ww scotland - mapping the evidence

Mapping the evidence base

Dr Lisa Tompson and Dr Amy ThorntonUniversity College Londonl.tompson@ucl.ac.uk

UCL DEPARTMENT OF SECURITY AND CRIME SCIENCE

MISSION: “to identify the best available evidence on approaches to reducing crime (and the potential savings to the police service, their crime reduction partners and the public)”

Structuring our research question

Findings from systematic review or meta-analyses

Broadly defined ‘crime prevention’

Overall aim was to search for evaluations of interventions in all relevant fields that might have a crime prevention outcome

Systematic reviews

• Provide an up-to-date summary of all literature on a topic

• Allow large amounts of data to be synthesised

• Provide an objective collation of results of research

• Provide reliable recommendations

Final number of included studies = 326

Our systematic search flowchart

The crime prevention evidence base

• Commissioned by various stakeholders who frame the research question in myriad ways– By intervention– By problem– By population– By context– By policing strategy– By outcome– By stakeholder

• Implies that all these foci are relevant to practitioner sub-groups

Proportion of reviews with country mentioned

33% (n=36) 79% (n=84) 24% (n=26)

OTHER18% (n=19)

INTERNATIONAL25% (n=27)

Profile of (original) reviews

Timeline of evidence syntheses

Some descriptive stats – outcome data type

Some descriptive stats – crime type

Some descriptive stats - offender populations

Thank you!