SEBP 2021 - Moving beyond ‘nudge’. How to reduce crime and influence people

From the 2021 Online Conference of the Society of Evidence Based Policing

 

Professor Jason Roach from the Applied Criminology and Policing Centre at the University of Huddersfield presented live on 31st March:

 

Unless you have been inhabiting another planet for the past ten years, then you are likely to be aware of Thaler and Sunstein’s ‘nudge’ approach to encouraging us humans into making more ‘prosocial choices’ (2008). Examples include’ nudging’ to help people give up smoking and to encourage people to donate their organs when they die (the former presumably prolonging a promise to do the latter). In terms of a means by which crime might be reduced, then the uptake of nudge continues to lag behind its application in health and social policy initiatives. It is suggested here, that this is primarily because there has been little advancement in nudge thinking in a crime reduction direction, nor has it become more bespoke to policing in the same way that it has for numerous public health issues. Several ideas for how nudge thinking might be advanced, by making it more in tune with policing are presented (e.g. NUDGE-IT), along with the suggestion that by moving current thinking beyond ‘nudge’ towards a broader ‘psychology of influence’ approach, this will be more appealing to those charged with reducing crime.

 

www.sebp.police.uk