Kirkholt Revisited: Some Reflections on the Transferability of Crime Prevention Initiatives

Little attention has been paid to the transferability of ‘successful’ crime prevention projects. The Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project has been hailed by academics (Forrester et al. 1988, 1990; Bottoms 1990) and policy‐makers (Burns 1990; Home Office 1990) as one of the most successful crime prevention projects undertaken in the UK. In this paper we report on an ethnographic research case study of a crime prevention project which sought to transfer the mechanisms – both processual and those aimed at desired preventative outcomes – used in the Kirkholt Project to a different location. In doing so we develop a critique of dominant understandings of what constitutes ‘success’, ‘multi‐agency co‐operation’ and ‘evaluation’ in the field of crime prevention.