RT Article
T1 Situational crime prevention as a harm mitigation policy for active shooter incidents
JF Criminology & public policy
VO 23
IS 4
SP 947
OP 979
A1 Greene-Colozzi, Emily A.
A2 Freilich, Joshua D.
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1914427874
AB Research summary Situational crime prevention (SCP) is an environmental crime control perspective with enormous practical and policy relevance due to its practitioner-friendly theoretical approach. This study examines whether SCP interventions reduce incident casualty outcomes in active shooter incidents. We used an inductive, open-source data set of 555 active shooter and mass public shooting sites to study the applicability of SCP to active shooter and mass public violence. Our findings suggest a harm mitigation role for SCP: active shooter sites with stronger holistic SCP had fewer casualties. We assessed perpetrator motivation to test displacement, a core critique of SCP, and found that the harm mitigation potential of SCP persists even in the presence of a highly motivated offender. Policy summary SCP could be a practical and effective method to decrease casualties in the event of an active shooting, which is a highly motivated crime type that is difficult to predict and prevent. Public locations may select a range of appropriate SCP techniques based on individual resources and needs. The totality and interactions of these techniques may contribute to public safety in general, with diffuse benefits. This policy solution is highly oriented toward practice and real-life application, and may be used to supplement existing preventative measures like threat assessment and gun legislation.
K1 active shooter incident
K1 Displacement
K1 mass public shooting
K1 open-source data
K1 Situational Crime Prevention
DO 10.1111/1745-9133.12686