Vision: Smart Prevention

We can see ideas for smart prevention in many fields today. When we think of health prevention, for example, a great deal is done with digital data. When we think of traffic accident prevention, intelligent control of traffic flows, there are many, many approaches. What these smart approaches to prevention have in common is that they are controlled by data and information. When I now think of crime prevention, of the prevention of violence, my view is, however, that good and, in this sense, smart crime prevention does not always have to be based on digital technology. If we want to have good prevention, it should be prevention that is primarily based on tackling the causes and conditions under which crime, problematic behaviour, occurs against the background of evidence-based programmes and strategies. In this sense, then, of course, it is again smart, because it is information-driven, because it is based on good knowledge of the impact and effectiveness of prevention approaches. Fortunately, we now have such knowledge in a whole range of areas. When we think, for example, of the encouragement of positive parental parenting, when we think of drug addiction, alcohol prevention, when we think of the prevention of violence and bullying in schools. These are all areas in which we can say today that we have a stock of secure knowledge, of secure knowledge that is also available in a systematic way. In some forms, including, for example, databases such as the “Grüne Liste”, maintained by the State Prevention Council of Lower Saxony, and the portal “Wespe”, set up by the National Centre for Community Prevention. All these are advances made in recent years, which give us a basis for good, for smart, strategic, crime prevention action. Smart prevention also includes the further development of something like an evaluation culture, the implicitness of evaluating prevention measures. I believe that this will lead us to a really smart prevention, a prevention that is smart in the sense that it is based on good knowledge of the effects and side effects of prevention approaches.

• Weitere Informationen zu Thomas Görgen auf der Webseite der Deutschen Hochschule der Polizei
• Thomas Görgen bei Wikipedia
• Thomas Görgen beim Deutschen Präventionstag