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Prevention Over Punishment: Generative System Design for Reducing Harm Through Growth Rather Than Coercion

A. C. Applebee, L. N. Combe · 2026

Abstract

Contemporary approaches to social harm – across criminal justice, child protection, public health, and education – remain overwhelmingly oriented toward punishment, surveillance, and coercion. This paper argues that punitive systems fail not merely because they are cruel, but because they are structurally incapable of filling the vacuums they create. Drawing on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) research, prevention science, recidivism data from international correctional systems, neuroscience of emotional development, attachment theory, and case study evidence from child protection failures, this paper advances a generative framework for system design organised around a single principle: grow what we want until what we don’t want has nowhere to live. The framework comprises five design pillars – belonging loops, skills that travel, shared infrastructure, celebrated data, and story seeds – each grounded in evidence demonstrating that dense prosocial environments naturally reduce the ecological niche available to harmful behaviours.

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