The Importance of Randomized Experiments in Evaluating Crime Prevention

This article shows the importance of randomized experiments, which offer the most persuasive evaluations of the effects of crime-prevention efforts. It discusses the limitations of nonexperimental methods in concluding the effectiveness of crime prevention interventions, and then studies the statistical advantage of randomized experiments. This is followed by a discussion of the risks associated with not using the most precise methodology to evaluate crime prevention. This article also explains why crime-prevention researchers have often forgotten to use experimental methods and determines the conditions where the randomized experiments are likely to be most successful.