Crime Education

With the continual increase in crime, especially youth crime, societies through their politicians are striving to reduce crime throiugh crime education. In education circles there are several major questions about what crime education is and whether or not it is effective.
There are also some diffiuclties with terminology. For example, most educations (medical education,values education, character education) are designed to make people more comptent in a particular field. However, crime education is not designed to make people better at crime but to help them not get involved in it.
Another isue for crime educators is the duplication with other educations. Robb for example give four examples where individuals and organisations involved in crime reduction initiatives are using a values education approach.
Whilst much research has been conducted on nthe causes of crime, there s very little research on the effectiveness of crime education initiative on reducing crime. The diffiuclty facing educators is how to actually do crime education. One of the better explanations of the partcalities of crime education is give by Dr Bill Robb of The Centre for Alleviating Social Problems Through Values Education (CAVE) which is based in Scotland. He gives examples of three Socratic dialogues aimed at reducing burglary, shoplifting, knife crime and credit card fraud.
What is lacking in crime education are proper longitudinal studies to find out if people exposed to crinme education in whatever form it takes, become involved in less crime than those who are not exposed.

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