Control, Punishment & Victims

Situational crime prevention

Clarke describes this as a pre-emptive approach that relies not on improving society but simply on reducing opportunities for crime. The three features of methods are that they are directed at specific crimes, they involve managing the immediate environment of the crime and they aim at increasing the effort and risks of committing crime and reducing the rewards

For example, locking doors and windows increase the effort a burglar needs to make. Underlying situational crime prevention is a rational choice theory. This is the view that criminals act rationally by weighing up the costs and benefits before committing a crime so situational crime prevention reduces the opportunities to commit crime. An example is the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York which provided opportunities for homosexual liasions and rough sleeping. By reshaping the physical environment such as putting in small hand basins reduced such activity such as homeless people sleeping in there

However, situational crime prevention measures often do not reduce crime but simply displace it as if criminals are acting rationally then they will repond to target hardening by moving to where targets are softer such as a crackdown on Subway robberies simply displaced them to the streets above. Displacement can take several forms:

• Spatial - moving elsewhere to commit the crime
• Temporal - committing it at a different time
• Target - choosing a different victim
• Tactical - using a different method
• Functional - committing a different type of crime

However, this focuses on opportunistic petty street crime so ignores corporate crime which can be more harmful. It also assumes criminals make rational calculations but this isn't the case with violence and it ignores the root cause of crime such as poverty making it hard to develop long term solutions

Environmental crime prevention

The broken windows theory was devised by Wilson & Kelling to stand for all the various signs of disorder and they argue that leaving vandalism, littering etc untouched just encourages further misbehaviour with the neighbourhood becoming  a magnet for deviances because of an absence of formal social control and informal control. The solution to this is to straight away deal with any deviant behaviour such as by replacing the broken window and then adropt a zero tolerance policy to tackle disorder

The zero tolerance policing has worked in New York with the Clean Car Program reducing graffiti from the subway and a 50% drop in homicide rates but it is not clear how far zero tolerance was the cause of the improvements as there was a general decline in the crime rate in US cities, even in those where there wasn't a zero tolerance policy

Social & community crime prevention

These place the emphasis firmly on the potential offender and they aim to remove the conditions that predispose individuals to commit crime such as social conditions like poverty and unemployment. The Perry pre school project was aimed at disadvantaged black children in Michigan where an experimental group went through an intellectual enrichment programme. The longitudinal study followed the children's progress compared with the control group and by age 40 they had fewer lifetime arrests for crime and it was calculated that for every dollar spent on the programme $17 were saved on welfare and prison costs

However, these approaches take for granted the nature of crime. They disregard the crimes of the powerful with 26% of crime reduction strategies being targeted on vehicle crime yet pollution is not targeted at all despite the effects of their health on the public

This is defined as the monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population or crime control. It therefore involves observing people's behaviour to gather data about it and regulate behaviour such as through CCTV.

Foucault: birth of the prison

Sovereign power - before the 19th century when the monarch had absolute power over people and control was asserted by brutal punishment such as execution

Disciplinary power - dominant from the 19th century and in this form of control they seek to govern not just the body but the mind through surveillance

Foucault rejects the view that brutal bodily punishment disappeared from Western societies because they became more humane and instead argues that disciplinary power replaced sovereign power because surveillance became a more efficient way of controlling people

He illustrates disciplinary power with the Panopticon. This is a prison where each prisoner is visible to the guards from a central watchtower but the guards are not visible to the prisoners so they don't know if they are being watched. As a result they have to behave as if they were being watched becoming a form of self surveillance where control takes place inside the prisoner

Foucault argues that the prison is just one of a range of institutions that from the 19th century increasingly began to subject individuals to disciplinary power to induce conformity through self surveillance such as schools and factories

However, some forms of surveillance are necessary such as looking at patients with eating disorders. In addition there hasn't been a clear cut switch to Disciplinary power because is many countries the death penalty is still enforced. The use of CCTV isn't always effective with few robbers being put off by CCTV. Feminists also criticise CCTV as an extension of the male gaze and doesn't make women more secure

Synoptic surveillance

Mathiesen criticises Foucault for assuming that CCTV can only be used by the powerful. He suggests that in late modernity there is an increase in centralised surveillance but also surveillance from below, the synopticon. A form of this is where the public monitor each other such as with video camera mounted on cycle helmets to collect evidence in the case of accidents.

Surveillant assemblages

Until recently, surveillance technologies tended to be stand alone but now CCTV footage can be analysed using facial recognition software. These combinations are called surveillant assemblages and suggest we are moving towards a world in which data from different technologies can be combined to create a data double of the individual

Actuarial justice and risk management

Feeley & Simon argue that a new technology of power is emerging throughout the justice system. It focuses on preventing offending and is based on calculations of risk. For example airport security screening checks are based on known offender risk factors such as age, ethnicity, religion etc and anyone scoring above a given number is stopped and searched. The aim of this is not to treat but just seeks to predict and prevent future offending. In 2010 West Midlands police sought to introduce a counter terrorism scheme to surround two mainly Muslim suburbs of Birmingham with ANPR cameras therefore placing whole communities under suspicion

Reduction - One justification for punishing offenders is that it prevents future crime. This can be done through:

• Deterrance as punishing the individual discourages them from future offending. Policies include the Thatcher government's short sharp shock regime in young offenders' institutions in the 1980s
• Rehabilitation is the idea that punishment can be used to reform offenders so they no longer offemd. Policies include providing education so they can earn an honest living on release
• Incapacitation is the use of punishment to remove the offender's capacity to offend again. Policies include execution, cutting off hands etc.

Retribution - This means paying back and is a justification for punishing crimes that have already been committed rather than preventing future crimes. It is based on the idea that offenders deserve to be punished and that society is entitled to take its revenge on the offender for having breached its moral code

Durkheim: a functionalist perspective

He argue that the function of punishment is to uphold social solidarity and reinforce shared values with punishment being primarily expressive as it expresses society's emotions of moral outrage through public trial to reaffirm society's shared values

Durkheim identifies two types of justice which correspond to two types of society:

Retributive justince - In traditional society there is little specialisation producing a strong collective conscience which when offended responds with a vengeful passion to repress the wrongdoer. Punishment is severe and cruel and its motivation is purely expressive

Restitutive justice - In modern society there is extensive specialisation and solidarity is based on the resulting interdependence between individuals. Crime damages this interdependence so it is necessary to repair the damage for example through compensation. This aims to restore things to how they were before the offence with its motivation being instrumental

Marxism: capitalism & punishment

The function of punishment is to maintain the existing social order. As a part of the repressive state apparatus it is a means of defending ruling class property against the lower classes such as in the 18th century punishments such as hanging for theft in the colonies were part of a rule of terror over the poor

The form of punishment reflects the economic base of society. Imprisonment reflects capitalist relations of production such as capitalism puts a price on the worker's time so too prisoners do time to pay for their crime

Until the 18th century prison was used mainly for holding offenders prior to their punishment and it was only following the Enlightenment that imprisonment began to be seen as a form of punishment in itself where offenders would be reformed through hard labour. Nowadays imprisonment is regarded as the most severe punishment but it is not effective as 2/3 of prisoners commit further crimes on release. The total number of prisoners in England and Wales is 85,000 which presents problems such as overcrowding

Mass incarceration - from the 1970s prisoner numbers began to rise rapidly meaning it ceases to be the incarceration of individual offenders and becomes the systematic imprisonment of whole groups as 40% of the unemployed end up in prison. In the US there are now 1.5 million prisoners over three times the EU rate of imprisonment even though rates of victimisation are similar

Transcarceration - the idea that individuals become hooked into a cycle of control, shifting between different carceral agencies during their life such as someone being brought up in care, then sent to a young offenders' institution and then prison

Alternatives to prison 

ASBO - Prohibits an individual from carrying out specific anti social acts with curfews etc, it puts off wannabe offenders by giving them criminal records but it saves prison space. some argue that they do not work and don't prevent punishment

Electronic tagging - A tag which attachs to the ankle allowing surveillance by showing location at all times. it sends an alert to a monitoring centre if you break your court order and allows you to be easily found and arrested. however, it doesn't actually prevent crime and it is a physical sign which could enhance labelling

Positivist victimology

Miers defines this as having three features:

• It aims to identify the factors that produce patterns in victimisation
• It focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence
• It aims to identify victims who have contributed to their own victimisation

They focus on the idea of victim proneness identifying 13 characteristics of victims such as that they are likely to be female or elderly, they invite victimisation by being the kind of person that they are

However, this ignores wider structural factors influencing victimisation such as poverty and it can be seen as victim blaming and ignores situations where victims are unaware of their victimisation

Critical victimology

This is based on conflict theories and focuses on two elements:

• Structural factors such as patriarchy which place powerless groups at greater risk of victimisation
• The state's power to apply or deny the label of victim as victim is a socal construct and doesn't apply to everyone such as when the police don't press charges against a man for **** the woman loses her victim status

By concealing the true extent of victimisation it hides the crimes of the powerful and in the hierarchy of victimisation the powerless are most likely to be victimised yet least likely to be acknowledged

However, it disregards the role victims may play in bringing victimisation on themselves through their own choices such as not making their home secure

Patterns of victimisation

Class - the poorest groups are more likely to be victimised as crime rates are generally higher in deprived areas and homeless people are 12 times more likely to have experienced violence

Age - teenagers are more vulnerable to sexual harassment and the elderly are most at risk of abuse within a nursing home

Ethnicity - minority ethnic groups are at greater risk than whites of being victims of racially motivated attacks and are more likely to feel under protected

Gender - 70% of homicide victims are male but women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence

Repeat victimisation refers to the fact if you have been a victim ince you are likely to be one again. 4% of the population are victims of 44% of all crimes

The impact of victimisation

Crime may have serious physical and emotional impacts on its victims such as disrupted sleep and increased security consciousness. Hate crimes against minorities can create waves of harm that radiate out to affect others by intimidating whole communities

Secondary victimisation - in addition to the impact of crime itself individuals may suffer further victimisation at the hands of the criminal justice system with Feminists saying that **** victims are so poorly treated by the police it amounts to a double violation

Fear of victimisation - crime creates fears of becoming victimised such as women being more afraid to go out at night in fear of being attacked. Feminists have attacked the emphasis on fear of crime and argue that it focuses on women's passivity when we should be focusing on their safety