Social Crime Prevention in the Developing World

This Brief explores the role of social crime prevention as a crime reduction strategy in the developing world. "Social crime prevention" focuses on the social and economic factorsthat may contribute to violenceand criminal behavior in a community. Particularly in the developing world, anunderstandingof the socioeconomic and politicalcontext holdslong-term potential for crime reduction (rather than crime displacement); however, the strategies are complex and the results may be slow. Generally, police andlaw enforcement arerelied upon to present quick results, where social crime prevention strategies can be viewed as being "soft on crime" or too slow. This Brief discusses the tensionbetween the traditional role of policeand proactive social crime prevention strategies in an international context, through a variety of case studies. It also provides recommendations for balancing or reshaping this role. This work will be of interest to researchers and policy makers interested in crime prevention, particularly in the developing world, criminal theory, police studiesand related disciplines such as demography, sociology and political science.