By Mike Sutton.
According to the criminologist Paul Ekblom pickpockets admitted to lurking by signs designed to warn potential victims in order to see where people reassuringly patted their wallets. This then made picking their wallets much easier. This story is mentioned at page 120 of Clarke (1995).
How do we know whether or not attitude change poster and other media campaigns devised by committees, advertising executives – including that old favorite fall-back of the intuitive ‘experts’ that are campaigns designed for young people by young people – actually work in the right direction?
The telling question here is: could they make things worse through backfire, problem displacement, or escalation?
How do we know, for example, that anti-knife crime posters, designed by young people to influence young people, do not make people (young and old) more fearful of knife attacks and lead them to arm themselves for self defence?
Race’ and ethnic prejudice reduction and other attitude change
Uninformed, intuitive, and compellingly plausible good intentions may have the opposite to intended effect in sensitive areas of social policy where ‘race’ and ethnic bias is involved and where prejudice and attitude change is the goal (Sutton et al 2007). Uninformed initiatives can actually increase the prejudice and victimisation that they are seeking to reduce.
Beware, therefore, because letting untested attitude campaigns loose in a social environment may well be worse than ineffective because it may actually increase the very problem that the campaign is seeking to reduce.
First do no harm
A classic example of good non clownmongering practice can be found In a study of vandalism on London buses. In this case, Clarke’s conclusions based on a research study (Clarke et al 1978) enabled him to avoid being a clownmonger, because he observed that, although buses with conductors had less vandalism, they had more assaults against staff (conductors) and so he refused to recommend that London bus companes solve the vandalism problem by employing more conductors. Hence Clarke’s observation of the facts facilitated foreseeable unintended crime prevention consequences. And so crime displacement from vandalism to violence was avoided in this case.
Conclusion
Don’t rely upon un-evidenced intuitive, compelling ‘belief’. Because what works is often counter-intuitive, as is what backfires. Only research can determine the effectiveness of policy. And while clowns don’t do research, research shows that they do backfire quite a bit.
Clarke (1978) showed how just a little further research can reduce clowngering. As another example, I particualrly like the notion seeking to be on the leading rather than the bleeding edge of innovation by seekng out good innovative pratice from one area into your own:here.
