Citizen crime prevention: Domains and participation

Attempts to engender citizens' participation in crime-prevention activities have met with varied degrees of success. Indeed, studies find great differences in participants. Part of the reason may be that different types of crime prevention are considered in the various programs and analyses. The present study uses the National Crime Survey: Victims Risk Supplement to uncover different domains of crime prevention activity and to investigate who participates in crime prevention. Five distinct types of crime-preventive behavior are isolated in the analysis. Further, path analytic techniques reveal that different demographic and crime related factors influence participation in the various crime-prevention activities. These results suggest that participation in crime prevention is complex and that we need more knowledge about who participates in different crime-prevention programs in order to promote such participation more effectively.