They look good but don't work: a case study of global performance indicators in crime prevention

Around the western world global performance indicators are widely used by governments and bureaucrats to determine the effectiveness of community development programs. The worldwide shift to crime prevention models, relying upon the formation of community partnerships with police to effect safety in neighbourhoods, is no exception. Police and governments seem especially committed to using global performance indicators for measuring and assessing the effectiveness of these partnerships, probably due to the traditional measures of effectiveness of 'crime fighting' by police. The Waratah Crime Prevention Project was a pilot community based crime prevention project carried out in Victoria, Australia, which required the use of global performance indicators as a measure of effectiveness on the directive of government and police. This paper reports on the reasons for the total failure of these global performance indicators to measure the changes effected by the project in the three key performance areas of reducing violence in and around licensed premises; reducing violence in families; and reducing violence by young people. The paper discusses the problems with assigning only global measures to community crime prevention programs, and suggests recommendations for future projects. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.