Crime Prevention & Control
- Created by: rebeccamellors
- Created on: 30-01-17 12:42
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- Crime Prevention & Control
- Situational Crime Prevention
- Clarke (1992) describes SCP as a pre-emptive approach that relies, not on improving society or its institutions but reducing opportunities for crime
- Clarke identifies 3 features of measures:
- They are directed at specific crimes
- Involve managing or altering immediate environment of crime
- Aim at increasing effort & risks of committing & reducing rewards
- Target hardening measures (e.g. locking doors) increase effort
- Opportunity or rational choice theory of crime - criminals act rationally, weighing up costs & benefits of crime before deciding to commit
- Felson (2002) example of SCP in a bus terminal in NYC
- Re-shaping physical environment to 'design crime out' greatly reduced such activity
- Displacement
- Criticism of SCP is that they don't reduce crime they simply displace it
- Can take place in several forms:
- Spatial - moving elsewhere
- Temporal - different time
- Target - choose different victim
- Tactical - different method
- Functional - different type of crime
- Evaluation
- Works to some extent in reducing certain crime, however with most there is likely to be displacement
- Tends to focus on opportunistic petty street crime - ignores more costly & harmful crime
- Ignores root cause of crime - poverty or poor socialisation
- Environmental Crime Prevention
- Approach based on Wilson & Kellings (1982) article 'broken windows'
- Phrase broken windows is used to stand for the various signs of disorder & lack of concern for others found in some neighbourhoods
- Argue leaving broken windows unrepaired, tolerating aggressive begging, etc send out signal that no one cares
- In such neighbourhoods there's absence of both formal & informal social control
- Police are only concerned with serious crime & turn blind eye to petty behaviour
- Rest of neighbourhood feel powerless & intimidated the neighbourhood goes into a spiral of decline
- Respectable members move out & area becomes magnet for more deviants
- Zero Tolerance Policing
- Police must adopt zero tolerance policing strategy
- Instead of merely reacting to crime they must proactively tackle even the slightest disorder even if not criminal
- Will halt neighbourhood decline & prevent serious crime
- Environmental Improvement strategy
- Any broken window must be immediately repaired
- Abandoned cars towed without delay
- Prevent more following
- Situational Crime Prevention
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