Opinions of officers working with juveniles on efficiency of crime prevention measures.

The article focuses on crime prevention programs and especially on a single element of these programs – a prevention measure. A prevention measure is a single activity supposed to diminish a risk of crime in related population. Efficiency is seen as a most important requirement of a measure. Meta-investigations of R. Martinson, Sherman and others have shown that it is a great mistake to presume this efficiency. Only small part of popular prevention measures can be efficient and they do only under some special conditions. One of the most important of these conditions is the view of people implementing a measure. Their disbelieve can turn an efficient measure to the inefficient one. Just the same effect has the lack of understanding how the measure works, what is the mechanismus of its preventive effect. We investigated attitudes of officers and volunteers that take part implementing a crime prevention program. They were asked to evaluate supposed efficiency of the measures included into crime prevention program and to explain their answer. The received evaluation of efficiency turned to be totally independent of real (experimentally proven) efficiency. All our respondent „reinvented“ the mechanism of preventive effect. Several interesting effect were observed. One of them – super optimism (believe that all prevention measures are efficient – „something has to be done“). The second – police orientation (believe that the greater is the participation of police implementing a measure the more efficient it is).Straipsnis skirtas nusikaltimų prevencijos priemonių veiksmingumo problemai. Sprendžiant šią problemą, svarbus yra pareigūnų ir visuomenės atstovų, dalyvaujančių įgyvendinant prevencijos priemones, nuomonės apie jų veiksmingumą tyrimai. Tai sietina su tuo, kad prevencijos priemones įgyvendinantys asmenys gali tiesiogiai stebėti jų įgyvendinimo efektą. Straipsnyje apibendrinami tyrimo, kurio metu nustatyti keletas svarbių reiškinių, susijusių su prevencijos priemonių veiksmingumo vertinimu, duomenys. Parodoma, kad prevencijos priemones įgyvendinantiems asmenims būdingas „optimistinis“ priemonių vertinimas, kuris prieštarauja objektyviam (eksperimentiniais tyrimais nustatytam) šių priemonių veiksmingumo įvertinimui. Išaiškinti veiksniai, nuo kurių labiausiai priklauso prevencijos subjektų požiūris į pre-vencijos priemonių veiksmingumą