AbstractMany countries now have some kind of national crime prevention structure.This new crime prevention, unlike traditional criminology, extends the responsibility for preventing crime outside of criminal justice to households, neighbourhoods, and families. Drawing on the work of British political philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, the article discusses recent prevention trends in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Specifically, the discussion applies four of Oakeshott's central themes — his attitude toward social science, his concept of a person, his theory of human association, and his description of the rule of law to four emerging rationales — evidence-based policy, situational crime prevention, social crime prevention and marketing prosocial values.