Securing the knowledge: the 5Is framework for improving performance in crime prevention, security and community safety

In crime prevention, security and community safety, attempts to replicate individual ‘success-story’ projects often end in implementation failure. And efforts remain divided—between situational and offender-oriented interventions, between cause, risk factor and problem-oriented approaches, and between justice/law enforcement and ‘civil’ prevention. The field is in poor shape to control everyday crime problems, let alone the challenges of terrorism, organised crime and techno-crime where preventers must continually out-innovate offenders and the upcoming disruptions from financial disarray and climate change.

Professor Paul Ekblom has developed an approach which seeks to change that. In the seminar, he will diagnose under-performance in terms of how practice knowledge is captured and transferred, fostering cookbook copying and stifling innovation; in concepts and terminology inadequate as tools for thinking and communication; and in the adoption of over-simple frameworks which, though useful for a quick start, soon constrain practitioners. He describes a specification for a fit-for-purpose knowledge management framework, confronting complexities of real-life prevention and helping practitioners select prior practice, replicate and innovate. He then introduces a process-based framework, 5Is, and related definitions and models of causation and intervention, designed to meet the specification. This material, described in a forthcoming book (Crime Prevention, Security and Community Safety using the 5Is Framework: Palgrave Macmillan) supplies the foundations for a working practical system of knowledge management and process evaluation that complements and extends the progress made in impact evaluation.