The Oxford Handbook of Crime Prevention is the most reliable and the only comprehensive source on research and experience on the prevention of crime in the United States and across the Western world.

How can a society prevent-not deter, not punish-but prevent crime? Criminal justice prevention, commonly called crime control, aims to prevent crime after an initial offence has been commited through anything from an arrest to a death penalty sentence. These traditional means have been frequently examined and their efficacy just as frequently questioned. Promising new forms of crime prevention have emerged and expanded as important components of an overall strategy to reduce crime.

This is an excellent book and comes highly recommended. It's a book which is informative and accessible for academics, students or those with a general interest. Written by leading academics, it's packed full of knowledge and has a clear eye on priorities for future research and future direction. Whether to be dipped in and out of or read from cover to cover, it successfully draw on decades of previous work and brings it up to date, making it more relevant than most can imagine.