ROGER BOWLES, JOSEPH AKPOKODJE AND EMMANUEL TIGERE EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACHES TO CRIME PREVENTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is to review the present state of the evidence base on the effectiveness of crime prevention programmes and practices in developing countries and to consider the prospects for its improvement. The paper summarises the findings from a scoping review of the literature and develops some suggestions about how the void it finds might be filled. A key focus is on the quality of the methodology used in the research from which the findings are drawn. Against this background the paper considers the degree to which findings about effectiveness, even where they are derived from high quality research on the impact of a criminal justice intervention, are likely to be generalisable from the location of an experiment or pilot to other settings or countries. Building an evidence based on the effectiveness of crime prevention or crime reduction interventions for developing countries would clearly be a major task. Many kinds of political, social, economic and other forces, which vary from country to country, may mediate the impact of criminal justice interventions. The result may be that what works well in one country may not work at all well elsewhere for all kinds of reasons. The principal challenge in creating an evidence base is to develop inclusion criteria when making cross-country comparisons that strike an appropriate balance between the costs and benefits of greater methodological rigour and generalisation. KEY WORDS: criminal justice interventions, crime prevention, crime reduction, develop- ing countries, effectiveness, evidence-based policy 1. INTRODUCTION The primary purpose of this paper is to summarise and comment on the findings from a scoping review of the literature on the effectiveness of crime prevention programmes and practices in developing countries. A key focus is on the quality of the methodology used in the research from which the findings are drawn. The paper considers also two broader questions. The first concerns the development of methodology for the analysis of the ef- fectiveness of crime prevention programmes and practices in developing countries. In particular we pursue the question as to how this methodol- ogy might be integrated into the standard framework for the economic evaluation of development projects and spending more generally. The other broader issue, and the one which links this paper with oth- ers in the volume, is the degree to which findings about effectiveness, even where they are derived from high quality research on the impact of a criminal justice intervention, are likely to be generalisable from the lo- cation of an experiment or pilot to other settings or countries. Building European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (2005) 11: 347–377 DOI: 10.1007/s10610-005-9001-0 C  Springer 2005