UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF CRIME PREVENTION

It borders on the fatuous to suggest that programs designed to prevent crime do not always succeed. Regardless of success or failure, some programs generate what economists would refer to as social costs, or "negative externalities". The ways in which crime prevention programs may become derailed are numerous and diverse, as are the generic pathologies which give rise to these derailments. The present essay pursues this theme by attempting an overview of the ways by which crime prevention initiatives may defeat themselves or otherwise inflict collateral damage. The focus goes beyond those initiatives which simply fail to have their intended effect. Rather we are concerned with initiatives which either backfire entirely, in effect making things worse, or those resulting in significant harm which offsets many or most of the benefits which the original initiatives may produce. Our concern rests primarily with institutions operating "upstream" of prosecution, delivering what is generally referred to as "situational" or "social" crime prevention, although downstream examples may be invoked where particularly illustrative.1 Despite its apparent preoccupation with failure, this essay has been written in a constructive spirit. Just as the study of engineering failures does not imply that society should forsake the use of bridges or buildings, the study of crime prevention failures does not suggest that crime prevention efforts should be abandoned. The analysis of engineering failures enables the subsequent construction of stronger bridges and taller buildings; the analysis of crime prevention failure can lead to the design and implementation of better crime prevention programs. Thus the objective of this essay is not to cast a pall of pessimism over the enterprise of crime prevention, but rather to foster more analytical rigor in the planning, the implementation, and the evaluation of crime prevention activity.2 The paper has three main parts. Part II presents a typology of regressive outcomes which may flow from crime prevention policies, to include such phenomena as escalation, overdeterrence, and the generation of perverse incentives. Part III seeks to explain the etiology of these negative externalities in terms of such phenomena as planning and implementation failures. Part IV suggests principles and safeguards, which if heeded by those in a position to formulate and implement crime prevention policy, will serve to reduce the risk of undesirable unintended consequences.