Prevention Fit as Calibrated Processual Alignment

Prevention fit is often treated as an intuitive judgement that an intervention suits a recognised problem. Such judgements remain analytically weak when the crime phenomenon, the intervention, the prevention claim, and the relevant contextual conditions have not first been independently specified. This paper defines prevention fit as a claim-relative and calibrated relation between a frozen Crime-Process Profile and a frozen Prevention-Mechanism Profile under declared contextual conditions. Prevention fit is assessed through exactly eight dimensions: process-level fit; mechanism fit; target-bearer fit; temporal fit; scale fit; intensity fit; feasibility and reproducibility fit; and evaluative fit. The paper distinguishes potential and realised fit, direct fit and complementary relevance, local and system fit, fit and sufficiency, and fit and empirical effectiveness. It develops a multidimensional fit vector, non-compensatory threshold rules, necessary and supporting correspondence, the fit-claim authority declaration, bounded claim ceilings, short-form non-substitution, mandatory escalation, and high-judgement adjudication using stable, sensitive, and indeterminate classifications. This is Paper 3 of 6 and the central relational paper in the Prevention Fit Programme. Its output is a frozen claim-relative prevention-fit record. It does not diagnose the full structure of misalignment, construct portfolios, or establish effectiveness.