Assess the effectiveness of crime prevention strategies in reducing crime (21)

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                                                Assess the effectiveness of crime prevention strategies in reducing crime (21)                                                                                Intro: lay out the crime reduction strategies you are going to include, choose three making sure they cover community and individual strategies (left and right realists are therefore covered) e.g situational, environmental and social crime prevention methods

Advantages

  • Situational crime prevention (right realist Ron Clarke): "pre emptive" bc aim is to reduce opportunities to commit opportunistic crime such as burglary or theft by altering the immediate environment of crime, increasing risks and decreasing rewards. Can do this through 'target hardening' e.g CCTV
  • Link top point with Rational Choice theory bc with more 'zero tolerance policies' people will weigh up pros/cons more. E.g Felson (98) New York bus station. Shows usefulness of this strategy bc the poorly designed bus stop was refurbished to stop the deviant behaviour going on like the homeless sleeping and using the basins there.
  • Enviromental crime prevention: Wilsons' broken window thesis argued that tolerating one crime (leaving one broken window) will create more crime and that is why 'zero tolerance policing'should be used. E.g NYPD made a 'clean car' policy which reduced vandalism on subway carts.

Disadvantages

  • Critiques for not necessarily preventing crime but simply 'displacing it'. A rational criminal would choose a location and time that has less focus on target hardening.
  • Left realists argue that situational crime prevention Ignores white collar crime and focuses on petty utiliarian crime instead of finding the root causes.
  • critiqued bc of crime statistics suggest there was a general decline in other cities too, suggesting strategy not as effective as appeared.

Evaluation

Overall, right realist crime prevention strategies are not effective in reducing crime. Left realist approach more beneficial bc aim to fix underlying damaged structures that exist in society to improve crime rates and society as a whole

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