A Framework for Addressing Violence and Serious Crime: Focused Deterrence, Legitimacy, and Prevention

This Element examines an increasingly important community crime prevention strategy - focused deterrence. This strategy seeks to change offender behavior by understanding underlying crime-producing dynamics and conditions that sustain recurring crime problems, and implementing a blended set of law enforcement, community mobilization, and social service actions. The approach builds on recent theorizing on optimizing deterrence, mobilizing informal social control, enhancing police legitimacy,...