Applying Situational Crime Prevention to Sexual Assaults in Jail Facilities: An Action Research Partnership

This project will apply situational crime prevention (SCP), which focuses on closing off opportunities for crime, to address sexual assault and related acts of violence in 3 large county jails. This project will involve a practitioner researcher partnership between the study sites and the Urban Insitute researchers. All research in this project will focus on sexual violence, both inmate on inmate and staff on inmate. The researchers also plan to demonstrate how situational crime prevention measures applied to sexual violence will assist corrections practitioners to apply the knowledge to the prevention of other forms of violent behavior including self-harm. This project will involve: an analysis of historical data related to violent and sexually violent incidents, implementation of SCP to the facilities, apply various research methods to an outcome study, document the impact of the partnership, and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the interventions. ca/ncf