Better Crime Prevention provides a critical guide to theory, research, ethics, and politics in relation to crime prevention policy and practice. It concludes with an agenda for continuous improvement. The book also demonstrates what is involved in doing theoretically informed and realistically applied social science orientated to reducing harms.

The focus throughout this book is on ethical and effective ways to reduce crime-related harms. There are chapters on how to target crime prevention efforts, crime prevention theories and frameworks, ethical issues in crime prevention, the practical conduct of crime prevention, evidence-based crime prevention, the politics of crime prevention, and the need for continuous adaptation in crime prevention.

Student readers will obtain an overview of, and capacity critically to engage with, crime prevention theory and practice. Policymakers and practitioner readers will be able to make better-informed decisions about what to do and how to allocate crime prevention resources. Social scientists interested in contributing realistically to harm reduction will better understand how they can go about doing so.