Samenvatting

Prevention is very difficult to evaluate. If the situation you are trying to avoid, does not occur, it is likely to continue with prevention. If the situation does occur, it is logical to continue with the already taken preventive measures or even intensify these. This is what we call the ‘prevention trap’. In the first part of the article, a framework is presented for a methodological way to test policy on signals of the presence of a ‘prevention trap’. In the second part this framework is applied on the way the city of Amsterdam is dealing with the brothers and sisters of the top 600 criminal offenders, in the so called ‘Top 600 approach’. Some conclusions are drawn.