This book provides a concise and up-to-date account of crime prevention theory, practice and research in a form designed to be accessible and interesting to both students and practitioners. Readers will be equipped to think in an informed and critical way about what has been and might be done in practice to prevent crime at local and national levels. What is distinctive in the approach is the emphasis on crime reduction mechanisms, how they may be activated and the intended and unintended patterns of outcome produced. Each of chapters two to five takes this as its organizing principle. The key aim is to clearly to convey ideas, arguments and evidence as simply as possible whilst doing justice to the material available.