Week 5

Question 1

Violent crimes

Answer 1

• murder
• sexual assault
• kidnapping/abduction (K/A)
• robbery
• assault
• DV

Question 2

Violent crime locations

Answer 2

• everywhere residential highest occurrence apart from robbery where majority is in the community
• residential is actually lowest for robbery
• community second highest followed by other for murder, sexual assault and K/A

Question 3

Violent crime weapons

Answer 3

• no weapon majority of time for murder, sexual assault, K/A and robbery
• homicide, K/A and robbery second most used is knife
• sexual assault second most is firearm

Question 4

Violent crime victim age and gender

Answer 4

• homicide highest occurring M/F is 35-49
• > norm dist around this
• sexual assault highest occurring M=0-9 and 10-14, F=15-19
• robbery highest occurring M/F is 25-34, F norm dist but M second highest 15-19
• K/A highest occurring M/F is 25-34, extremely so for M, F norm dist but M second highest 0-9

Question 5

Violent crime victim and offender relationship

Answer 5

• assault highest for M by strangers but IP for F, overall highest for strangers
• homicide fluctuates between domestic and acquaintance, currently domestic highest
• > IP much higher than other domestics

Question 6

Preventing violent crime

Answer 6

Solutions must be tailored to problems (e.g. medical model)

• Crime prevention = situational + dispositional
• > Because: Crime = opportunity + propensity

Example: Domestic violence

• Situational prevention
• Dispositional prevention
• Societal solutions

Question 7

Street crimes

Answer 7

• Drug dealing
• Prostitution
• Street assaults
• Street robberies
• Graffiti
• Vandalism
• Social incivilities
• Social and physical disorder

Question 8

Street crimes deemed not as serious

Answer 8

Creates burdens on police

• ~90% of CFS are for trivial or non-criminal matters
• Much of police work as ‘containing situations’

Creates burdens on the CJS
Causes fear of crime
- Consequences of FoC?

Question 9

Hot spots

Answer 9

• “Small places in which the occurrence of crime is so frequent that it is highly predictable, at least over a one year period” (Sherman, 1995)
• About 3-4% of all places generate over half of all citizen complaints about crime and disorder to the police
• Crime is not randomly distributed, but is the result of environmental (and then situational) factors

Question 10

Street crime problems

Answer 10

• Street-level drug markets
• Alcohol and public drunkenness
• Street assaults and robberies
• Street prostitution
• Graffiti and vandalism
• Disorder offences (‘incivilities’)
• > Social disorder
• > Physical disorder

Question 11

Costs of crime

Answer 11

• look up image

Question 12

Broken windows exp

Answer 12

• Social psychology experiment by Zimbardo (1969)
• Placed an identical ‘abandoned’ vehicle in two neighbourhoods (one bad, one good), then waited and watched
• > bad neighbourhood: Offences commenced within 10 minutes, car entirely stripped within 1 day
• > good neighbourhood: Untouched for 1 week (one passerby lowered the hood during a rain shower); once windows were smashed, others joined in

Question 13

Broken windows theory Wilson & Kelling (1982)

Answer 13

• Street crime -> ‘spiral of decline’ -> Violent crime
• “Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of refuse from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.”
• Norm-setting and signalling: Disorder -> Crime

Question 14

Broken windows theory

Answer 14

• Broken windows policing
• > Zero-tolerance policing
• Mixed empirical evidence
• > Disorder can lead to more disorder
• > Incivilities can hinder social processes necessary for crime control
• > Street crime does not lead to violent crime

Question 15

Street crime hotspots

Answer 15

Street crime clusters in spatial and temporal ‘hotspots’

• e.g. street assaults around nightclubs and bus and train stations.
• more likely at night and weekends (e.g. more assaults around nightclubs on Friday nights and weekend nights)
• clustering is the result of environmental, situational and social features of the location

Question 16

Violent crime risk factors

Answer 16

• Being an Indigenous Australian (almost 4 times more likely to be victimised)
• Being a male aged 20 – 24 years (for females highest victimisation is between 35 and 39 years)
• Being vulnerable (e.g. aged under 5 years or over 80 years)
• Being unemployed
• Being single if male; or partnered if a female

Situational risk factors – residential settings are the most common site of violent crime.