Crime prevention for primary school-aged children: Towards a strategy for Nanaimo.

Abstract

This thesis provides recommendations for a crime prevention strategy focusing on primary school aged children (5 to 12 age range) within the municipality of Nanaimo. These recommendations are reached by reviewing and analyzing research related to the causes and correlates of crime prevention, and by conducting interviews with key representatives of organizations providing services to primary school aged children at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. Research is reviewed that identifies various factors that place individuals at risk of becoming delinquent. Recent crime prevention research is then reviewed which identifies the need to look beyond the traditional approaches of crime prevention involving "cops, courts, and corrections." These studies suggest the need for a crime prevention approach in which social policy works with criminal justice policy in preventing crime. The writer refers to this approach as the crime prevention through social development for safer communities approach. The approach recognizes the need to incorporate primary school age experiences within a crime prevention strategy. Summaries of interviews with representatives of government at all levels, and with administrators and members of non-government organizations, describe policies, programs, and services for primary school aged children. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)