Brandon C Welsh
Biographic Data
| ID | 1724664 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brandon C Welsh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brandon C |
| FAMILY NAME | Welsh |
| SIGNATURE | WELSH B C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northeastern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2627-2920 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 71 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 237 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 64 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 7 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Can place‐based crime prevention impacts be sustained over long durations? 11‐Year follow‐up of a quasi‐experimental evaluation of a CCTV project
Research summary A long‐standing critique of place‐based crime prevention interventions has been that any reductions in crime are often short‐lived. If researchers do not carry out longer‐duration follow‐ups, we cannot know for sure if the effects of these interventions will persist, decay, or even strengthen. Using a rigorous microsynthetic control design, we evaluated the long‐term impacts of a large‐scale, public‐area closed‐circuit television…
Iatrogenic Effects and the Myth of the Downfall of Delinquency Prevention: Joan McCord and the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, 1975–2004
The mid-life follow-up of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, with Joan McCord as study director, represents a rather consequential event in the annals of criminology. The study’s harmful effects were the subject of immediate, intense public discourse and scholarly debate and considerable research and policy interest. This article aims to develop an historical understanding of the scholarly, policy and social contexts in which these results wer…
The Oxford Handbook of Evidence-Based Crime and Justice Policy
An evidence-based approach to crime and justice policy can go a long way toward ensuring that the best available research is considered in decisions that bear on the public good. However, the term “evidence-based” is characterized by a great deal of rhetoric. Indeed, there remains a marked disjuncture between calls for evidence-based policy and an understanding of what it means for policy to be evidence-based. The calls for evidence-based policy …
Disorder policing to reduce crime: An updated systematic review and meta‐analysis
Research Summary Broken windows theory suggests that police can prevent serious crime by addressing social and physical disorder in neighborhoods. In many U.S. cities, recent increases in disorder, fear, and crime have initiated calls for an intensification of disorder policing efforts. Disorder policing programs can be controversial, with evaluations yielding conflicting results. Further, a growing number of descriptive analyses of aggressive or…
Social Medicine for Social Justice: Perspectives on Violence Prevention
Social medicine is the application of social science research to address health, inequities in access to health care, and structural violence. Foundational to this work is to bring about social justice for marginalized and underserved populations. Drawing on several case studies from developed and developing countries, we apply ideas and practices from social medicine to explore how the advancement of social justice can help prevent interpersonal…
Early Developmental Crime Prevention and Social Impact over the Life Course
Preventing the development of criminal potential in young people is an important component of broader crime reduction strategies. A key feature of developmental crime prevention is a comprehensive effort to improve the life chances of at-risk children and families, and there is evidence that doing so improves long-term life-course outcomes like physical health, mental health, education, and employment. We assess available research evidence from 1…
Crime Prevention for Social Impact and Social Justice: The Ideals, the Challenges, the Progress
A growing body of research on evidence-based crime prevention draws attention to a pressing need for these crime prevention programs, policies, and practices to do more to bring about social impact and social justice. Crime prevention that prioritizes social impact is about harnessing the knowledge of evidence-based interventions and fostering systems change that is both meaningful and lasting. This approach includes targeting the social and envi…
Can Nonexperimental Studies Improve the Policy Relevance of Crime Prevention Research? Insights from Public-Area Video Surveillance Interventions
Critics of evidence-based crime prevention argue that extant research lacks insight into aspects of crime control and prevention that are critical to policymakers. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of programs require the use of experimental and quasi-experimental designs, and some scholars argue that relaxing that methodological criterion would result in a larger pool of studies that could better inform policy and practice. We test that propo…
Pathways Through Juvenile Justice: A System-Level Assessment of Cumulative Disadvantage in the Processing of Juvenile Offenders
The impact and policy relevance of street lighting for crime prevention: A systematic review based on a half‐century of evaluation research
The internationalisation of cctv surveillance: Effects on crime and implications for emerging technologies
In the last two decades, closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras have come to occupy a central role in contemporary crime prevention across the world. Widely viewed as the “internationalization” of CCTV surveillance, there has been a corresponding growth in the evidence base about its effect on crime. The cumulative evidence demonstrates that CCTV surveillance is associated with significant yet modest reductions in crime and the eff…
There has to be a better way: Place Managers for Crime Prevention in a Surveillance Society
We live in a surveillance society. Often justified under the guise of government anti-terrorism activities, domestic crime reduction, or both, surveillance takes many forms, including closed-circuit television cameras, networked cameras, and facial recognition applications. There is also a range of alternative forms of surveillance, measures considered less of an imposition to privacy, civil liberties, and other personal freedoms. One example is …
How Universal Is Disproportionate Minority Contact? An Examination of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice Processing Across Four States
The extent to which disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in the juvenile justice system varies across states remains largely unknown. Using a multijurisdictional sample of 146 counties across four states, the present study utilizes multilevel modeling with cross-level interactions to explore whether there is variation in the influence of race and ethnicity among states across four major juvenile justice processing decisions—preadjudication det…
Place managers for crime prevention: The theoretical and empirical status of a neglected situational crime prevention technique
The case for rigorous comparative research and population impacts in a new era of evidence‐based interventions for juvenile offenders
A key take away from Elliott et al.’s critical review is the need for a program of more rigorous comparative research to assess the two main evidence‐based models for guiding juvenile justice interventions. Additionally, a sound measure of this research should be whether or not the different models are able to achieve (and sustain) population impacts. Both of these are important issues facing the evidence‐based movement in juvenile justice today,…
CCTV surveillance for crime prevention: A 40‐year systematic review with meta‐analysis
Research Summary We report on the findings of an updated systematic review and meta‐analysis of the effects of closed‐circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras on crime. The findings show that CCTV is associated with a significant and modest decrease in crime. The largest and most consistent effects of CCTV were observed in car parks. The results of the analysis also demonstrated evidence of significant crime reductions within other settings…
Broken (windows) theory: A meta-analysis of the evidence for the pathways from neighborhood disorder to resident health outcomes and behaviors
What Have We Learned from Environmental Criminology for the Prevention of Crime?
A recent study of the role of theory in modern-day crime prevention makes the case that situational crime prevention (SCP), compared to the two other major crime prevention strategies of developmental and community prevention, has had a greater influence on practice. This chapter surveys environmental criminology’s contribution to the prevention of crime. It does so through the lens of SCP and its highly influential classification system. As one …
Costs and Benefits of Preventing Crime
What are the cost savings from preventing a typical burglary, robbery, assault, or even a criminal career? Who benefits from these savings? How often do the benefits from preventing crime or criminal behavior exceed the resources spent on preventing or controlling crime? Is it more cost-effective to invest in early childhood programs or juvenile boot camps to reduce criminal offending? These are some of the important questions that face policymak…
Crime and the Life-Course, Prevention, Experiments, and Truth Seeking: Joan McCord's Pioneering Contributions to Criminology
A life-span developmental approach describes Joan McCord's career and highlights her pioneering contributions to criminology and, more broadly, to understanding human development. The main focus of this article is on her exceptional scientific contributions through the assessment of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study experimental preventive intervention. We highlight her efforts to understand how a delinquency prevention intervention caused iat…
Looking Through Broken Windows: The Impact of Neighborhood Disorder on Aggression and Fear of Crime Is an Artifact of Research Design
Broken windows theory (BWT) has heavily influenced social science and policy over the past 30 years. It posits that disorder in neighborhoods leads to elevated crime by inviting additional criminal activity and by discouraging the positive social behavior that prevents crime. Scholars have debated the veracity of BWT, and here we conduct a meta-analysis of 96 studies to examine the effects of disorder on residents’ ( a) general proclivities for a…
Modeling the Scaling Up of Early Crime Prevention: Implementation Challenges and Opportunities for Translational Criminology
Research Summary Although the amount of research evidence on the effectiveness of developmental crime prevention has grown considerably in recent decades, the translation of this scientific knowledge into policy and practice has lagged behind. In this article, we consider the challenges as well as the opportunities associated with scaling up evidence‐based programs and we offer an approach for considering the potential effects of deviations in im…
Delinquency prevention for individual change: Richard Clarke Cabot and the making of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study
A meta-analysis update on the effects of early family/parent training programs on antisocial behavior and delinquency
Assessing the impact of race on the juvenile waiver decision: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Broken (windows) theory: A meta-analysis of the evidence for the pathways from neighborhood disorder to resident health outcomes and behaviors
The capable guardian in routine activities theory: A theoretical and conceptual reappraisal
Effects of Closed-Circuit Television on Crime
This article reports on the findings of a systematic review--incorporating meta-analytic techniques--of the available research evidence on the effects of closed-circuit television (CCTV) on crime in public space. A number of targeted and comprehensive searches of the published and unpublished literature and contacts with leading researchers produced twenty-two CCTV evaluations that met our criteria for inclusion in this review. CCTV had a signifi…
CCTV surveillance for crime prevention: A 40‐year systematic review with meta‐analysis
Research Summary We report on the findings of an updated systematic review and meta‐analysis of the effects of closed‐circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras on crime. The findings show that CCTV is associated with a significant and modest decrease in crime. The largest and most consistent effects of CCTV were observed in car parks. The results of the analysis also demonstrated evidence of significant crime reductions within other settings…
Biosocial criminology and modern crime prevention
Looking Through Broken Windows: The Impact of Neighborhood Disorder on Aggression and Fear of Crime Is an Artifact of Research Design
Broken windows theory (BWT) has heavily influenced social science and policy over the past 30 years. It posits that disorder in neighborhoods leads to elevated crime by inviting additional criminal activity and by discouraging the positive social behavior that prevents crime. Scholars have debated the veracity of BWT, and here we conduct a meta-analysis of 96 studies to examine the effects of disorder on residents’ ( a) general proclivities for a…
Toward an Evidence-Based Approach to Preventing Crime
This article brings together the main conclusions from the previous articles in this issue and identifies priorities for moving toward an evidence-based approach to preventing crime. The Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group has begun the important task of preparing systematic reviews of the effectiveness of a wide range of criminological interventions. Alongside the Campbell initiative, a program of research of new crime prevention and …
Surveillance for Crime Prevention in Public Space: Results and Policy Choices in Britain and America
Research Summary: The present study assessed the comparative effectiveness of two forms of surveillance in preventing crime in public space: formal surveillance, in the form of closed‐circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras, and natural surveillance, in the form of improved street lighting. Based on the highest quality available research evidence on these two measures—from systematic reviews incorporating meta‐analytic techniques—it was fo…
Overview of: “Promoting Evidence‐Based Practice in Delinquency Prevention at the State Level: Principles, Progress, and Policy Directions”
Research Summary Evidence‐based practice in the field of delinquency prevention has come a long way in the last 15 years in the United States. This progress has been aided by several leading organizations and researchers providing authoritative and up‐to‐date lists of what works, the application of cost–benefit models, and some political leaders championing this movement over “get tough” practices. State governments are on the cutting edge of thi…
Effectiveness and Social Costs of Public Area Surveillance for Crime Prevention
Video surveillance, or closed-circuit television (CCTV), has become a highly popular and prevalent method of preventing crime in public space in many countries across the world. Although it often dominates the policy focus, questions have been raised about its effectiveness and social costs, as well as how it compares to alternative surveillance measures. A theoretical and programmatic understanding of surveillance draws attention to other widely…
A Half Century of Randomized Experiments on Crime and Justice
The number of randomized experiments on crime and justice with a minimum of 100 participants more than doubled between 1957 and 1981, when there were thirty‐seven, and between 1982 and 2004, when there were eighty‐five. There was an increase in very large, multisite replication experiments and in experiments in which the unit of randomization was the area. Results in the second period were generally more encouraging, showing that some interventio…
The internationalisation of cctv surveillance: Effects on crime and implications for emerging technologies
In the last two decades, closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras have come to occupy a central role in contemporary crime prevention across the world. Widely viewed as the “internationalization” of CCTV surveillance, there has been a corresponding growth in the evidence base about its effect on crime. The cumulative evidence demonstrates that CCTV surveillance is associated with significant yet modest reductions in crime and the eff…
Juvenile Transfer and the Specific Deterrence Hypothesis: Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis
Research Summary We conducted a systematic review of recidivism outcomes for juveniles transferred to adult court, incorporating meta‐analytic techniques. Nine studies—based on nine statistically independent samples—met the inclusion criteria. Pooled analysis suggests that juvenile transfer had no statistically significant effect on recidivism. However, the distribution of effect sizes was highly heterogeneous and, given the strength of the resea…
Examining the Iatrogenic Effects of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study: Existing Explanations and New Appraisals
Journal Article Examining the Iatrogenic Effects of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study: Existing Explanations and New Appraisals Get access Steven N. Zane, Steven N. Zane Steven N. Zane, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University , Churchill Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 , USA ; Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Brandon C. Welsh, Brandon C. Welsh * Steven N. Zane, S…
Monetary Value of Early Developmental Crime Prevention and Its Policy Significance
Reclaiming crime prevention in an age of punishment: An American history
Crime prevention has long figured prominently in the scholarly and applied traditions of criminology. Using a socio-historical approach, this article examines the developments of and influences on the concept of crime prevention in the USA over the last century. We argue that crime prevention is a unique social and environmental strategy for reducing crime and is distinct from crime control or punishment. Prevention’s main characteristics include…
Promoting Evidence‐Based Practice in Delinquency Prevention at the State Level: Principles, Progress, and Policy Directions
Disorder policing to reduce crime: An updated systematic review and meta‐analysis
Research Summary Broken windows theory suggests that police can prevent serious crime by addressing social and physical disorder in neighborhoods. In many U.S. cities, recent increases in disorder, fear, and crime have initiated calls for an intensification of disorder policing efforts. Disorder policing programs can be controversial, with evaluations yielding conflicting results. Further, a growing number of descriptive analyses of aggressive or…
Searching for the Best Mix of Strategies: Delinquency Prevention and the Transformation of Juvenile Justice in the “Get Tough” Era and Beyond
At the same time as politicians were calling for and legislating “get tough” policies that led to mass incarceration and increased rates of imprisonment for juvenile offenders in the 1990s, many states and jurisdictions began adopting an array of evidence-based therapeutic programs. Beginning with the Chicago Area Project of the 1930s, we examine the historical development of delinquency prevention in the context of broader shifts in the politics…
Science, politics, and crime prevention: Toward a new crime policy
Save Children From a Life of Crime
Social Medicine for Social Justice: Perspectives on Violence Prevention
Social medicine is the application of social science research to address health, inequities in access to health care, and structural violence. Foundational to this work is to bring about social justice for marginalized and underserved populations. Drawing on several case studies from developed and developing countries, we apply ideas and practices from social medicine to explore how the advancement of social justice can help prevent interpersonal…
Early Developmental Crime Prevention and Social Impact over the Life Course
Preventing the development of criminal potential in young people is an important component of broader crime reduction strategies. A key feature of developmental crime prevention is a comprehensive effort to improve the life chances of at-risk children and families, and there is evidence that doing so improves long-term life-course outcomes like physical health, mental health, education, and employment. We assess available research evidence from 1…
Place managers for crime prevention: The theoretical and empirical status of a neglected situational crime prevention technique
Evidence-based Crime Prevention: The Effectiveness of CCTV
Value for money? A review of the costs and benefits of situational crime prevention
Journal Article Value for money? A review of the costs and benefits of situational crime prevention Get access BC Welsh, BC Welsh Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar DP Farrington DP Farrington Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 39,…
Delinquency prevention using family‐based interventions
Delinquency prevention using family-based interventions
Monetary Costs and Benefits of Crime Prevention Programs
Few attempts have been made to calculate the monetary costs and benefits of crime prevention programs. Existing calculations for situational, developmental, and community prevention, and correctional intervention programs give hopeful indications that benefits often exceed costs. However, the noncomparability of methods used in different studies makes it impossible to determine which program or class of programs is the most economically efficient…
Toward an Evidence-Based Approach to Preventing Crime
This article brings together the main conclusions from the previous articles in this issue and identifies priorities for moving toward an evidence-based approach to preventing crime. The Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group has begun the important task of preparing systematic reviews of the effectiveness of a wide range of criminological interventions. Alongside the Campbell initiative, a program of research of new crime prevention and …
Technological Innovations for Policing: Crime Prevention as the Bottom Line
Effects of Closed-Circuit Television on Crime
This article reports on the findings of a systematic review--incorporating meta-analytic techniques--of the available research evidence on the effects of closed-circuit television (CCTV) on crime in public space. A number of targeted and comprehensive searches of the published and unpublished literature and contacts with leading researchers produced twenty-two CCTV evaluations that met our criteria for inclusion in this review. CCTV had a signifi…
Evidence-based Crime Prevention: The Effectiveness of CCTV
Surveillance for Crime Prevention in Public Space: Results and Policy Choices in Britain and America
Research Summary: The present study assessed the comparative effectiveness of two forms of surveillance in preventing crime in public space: formal surveillance, in the form of closed‐circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras, and natural surveillance, in the form of improved street lighting. Based on the highest quality available research evidence on these two measures—from systematic reviews incorporating meta‐analytic techniques—it was fo…
Crime and Punishment in Canada, 1981-1999
The average Canadian enjoys a high standard of living bolstered by a social safety network that includes universal health care coverage, generous benefits for unemployed workers and families in need, and year-long maternity leave. While crime ranks among the public's top concerns nationally, Canada is viewed as a safe and peaceful country in which to live and visit. But how safe is Canada? Police records indicate that Canada experienced a substan…
Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives
Over the last three decades American policing has gone through a period of significant change and innovation. In what is a relatively short historical time frame the police began to reconsider their fundamental mission, the nature of the core strategies of policing, and the character of their relationships with the communities that they serve. This volume brings together leading police scholars to examine eight major innovations which emerged dur…
Preventing Crime: What Works for Children, Offenders, Victims, and Places
Crime prevention should be rational and should be based on the best possible evidence. Decision-makers should weigh heavily any available evidence on what works best. How can a program that has produced no discernable evidence of effectiveness, as shown through numerous evaluations, be considered for implementation? Unfortunately, this happens all the time. Evidence-based crime prevention attempts to overcome this and other obstacles by ensuring …
How Important is “Regression to the Mean” in Area-Based Crime Prevention Research
A Half Century of Randomized Experiments on Crime and Justice
The number of randomized experiments on crime and justice with a minimum of 100 participants more than doubled between 1957 and 1981, when there were thirty‐seven, and between 1982 and 2004, when there were eighty‐five. There was an increase in very large, multisite replication experiments and in experiments in which the unit of randomization was the area. Results in the second period were generally more encouraging, showing that some interventio…
Evidence-Based Crime Prevention
Preventing Crime
Save Children From a Life of Crime
Effects of early family/parent training programs on antisocial behavior and delinquency
Making Public Places SaferSurveillance and Crime Prevention: Surveillance and Crime Prevention
1. Introduction PART I: POLITICS, THEORY, AND METHOD 2. The Politics of Surveillance for Crime Prevention 3. How Might Surveillance Measures Reduce Crime? 4. Evidence-Based Crime Prevention PART II: EVIDENCE OF EFFECTIVENESS 5. Closed-Circuit Television 6. Improved Street Lighting 7. Security Guards, Place Managers, and Defensible Space PART III: POLICY CHOICES AND CHALLENGES 8. Safer Streets, Safer Cities: Policy Choices for America 9. Conclusio…
Public Area CCTV and Crime Prevention: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis
In recent years, there has been a marked and sustained growth in the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras to prevent crime in public places in the USA and other Western nations. Amidst this expansion and the associated public expenditure, as well as concerns about their efficacy and social costs, there is an increasing need for an evidence‐based approach to inform CCTV policy and practice. This paper reports on an updated …
Early Developmental Prevention of Delinquency and Later Offending: Prospects and Challenges
Early developmental prevention involves interventions designed to prevent the development of criminal potential in individuals, especially those that target risk and protective factors, in the early years of the life course. Developmental prevention
Crime Prevention
This article provides a comprehensive overview of research on and key issues facing crime prevention. Section I summarizes the main ways of classifying or organizing crime prevention programs. Sections II, III, and IV review, respectively, the research on the major crime-prevention strategies of developmental, community, and situational prevention. Here, primary emphasis is placed on research carried out in the last decade. An evidence-based appr…
Guardianship for crime prevention: A critical review of the literature
Evidence-based Crime Policy
The Science and Politics of Crime Prevention: Toward a New Crime Policy
Criminology (56 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (49 works) · Political science (45 works) · Psychology (43 works) · Law (36 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Crime prevention (32 works) · Computer Science (22 works) · Criminal justice (22 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (18 works)