Preventing Crime: What We Know, and What We Need to Do

This book summarises the latest findings of Australian and international crime prevention researchers and suggests how future policies based upon their evidence could and should be better shaped and employed by policymakers. Governments all over the world are constantly endeavouring to make their communities safer and the lives of their citizens less fearful. For decades now, criminological researchers, challenged to assist in this task, have been asking: “What is working to reduce crime?” “What could work better in preventing crime before it erupts?” “What have we not tried, but could try in the field of crime control?” Pleasingly, the research outputs on this subject are voluminous and growing. They regularly inform policymaking in productive ways. This, in turn, has led and continues to lead to good crime prevention outcomes, but a lot more could be done. The author sets out twelve key priorities, designed to reduce victimisation, and tackle street crime and white-collar crime especially, each of them based upon a social justice framework. These priorities draw upon his extensive writings on the topic of law and criminology over the past forty years. There is, he concludes, far more value in tackling the societal factors that allow crime to emerge, grow and persist than applying a strict application of the criminal law and the justice system that feeds upon it.

Emeritus Professor Rick Sarre practised as a legal practitioner in Adelaide, South Australia, before becoming an academic. Having studied law, sociology, theology and criminology in Australia, the USA and Canada, he then taught in the United States, Hong Kong, Sweden and South Australia during his 35 years in the tertiary education sector. He also worked as a human rights lawyer in Hong Kong during one of his sabbaticals. He retired as Dean of the Law School at the University of South Australia in 2020. He remains a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology and Professorial Fellow of the Australian Institute of Police Management. He currently serves as an Advisor to the Commission for Academic Accreditation in the United Arab Emirates.