Episode 9: Crime Prevention "Common Sense"

Just because something feels like it should be true, doesn’t mean that it is. Sometimes these common sense stories lead to creating more of the problems they are intending to solve. This episode examines two crime prevention programs that were thought to be common sense but didn’t actually work and the stories that drove these approaches. 

Get in touch on OurStoriesAndOurSelves@gmail.com or @ourstories.bsky.social

Music from https://pixabay.com/users/good_b_music-22836301/

Sources: 

Childress, S. (2016). The Problem with ‘Broken Windows’ Policing. FRONTLINE. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-problem-with-broken-windows-policing

Greenwood, P. (2008). Prevention and Intervention Programs for Juvenile Offenders. The Future of Children, 18(2), 185–210. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20179984 

Kelling, G. L., & Wilson, J. Q. (1982, March 1). Broken Windows. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/

Longstaff, G. (2025). Broken Windows Theory | University of Law. https://www.law.ac.uk/resources/blog/broken-windows-theory/

Petrosino, A., Turpin-Petrosino, C., Hollis-Peel, M. E., & Lavenberg, J. G. (2013). ‘Scared Straight’ and other juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2013(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD002796.pub2

Quote Origin: Common Sense Is Nothing More Than a Deposit of Prejudices Laid Down in the Mind Before Age Eighteen – Quote Investigator®. (2014, April 29). https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/29/common-sense/

Sampson, R. J., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2004). Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of “Broken Windows”. Social Psychology Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/019027250406700401

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Scared Straight! (2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scared_Straight!&oldid=1292573820

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Vedantam, S., Benderev, C., Boyle, T., Klahr, R., Penman, M., & Schmidt, J. (2016, November 1). How A Theory Of Crime And Policing Was Born, And Went Terribly Wrong. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2016/11/01/500104506/broken-windows-policing-and-the-origins-of-stop-and-frisk-and-how-it-went-wrong

Vignati, J. (2011, January 11). Joe Vignati: ‘Beyond Scared Straight’ is Beyond Common Sense. Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. https://jjie.org/2011/01/11/joe-vignatibeyond-scared-straight-beyond-common-sense/

Vignati, J. (2011, August 16). OP-ED: Joe Vignati On Beyond Scared Straight and the Irresponsibility of the A&E Network. Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. https://jjie.org/2011/08/16/oped-joe-vignati-on-beyond-scared-straight-irresponsibility-of-ae-network/

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