Broadening the public health approach to policing

Abstract There is growing interest in a public health approach to policing. In Britain, it has attracted major government investment and is advocated as a way to improve understanding and prevention of violence. We largely support efforts better to integrate public health and policing. We do, however, argue in this paper that the current conception of public health is unduly narrow, focussing overwhelmingly on early intervention and paying little attention to situational measures directed at more immediate causes of crime. We argue that the neglect of situational intervention rests on a partial interpretation of the public health literature, and ignores a long history of situational measures being effectively used to reduce harmful behaviours. If a public health approach is to generate improvements in policing and crime prevention, we argue that a broader conception of public health is needed.