3001CCJ Crime Analysis and Investigation

1.Description of the initiative

In this section briefly describe the project. This should be the most straightforward part of the assignment. You simply need to describe the problem and its resolution. That is, you need to summarise the project document. Remember that the assignment is about critiquing the project, so don’t eat up any more space than you need to outline the project.

Stick to the main facets of the project, try not to be distracted by discussing every detail of the project. Make a list of what parts of the project are essential and only include these. Key elements to outline:

What was the problem
What was the diagnosis (main reason for the problem)
What was the proposed solution (key elements of intervention)
Did it work (some key statistics would be useful here)

The description is probably the least important part of the assignment. Its purpose is to brief a reader on why this project is of interest to the current Queensland crime problem.

2.Theoretical perspective

In this section, identify and define what theories (if any) you think the team used in diagnosing the crime problem.

The important aspect to be mindful of is the role that theory plays in diagnosing and you will be marked on your ability to identify the appropriate theory/ies. Read the entire document carefully for any reference to the theoretical constructs we’ve covered in class or in the textbook. Keep detailed notes as you are reading. Until you are very familiar with the theories, I’d divide a single page into four sections and make headings of the three environmental criminology theories. The fourth section can be titled “Other”, put anything that doesn’t fall into environmental criminology here.

Key elements to outline in this section:

What theory/ies were used to diagnose the crime problem?
What cues are present that relate to these theory/ies? (e.g., if the authors mention and “crime attractor”, that’s a pretty good indicator Crime Pattern Theory was used). Draw examples from the project.

3.Analytic procedure

In this section, outline what explanations for the problem were considered and how they were tested. Do you think any factors not related to the project (i.e. competing explanations) may have, in fact, been responsible for the observed reduction in crime? How might these have been tested for?

Key questions to address in this section are:

What hypotheses were used in identifying the cause of the problem? This might be stated quite clearly, “The local analyst thought that outsiders were responsible for breaking into the bottle shops”, in which case they have made your job quite easy. Or it may be not so easily identifiable.

Were they correct in their diagnosis? Are there any competing explanations for why the crime problem might have occurred?
Are there any competing explanations for why crime reduced following the intervention?
How did they evaluate their project? What are the limitations with their evaluation?

Are they missing any data sources? How could the evaluation be strengthened? If you find something incomplete, try to think about how this problem could be circumvented. Remember the document you are preparing is something that could be applied in the real world. Nothing will be perfect, and you should be prepared to identify solutions to problems.

Other factors for consideration

In this section, you need to recommend, on the evidence presented in the previous sections whether this initiative should be adopted. Feel free to identify factors that might enhance or inhibit the efficacy of the intervention.

You have two jobs in this section. First – provide a recommendation. Depending on the preceding text you might been to justify this (if you don’t list any problems, but fail to recommend implementing it then you’ll have some explaining to do). There isn’t a correct answer for this part. Very few crime prevention project are perfect, so as long as you’re reasoning is sound. I’m happy to entertain diverging views on the merits of these project. Just make sure your reasoning is rock solid.

The second part of this section is a chance for you to demonstrate your deep understanding of the project by identifying all contextual variable that you think we should be aware of. For example, what social and spatio-physical factors would need to be considered if this was to be adopted in QLD? You may want to think about some of the differences between this urban U.S. high school and typical high schools in Australia. You will need to back up key conclusions in this section with evidence.