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Achieving population-level violence declines: implications of the international crime drop for prevention programming

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Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations for the period 2016–2030 aim to achieve a substantial reduction of interpersonal violence. An increasing body of evidence of what works, emerging from randomized controlled trials, can inform public health policy decisions. However, there is very limited evidence on the kinds of mechanisms that lead to sustained declines in interpersonal violence at the population level. We discuss the implications of what is known about recent major declines in violence to guide violence-reduction policies.

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Acknowledgements

Manuel Eisner presented an initial version of this paper at the National Academy of Sciences “Roundtable on Crime Trends”. We thank Richard Rosenfeld and Brandon Welsh for useful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Violence Research Centre, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge, CB3 9DA, UK

    Manuel Eisner, Aja Louise Murray & Maria Krisch

  2. Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Amy Nivette

Authors
  1. Manuel Eisner
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  2. Amy Nivette
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  3. Aja Louise Murray
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  4. Maria Krisch
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Correspondence to Manuel Eisner.

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Eisner, M., Nivette, A., Murray, A.L. et al. Achieving population-level violence declines: implications of the international crime drop for prevention programming. J Public Health Pol 37 (Suppl 1), 66–80 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41271-016-0004-5

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