Crime and Deviance: Prevention, Punishment, Victimisation & Media

Crime Prevention....

Right Realist crime prevention strategies

• Do not believe we should deal with the causes of crime (bio & socialisation) since these cannot be easily changed → two main concerns:

  • Practical measures that make crime less attractive/ more difficult

  • Punishment instead of eliminating the underlying causes/rehab

Situational crime prevention…

• Target hardening or ‘stopping crime before it happens’ → designed to limit the opportunities to offend. Measures: include locking doors/windows to increase the effort a burglar has to make → increased CCTV/security guards to increase the likelihood of being caught

• Based upon rational choice theory: by increasing the effort needed to commit a crime, people are less likely to commit a rational choice

  • Evaluation: :) success in suicide prevention → early 1960s half of British suicides were from gassing, Britain’s supply = toxic coal gas → gradual replacement with natural gas → by 1997 gassing had dropped to near 0 & these people had not switched to another method → made suicide more difficult :( assumes all criminals make rational choices (unlikely in crimes fuelled by drugs/alcohol, :( does not reduce, just displaces → people will commit crime in a different area/at a different time/ with a new target/ different method/ different type of crime

Environmental crime prevention…

• Keeping up respect in the area as an absence of social control = a lack of care → any signs of vandalism must be dealt with immediately → without action, the situation would deteriorate, tipping the area into a spiral of decline → becomes a magnet for deviants as respectable people move out

• Solution = zero tolerance policing → stamp down hard on petty offences, police must proactively tackle even the slightest sign of disorder to stop serious crime from taking root

  • Evaluation: :) strength = applicable! ZTP can be seen in the New York Clean Car program (subway) → cars were taken out of service if they had any graffiti on them, impounded & had to pay and clean → graffiti = largely removed BUT it blamed the owner not the deviant and zero tolerance allows police to have a free rein on stop and search policies: target MEGs, and it just displaces the crime away from that area

Social & Community crime prevention…

• Aim to tackle the roots of crime such as poverty/unemployment/poor housing → appears to be contradictory? For RR as these causes of crime are usually used by Marxists/ LR

• Example = Perry preschool project → disadvantaged black children in Michigan: offered a 2 year intellectual enrichment course with weekly home visits for 3-4 year olds → longitudinal study showed that by age 40 they had signif fewer lifetime arrests and more had graduated high school and were in employment

  • Evaluation: Marxists :( whilst they tackle the roots of WC crime… they ignore the ‘crimes of the powerful’ → RR crime prevention focuses on street crime → what are the strategies tackling? North West: burglary, vehicle crime, violent crime, robbery → ALL STREET CRIME = over representing WC

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