Violence prevention programs need better evaluation, psychologist testifies Researchers need funding to evaluate the best way to implement violence prevention programs, APA member Patrick H. Tolan, PhD, told a House of Representatives subcommittee during an October hearing on preventing and fighting crime. Tolan, a member of the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, told the Judiciary Committee's Crime subcommittee that, as the field of violence prevention rapidly develops, it has become clear that there are many opportunities for violence prevention, that the strategy works better than punishment or incarceration and it is producing cost savings for society.
Prevention works, but the effects depend greatly on what is done and how it is done.
Prevention is more effective and less costly than punishment and incarceration. Objective evaluations with sound scientific controls should be used to judge and compare prevention with other strategies, not personal testimonies, simplistic indexes or trend correspondences. These evaluations will provide direction about which approaches are valuable as well as the relative benefits among approaches. Prevention benefits are easy to underestimate, miss or perceived as nonessential. It is hard to see that something did not happen.