From rigor to relevance. Building an evidence culture for criminal justice and urban security policies in Southern Europe

The call for evidence-based criminal justice has become ubiquitous, yet the production and use of rigorous, cumulative research remain uneven across policy domains and regions. This study examines these tensions from a European perspective, where evaluation practices are less institutionalized than in Anglo-American contexts. The gap is particularly visible in crime prevention and urban security policies in Southern Europe, where interventions have expanded in recent decades while systematic evaluation remains exceptional. Although contemporary societies are statistically safer, citizens increasingly report feelings of insecurity, prompting governments to extend traditional criminal justice measures alongside preventive instruments, often adopted in response to public anxiety or electoral pressure. Yet these measures rarely undergo assessment, undermining effectiveness and democratic legitimacy. The study identifies three interrelated challenges—methodological, institutional, and translational—and argues that addressing them requires improved causal designs, cumulative evidence, stronger institutional commitments to evaluation, and effective mechanisms of translation between research and policy.