How Strong is the Evidence-Base for Crime Reduction Professionals?

AbstractTo support the development and implementation of evidence-based crime reduction, we systematically identified and appraised 70 systematic reviews of single crime reduction measures published between 1975 and 2015. Using the EMMIE framework, we find that the quality of reporting on the Effectivenessof crime reduction measures is reasonably strong, particularly in systematic reviews published by the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations. In contrast, evidence concerning the Mechanismsunderpinning a crime reduction intervention, the conditions that Moderateeffectiveness, Implementationchallenges and the Economiccosts and benefits of crime reduction was largely absent from the assessed systematic reviews. We conclude that there is a distinct lack of systematic review evidence in crime reduction that currently speaks to the knowledge needs of practitioners (i.e., how to make an intervention “work” for them).