The 2018 National Academy of Sciences report on proactive policing acknowledges that police strategies to prevent crime are likely to have collateral consequences on community outcomes, and in some cases (such as community-oriented policing) aim to shape community outcomes directly. However, strategies that effectively prevent crime have mixed effects on community outcomes, while approaches that improve community perceptions of the police often do not have strong crime control benefits. In this chapter I propose that the future of proactive policing may depend on developing a better understanding of the complex relationship between communities, police, and crime prevention. Rather than viewing community impacts and crime prevention impacts as two separate processes, I argue that community support and collaboration are inherent to proactivity and may ultimately moderate the success or failure of proactive policing strategies. I conclude with suggestions for future research and theory development to better understand this relationship and translate research into effective practice.

This chapter provides an overview of the Gestapo and political policing in Government District Düsseldorf. The origins of ministerial independence are traced through laws, precedents, and power struggles that recast political police as a “special authority” removed from administrative oversight. The origins of preventative police justice outline how Himmler carved out a new mandate of prevention without encroaching on punishment through the courts under the cover of policy and law regulating arbitrary “protective custody” in concentration camps. An overview of politico-economic geography then underlines the importance attributed to suppressing dissent in this strategically vital district with historically low support for Nazism. Generational biography of regional personnel further details how this conditioned a shared institutional culture defined by the defeat of 1918 and communist uprisings in the Rhineland. Finally, tectonic shifts in case load identify inflection points in 1935 as the Gestapo pursued organized resistance into society at large, and in 1943 when case load plummeted as attention shifted to suppressing a slave revolt.

Crime prevention has a long history in Australia and other parts of the world. In all societies, people have tried to protect themselves and those close to them from assaults and other abuses. This introductory chapter provides an outline for the the text, delineating and explaining the material covered and its core areas of investigation.

The concluding chapter reflects on Tilley’s call for a middle-range radical realism for crime prevention and then outlines some of what the authors believe will be forces, trends and developments that shape crime prevention policy and practice in the coming years. It focuses on potential trends and forces shaping and impacting crime prevention, cybercrime, 'big data', nudging for prevention, prevention science, and crime prevention as a human service.

Implementation failure has been identified as a key problem plaguing crime prevention programs in Australia and abroad. There are numerous reasons for this, including a lack of continuous funding, poor strategy design, ineffective systems to govern implementation, incompatible priorities between central and local government, inadequate political leadership and support among stakeholders, rivalry and an unwillingness to share data between agencies, and insufficient capacity at the local level to facilitate and coordinate program delivery. One factor that confounds the process of implementation is that often it relies upon partnership approaches, with it becoming more challenging to coordinate and achieve strategy outcomes when there are multiple partners participating in a crime prevention program. This chapter discusses an evidence-based approach to crime prevention policy and practice, the challenges of implementing crime prevention strategies, key knowledge and skills to 'do' crime prevention work, factors essential to successful strategy implementation, various evaluation methods, and building capacity for implementation and evaluation.

Terrorism involves acts with the intent of coercing or intimidating governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political or ideological. It is this political/ideological component that makes it different from other forms of crime. Radicalisation is a term used to describe the psychological processes that lead to terrorism, with the term 'violent extremism' referring to actions that support ideologically driven violence. This chapter discusses approaches to preventing terrorism and violent extremism, with a focus on the definition of terrorism, the role of police in preventing terrorism, situational approaches to terrorism prevention, and social terrorism prevention. While the prevention of terrorism is the central focus of this chapter, terrorism prevention is also a vehicle to engage with topics that have broader relevance to crime prevention practice. Efforts to prevent terrorism involve all levels of government and rely heavily on policing and intelligence agencies, and also seeks to engage business and the communities to help identity and mitigate terrorism threats.

In attempting to prevent or reduce crime, it is essential that policy-makers and practitioners be prepared to confront two fundamental questions: what are the underlying causes of offending, and which of these causes are most relevant to the crime or crimes currently being addressed? Providing answers to these questions is never straightforward. Almost invariably therefore crime prevention policy and practice will be contested. This chapter investigates disputes and controversies in the crime prevention field, assessing the value of crime prevention through technical and critical paradigms, broad crime prevention classifications, understanding crime in context, and the importance of crime prevention problem-solving.

This chapter presents an analysis of the Chicago School’s approach to the study of crime and deviance, and its influence on the criminology of place. The shortcomings of place-based approaches are explored, demonstrating how all theories are a product of their context. In concentrating on the relationship between people and their environments Chicago School theorists set the foundations for more contemporary theories known as the criminology of place. The focus on place as a unit of analysis for understanding crime and victimisation patterns has remained at the forefront of crime prevention, with CPTED, crime mapping and justice mapping influencing how governments respond to offending and victimisation. However, the persistent problems are that power imbalances and political distortions seem to be missing from the analysis, and manipulation of the physical environment is favoured over more structural changes and long-term changes to social structures.

Chapter 6 explores the institutional context in which the work of territorialisation is performed, its rationale, and its relational logic of cutting and joining. It first introduces the context in which conditions of release are imposed and how legal actors practically choose and design these conditions, relying on internalized institutional norms and practices as well as information on the interactions between the accused and the spaces where the offence is (allegedly, at first) committed. The chapter then presents the competing State interests pursued by different legal actors during the criminal process, focusing particularly on the shifting rationalities of bail from ensuring the accused’s presence in court and preventing crime, to therapeutic and law enforcement.This chapter illustrates how legal actors mobilize both space and time to achieve their different goals.