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The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese police officers’ general support for police intervention into domestic violence, emphasizing adequate protection of the victims, and specific support for utilizing arrests to deal with the offenders.

This study relies on survey data collected from 1,064 police officers who worked in multiple areas in two provinces of China between June and July of 2019. OLS models were used to test whether organizational variables are significant predictors of officer attitudes toward domestic violence intervention.

Both agency endorsement and supervisory support are positively related to officers’ favorable attitudes toward police intervention into domestic violence and using arrests to handle offenders. The amount of training received from the agency on the recently promulgated Anti-Domestic Violence Law, however, has a negative influence on officer support for general intervention into domestic violence and no influence on officer attitudes toward arrests.

This study represents one of the first attempts to investigate the connections between organizational and managerial factors and Chinese officers’ support for both general and specific interventions into domestic violence. It contributes to the current literature that only included police cadets in the analysis of Chinese police attitudes toward domestic violence despite the fundamental differences between cadets and active-duty officers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the differential use of the Lethality Assessment Program (LAP) – a risk-informed, collaborative police-social service intervention – across female victim-survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) in four police jurisdictions in Oklahoma.

Women visited by the police during the study period participated in semi-structured telephone interviews. Logistic regression was utilized to examine what factors impacted implementation of the LAP.

There was differential use of the intervention based on the following: jurisdiction, severe violence at the incident, perpetrator’s use of a weapon ever in the relationship, PTSD symptomology, and women’s prior protective actions and utilization of domestic violence advocacy services.

Future research should examine the decision-making process of survivors and police officers to better elucidate the meaning behind these statistical relationships.

PTSD education should be an integral part of police training on domestic violence. In addition, officers should be trained to recognize less injurious, but also damaging, forms of IPV, such as verbal abuse and coercive control.

While police contact can provide accountability for the offender, the social service system is best equipped to provide safety options for the victim-survivor of violence.

Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of the LAP. It is important to understand how the intervention is applied in order to better understand who is most assisted by the intervention and what training or education could be beneficial for officers providing the intervention.

This intervention project targeted one vulnerable group, female apprentices in Ibadan, Nigeria, to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple interventions aimed at preventing voilence against women (VAW).

A baseline survey was conducted through face‐to‐face interviews with 350 young women recruited from apprenticeship workshops in Ibadan. The interventions consisted of skills training workshops for apprentices (323), sensitization training for the instructors of apprentices (54), police (30) and judicial officers (25) and the development/distribution of educational materials to reduce the incidence of violence. A follow‐up survey was conducted with 203 apprentices after five months of interventions.

Improvements were found at follow‐up with respect to knowledge of types of violence and sexual forms of violence (up from 89.4 to 97 percent) (p<0.05), and appreciation of vulnerability to VAW increased (from 77 to 95 percent) (p<0.05). The prevalence of beating dropped from 65.4 to 23 percent. A significantly greater proportion (p<0.05) of the apprentices reported payment for vocation‐related work (8.9 percent compared with 16.4 percent). Only a slight decline was reported in rape (5.7 to 5.4 percent) and sexual harassment (22.9 and 22.7 percent). The proportion of victims of violence who sought redress increased from 40.2 to 72.7 percent.

There is a need for more research into interventions that can reduce violence towards women.

Interventions targeted at female apprentices were effective in reducing the prevalence of forms of violence. The data generated may be useful for practitioners and in guiding policymakers on the regulation of activities in the informal sector. There is a need for more intervention programs for this population.

This paper addresses the needs of a marginalized group about a public health problem which is often denied or covered up.

Despite the importance of theory as a driving framework, many social marketers either fail to explicitly use theory as the basis of designing social marketing interventions or default to familiar theories which may not accurately reflect the nature of the behavioural issue. The purpose of this paper is therefore to propose and demonstrate the social marketing theory (SMT)-based approach for designing social marketing interventions, campaigns or tools.

This conceptual paper proposes a four-step process and illustrates this process by applying the SMT-based approach to the digital component of a social marketing intervention for preventing domestic violence.

For effective social marketing interventions, the underpinning theory must reflect consumer insights and key behavioural drivers and be used explicitly in the design process.

Social marketing practitioners do not always understand how to use theory in the design of interventions, campaigns or tools, and scholars do not always understand how to translate theories into practice. This paper outlines a process and illustrates how theory can be selected and applied.

This paper proposes a process for theory selection and use in a social marketing context.

Knife crime and serious violent crime (SVC) among youth has been growing at an alarming rate in the UK (Harding and Allen, 2021). Community and school-based intervention and prevention services to tackle knife crime are being developed with some evaluation; however, these are independent and of varied quality and rigour. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to record the approaches being developed and synthesise existing evidence of the impact and effectiveness of programmes to reduce knife crime. In addition, the complex factors contributing to knife crime and SVC are discussed.

A systematic approach was used to conduct this knife crime intervention evidence review using two search engines and four databases. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to ensure focus and relevance. The results of searches and decisions by the research team were recorded at each stage using Preferred Reporting Items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA).

Some evidence underpins the development of services to reduce knife crime. Much of the evidence comes from government funded project reports, intervention and prevention services reports, with few studies evaluating the efficacy of intervention programmes at present. Some studies that measured immediate impact in line with the programme’s aims were found and demonstrated positive results.

This systematic review specifically synthesised the evidence and data derived from knife crime and weapon carrying interventions and preventions, integrating both grey and published literature, with a novel discussion that highlights the importance of outcome evaluations and issues with measuring the success of individual level interventions and their contributions to the overall reduction of violence.

This paper is designed to critically review and analyze the body of research on a popular gang reduction strategy, implemented widely in the United States and a number of other countries, to: (1) assess whether researchers designed their evaluations to align with the theorized causal mechanisms that bring about reductions in violence; and (2) discuss how evidence on gang programs is generated and consumed. That review and assessment is then used to frame a research agenda for studying gang interventions.

A case study design is used to generate a multi-faceted understanding of the possible avenues for evaluation research on the law enforcement-based strategy known as the Group Violence Intervention. The paper discusses questions that remain to be answered about the strategy, such as “what type of deterrence is operating?” and if the model actually works by the threat of deterrence, and not by removing high-risk offenders and shootings from the street, what activities are needed to maintain the effect?

Across roughly two dozen impact evaluations of GVI, none have examined the likely cause and effect components of this multi-partner strategy in reducing the violence. Furthermore, there are many issues related to the production and generation of criminal justice evaluation research that have adversely pushed the balance of evidence on what works in gang reduction toward law enforcement programming. However, there are many strategies that researchers can use to think broadly about appropriate and holistic research and evaluation on gangs and gang programming.

The recommendations for research, if implemented, can help build a body of knowledge to move toward community-based and restorative models of gang violence reduction.

This original piece is one of the first essays to contextualize and discuss how aspects of the production of social science research on gangs may directly impact what programs and strategies are implemented on the ground.

Work-related violence is a major occupational safety and health (OSH) issue. According to the concept of violence prevention climate, managers play a pivotal role in preventing the risk of violence at work. However, research on this is scarce. The objective of this study was, therefore, to examine line managers' use of violence preventive practices in high-risk sectors.

The authors employed three different sources of data (semi-structured interviews and field notes from both leadership seminars and coaching sessions) that were collected in the context of an intervention study in Denmark aimed at improving violence prevention. The authors conducted a thematic analysis of violence prevention experiences among 16 line managers – eight from the prison and probation services and eight from psychiatric hospitals.

Using an existing prevention framework, the authors categorized the descriptions into three types of violence preventive practices used by the line managers across the two sectors: “preventing violence”, “managing episodes of violence” and “promoting the positive”. Especially the category “promoting the positive” is often neglected in the intervention literature.

The study identified new aspects of managers' violence preventive practices than those included in the violence prevention climate concept. Such knowledge may help organizations devise improved systems for violence prevention in high-risk sectors.

Youth violence victimisation impacts on health, mental health and future risk trajectories. A London hospital emergency department (ED) outreach youth service provides a unique intervention opportunity to support adolescents involved in violence. The purpose of this paper is to describe the set‐up of the service.

Young people (YP) targeted were aged 12‐18, from two London boroughs and attended ED with injuries from a violent incident. They were referred to Oasis youth workers for a mentoring/youth work intervention. Lifestyle and symptom scales were used to assess risk profile. Hospital staff questionnaires determined service awareness in the first six months, and interviews/focus group identified potential barriers to service uptake.

By 12 months, the service was operating smoothly. Of the first 505 YP attending ED, a third were referred, a third ineligible and a third non‐contactable/refused. Detailed analysis of the first 30 attending found most were male (87 per cent), equal White or Black ethnicity (40 per cent) with 20 per cent “Other” ethnicities, with only a third living with both biological parents. This was similar to the full population attending. Nearly half (49 per cent) had been assaulted, 30 per cent had injuries self‐generated through poor anger management, the remainder injured in fighting. Over half (57 per cent) had disorder, mostly behavioural, correlated with lifestyle risk scores. Barriers to service use/implementation included YP mistrust and fear of reprisals, problems with service visibility in the busy hospital environment and ineffective staff communication with YP, all countered during the running of the service. Gauging outcome at follow‐up is the second evaluation stage.

The youth violence project is an important initiative for intervention in youth violence.

Previous difficulties were identified with the evaluation of violence interventions, resulting in gaps in the literature regarding the effectiveness of violence interventions. This study aims to contribute towards addressing the gap in the evaluation of violence interventions, by exploring the experience of prisoners who completed the self-change programme (SCP) during a 24-month period in HMP Shotts.

Five prisoners who completed the SCP at HMP Shotts were interviewed via a semi-structured interview to explore their experiences of engaging with this violence intervention. The data was analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), allowing the exploration and understanding of the subjective meanings of the experiences from the individual participants.

Interpretation of the data resulted in the identification of three superordinate themes that were relevant to participant experience: change as a process, supportive group environment and perceived outcomes.

These findings provide insight into prisoner experiences on SCP and contribute towards the evaluation of violence interventions. As prison-based interventions undergo a process of continued evaluation and re-accreditation, it is useful to understand the programme processes that enhance participant engagement and their learning experience, while also understanding the processes that may impede participant engagement and successful completion of violence interventions.

Although there has been substantial research conducted on violence interventions, this research has aimed to address some of the gaps and previous difficulties experienced within the evaluation of violence interventions.