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When Early Crime Prevention Goes to Scale: A New Look at the Evidence

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Abstract

It is a widely held view—in both research and policy communities—that desirable effects on delinquency and later offending from early prevention trials will attenuate once they are “scaled-up” or “rolled-out” for wider public use. Some of the main reasons for this include a reduced level of risk, a more heterogeneous population, insufficient service infrastructure, and loss of program fidelity. If attenuation of program effects is not only possible but is highly probable, then the issue for researchers and policymakers should be how to preserve or even enhance effects in moving from efficacy trials to community effectiveness trials to broad-scale dissemination. This paper surveys the knowledge base in an effort to contribute to an improved understanding of the theoretical and empirical dimensions for successfully taking early crime prevention programs to scale. It also outlines some proposals for how future research can make progress on this critical policy issue.

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Notes

  1. The targeting ratios for the four programs were estimated using the ratio for graduation incentives as a benchmark. This was done because it was the only program for which the needed information was available. The estimation of the cost of the programs was derived from studies of the programs and a variety of other sources.

  2. A more technical unpublished report by Donohue and Siegelman (1996) also did not provide any more details on the scale-up penalty.

  3. The third step of the model involved an assessment of program costs. Program costs were estimated on the basis of what it would cost the Washington State government to implement a similar program (if the program was not already operating in the state). Both operating and capital costs were included. The fourth step involved monetizing each program’s effects on crime. Savings to the criminal justice system and crime victims (tangible or direct only) were estimated. The final step involved calculating the economic contribution of the programs, expressed as benefit-to-cost ratios. From this, programs could then be judged on their independent and comparative monetary value.

  4. Two steps were used to calculate the range of scale-up discounts. First, Perry’s reported reductions in adult poverty (approximately 20% at age 27 and 25% at age 40) were multiplied by the authors’ estimate that the long-term effects on adult poverty of their program would be about one-third to two-thirds of Perry’s. This resulted in the estimate that their program would achieve a 7–17% reduction (.33 * 20% and .67 * 25%). Second, the authors assumed that about 80% of eligible children would receive their program. This had the effect of lowering their estimated reduction in adult poverty to roughly 5–15% (.8 * 7% and .8 * 17%).

  5. The studies do not distinguish between effectiveness trials and broad-scale dissemination. For example, Aos et al. (1999, 2006), do not discount programs if they were evaluated in a real-world setting.

  6. “Research studies were defined as those in which the treatment, as well as offender intake and progress assessments, were designed and administered by the researcher mainly for research purposes. Demonstration projects included those with treatments that were also administered under research auspices and largely for research purposes, but which involved providers and procedures that were more representative of criminal justice settings. … Practice projects were those implemented by criminal justice agencies as relatively routine practice and evaluated by a researcher who had little or nothing to do with their design and administration” (Lipsey and Landenberger 2006, p. 66).

  7. The overall effect sizes and the differences in effect sizes are considered small, but not trivial. The results of each of these analyses were significant at p < .05, and the 382 studies used in the analyses comprised over 40,000 individual juveniles (Lipsey 1995).

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the editor, Jens Ludwig, and the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, Churchill Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Brandon C. Welsh

  2. School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Christopher J. Sullivan

  3. Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health, University of Colorado, Denver, CO, USA

    David L. Olds

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  1. Brandon C. Welsh
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Correspondence to Brandon C. Welsh.

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Welsh, B.C., Sullivan, C.J. & Olds, D.L. When Early Crime Prevention Goes to Scale: A New Look at the Evidence. Prev Sci 11, 115–125 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-009-0159-4

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