How I Would Spend $100 Million to Reduce Crime

Abstract

Governments all over the world are constantly endeavouring to make their communities safer and the lives of their citizens less fearful. Fortunately, their policy-makers have at their disposal a vast array of criminological research findings that have emerged and which continue to emerge from universities and public and private research institutes. For decades now, these researchers have been asking: ‘What is working to reduce crime?’ ‘What could work better?’ ‘What have we not tried, but could?’ Their research reveals that there are many choices when it comes to spending public and private money on initiatives and programs designed to reduce crime and, importantly, that some choices are better than others. Research has shown that, with appropriate resourcing of preferred choices, we can stem the flow of potential offenders (and re-offenders) into the justice system. In this essay, I take 100 million dollars and place them into a suite of initiatives and programs that evidence tells us will deliver the best outcomes for crime reduction in Australia today.