While public debate about crime prevention policy is driven more by emotions than by objective consideration of facts, evidence-based policing is growing rapidly and could significantly reduce crime, Lawrence Sherman, Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, will say.
He adds that prediction, prevention and detection of crime are the three areas where criminology research has massively increased in recent years, with major impact on police training and practice.
“We are at an important crossroads,” he says. “UK police have always been well-trained in law, which is absolutely fundamental, but their core business is preventing crime – which requires scientific and not just legal knowledge. Criminology as the science of behaviour in relation to crime is the primary, but not the only, source of the explosion in knowledge around predicting and preventing crime.”
Professor Sherman will give a talk on the New Police Knowledge at the Hay Festival on 8th June at 11.30am.
Image: Police. Credit: Photohudd via Creative Commons.
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Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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The new police knowledge
29 May 2012
The science of crime prevention gives police much more knowledge about crime prevention than most politicians or journalists even understand, a leading criminologist will tell this year’s Hay Festival.