the occurrence of crime and fear of crime, cannot be influenced at all by the means of penal law or at best to a very (too) limited degree. Here, – and not only here – prevention is clearly superior to repression, comes first, and has precedence in terms of content (Heinz 1998, 19 et seq.; Steffen 2013 b, 487).23
According to the principle of subsidiarity,24 crime prevention should primarily be the responsibility of citizens, then of public collectives such as municipalities, cities, and districts, and only then of states and federation (Marks 2014).
Many of these programs cost money, e.g. for training operators (“trainer”) and/or for materials. The local prevention protagonists must be capable of assessing the “value” of these programs for the goals and intended targets of their prevention enterprises.26
Chap. 4.3