Crime Prevention Flashcards
Situational crime prevention…
This is basically putting measures in place in the situation in which criminals and victims come together.
It is based on rational choice theory and Cohen and Felson’s Routine activity theory, which emphasises the opportunistic nature of crime.
Approaches to situational crime prevention include:
> Target hardening
Designing out
Target hardening…
Target hardening: decreases the opportunity for crime with measures like window locks, window shutters, car security features, anti-climb paint, CCTV, etc.
These things effectively make it harder to commit crimes such as burglary and graffiti.
Designing out…
This is a really interesting concept that refers to re-designing the city in order to prevent crime.
Some examples of this include sloping seats on bus shelters to prevent the homeless sleeping on them. Some more extreme examples include homeless spike, and spikes placed on buildings to prevent people climbing for burglary or graffiti purposes.
These measures also help the criminal justice system catch and prosecute offenders (e.g. the use of CCTV footage in court or anti-theft paint to identify stolen items) but the main reason for their use is to deter the crimes in the first place.
Pros of target hardening and designing out…
These measures can be very popular with councils and businesses as they can be effective at a relatively low cost.
No question, based on evidence from the police as well as from a range of criminological studies, that burglar alarms, CCTV and improved car security features all have a significant impact on reducing specific crimes.
Cons of target hardening and designing out…
Bauman situation crime prevention turns contemporary cities into “fortress cities” where people are controlled and kept safe. In his image of the future development of cities, he imagined people not daring to travel far from the “fortresses” just as people sought protection in medieval fortified towns.
A significant problem with situational crime prevention is displacement. While the measures might prevent crime in a specific situation, it is likely to simply move elsewhere.
Postmodernists such as Lyng (1990) argue that the seduction of crime comes from the thrill of taking risks. From that perspective the situational crime prevention methods provide a challenge and therefore extra levels of thrill and risk.
Some of the situational crime prevention methods prevent activities that most would not consider criminal (such as rough sleeping).
Environmental crime prevention…
Formal and informal social control measures which try to clamp down on anti-social behaviour and prevent an area from deteriorating. They emphasise the role of formal control measures (the police) much more than situational crime prevention theory.
These strategies are associated with Right Realism and are based on Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows Theory – the idea signs of physical disorder give off the message that there is low informal social control which attracts criminals and increases the crime rate.
Zero tolerance policing…
Zero Tolerance Policing involves the police strictly enforcing every facet of law, including paying particular attention to minor activities such as littering, begging, graffiti and other forms of antisocial behaviour. It actually involves giving the police less freedom to use discretion – under Zero Tolerance policy, the police are obliged to hand out strict penalties for criminal activity.
Example - New York City in 1994. At that time, the city was in the grip of a crack-cocaine epidemic and suffered high levels of antisocial and violent crime. Within a few years of Zero Tolerance, however, crime had dropped from between 30 – 50%.
ASBOs…
ASBOs are one of the best known crime control methods in the UK – they’re probably best described as bring related to Zero Tolerance techniques.
Antisocial Behaviour Orders were introduced in 1998 in order to correct minor acts of deviance which would not ordinarily warrant criminal prosecution.
Anyone over the age of 10 can receive an Antisocial Behaviour Order, and about half of them have been handed out to 10-17 year olds or juveniles.
In 2013, the so called ‘Naked Rambler‘ received an ASBO stipulating that he had to cover his genitalia and buttocks when he appeared in public, apart from in a changing room. The 53 year old was jailed for 11 months, after he defied the banning order.
Pros of zero tolerance policing…
Zero Tolerance Policing in New York resulted in a lot more people being arrested for possession of marijuana – 25 000 a year by 2012 (one every ten minutes).
We are catching more criminals.
Cons of zero tolerance policing…
ASBOs give people a criminal record for not actually doing anything criminal.
Zero Tolerance methods are not necessary.
It creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – ‘If police concentrate their patrols in a certain area and assume every young man they see is a potential or probable criminal, they will conduct more searches — and make more arrests. Which means a high percentage of young men in that neighbourhood will have police records. Which, in turn, provides a statistical justification for continued hyper-aggressive police tactics.
Social and community crime prevention…
Sometimes referred to as an actuarial approach to crime, these crime prevention strategies are based on identifying individuals and groups who are most at risk of committing crime and intervening in some manner or other.
Refers to insurance and the way premiums are calculated based on risk. The same principles can be applied to crime, some social groups are apparently more likely to commit crimes than others. Targeted interventions such as pre-school classes, parenting classes, and family and relationship counselling could prevent crime by reducing the circumstances that create crime. Some of these approaches are supported by left realist sociologists.
Intervention vs community…
There are two broad approaches –
Intervention - identifying groups and risk of committing crime and taking action to limit their offending. An example of such a scheme was the Troubled Families Programme established by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government.
Community – involving the local community in combating crime. Such as a neighbourhood watch.
Pros of community prevention…
When done properly, community prevention measures can save hundreds of thousands of pounds, by ‘turning’ a potential criminal into an employed tax-payer.
Cons of community prevention…
If done effectively, these are the most costly of all crime prevention measures.
Marxists argue that these policies may tackle deprivation but they do not tackle the underlying structural inequalities in the Capitalist system which are the root cause.
Michel Foucalt and David Garland interpret these strategies as being about surveillance and control rather than real social change which prevents crime.
