From Intervention Labels to Prevention-Mechanism Profiles

Crime-prevention research and policy commonly organise interventions through labels such as focused deterrence, mentoring, hot-spots policing, cognitive-behavioural programmes, situational prevention, surveillance, incapacitation, or exit support. These labels identify intervention classes, but they do not by themselves establish what a bounded intervention can change, through which mechanism, for which target bearer, at what scale, during which temporal window, or under what institutional conditions. This paper develops the Prevention-Mechanism Profile as the intervention-side foundation of the Prevention Fit Programme. It provides a controlled method for translating a bounded intervention instance into an independently constructed, evidence-traceable, and versioned mechanism profile. The framework specifies exactly fourteen dimensions: operative mechanism; processual target; target bearer and scale; temporal entry point; leverage window; intensity and dosage; reach and coverage; duration and temporal consistency; feasibility conditions; mechanism reproducibility; displacement and substitution risks; adverse pathways and counter-mechanisms; evidence and uncertainty; and boundary and contextual dependence. The paper also distinguishes formal design, planned delivery, delivered intervention, received intervention, activation potential, and observed activation. It establishes the intervention authority declaration, institutional-bearer record, independence safeguards, feasibility and reproducibility analysis, profile freezing, and the downstream handoff of the complete Prevention-Mechanism Profile. This is Paper 2 of 6 in the Prevention Fit Programme. It constructs the intervention-side object required before prevention fit can be assessed.