Profile area Crime prevention initiatives can be defined rather widely and include several activities primarily aimed at reducing crime and increasing security in society at large.
Our description of the approaches applied in the research conducted in Umeå can be said to be tuned to hands-on research. The aim is to provide wide background knowledge and understanding of this field. It is particularly important for professional development of police work. One of the focus areas is how the police can assist in security-creating initiatives in a way that balances with the force’s more particularly assigned duty of crime fighting.
If the security-creating side of the balance includes daily responses to and contact with citizens, then the crime prevention part includes investigating support for, and refinement of, strategies or methodologies in tactical initiatives for practical crime fighting. The starting point rests in evidence-based models for crime prevention initiatives. These latter include problem-oriented ways of working and the more concentrated expedients that may be applied in the police’s hot-spot approaches.
Research conducted in this profile area has finished projects and ongoing thesis projects. One of these deals with “credibility initiatives” within Swedish police work:
Public confidence and confidence-increasing strategies in the Swedish Police Authority.
Another thesis project investigates questions regarding crime prevention initiatives in practical, everyday work:
Crime prevention initiatives in the Swedish Police.
In a Swedish-Colombian collaborative project particularly focused on hot-spot approaches, there are international studies on how crime prevention initiatives can be applied in a Colombian context.
Common to all the conducted research is the endeavour to: see how crime prevention initiatives are applied in “the real world”; and, identify critical areas that may need highlighting. The research aims to strengthen policing through: increased knowledge of, amongst other things, under-represented groups in society; and, the promotion of an increased internationalisation that may provide data for measures and methods. Methodologically, questions regarding design and measurement problems are central in the research conducted in this profile research group.
