crime 5

• Crime prevention refers to behaviours designed to reduce the likelihood of crime by making it more difficult for a criminal or making it less worth their while
• Typical behaviours used by people to prevent crime

  • GROUP WORK
  • 1= Newman's defensible space (DS)
  • 2=Broken windows theory
  • 3=Zero tolerance
• Defensible space


  • One important factor in explaining why crime occurs is the environmental design of neighbourhoods
  • Many modern housing developments built in the UK and USA after World War 2 were considered to be 'failing' - high rise flats with rising crime rates and poor quality of life
• Defensible space


  A space which can be perceived as belonging to a particular person or small group of people
• Features that contribute to defensible space

  • Zones of territorial influence
  • Opportunities for surveillance
  • Increased opportunities for social interaction
• Why Brownsville had lower crime


  • The courtyards gave greater surveillance opportunities for residents to see who was present in their shared space
  • The residents took more care for the communal areas by looking after gardens in the courtyards which suggests ownership rather than it being public
  • More children played in Brownsville with parent watching-building up a sense of community where Van Dyke children either stayed inside or played out unsupervised (children may be committing crime)
• Wilson and Kelling (1982) suggested that the cause of crime in neighbourhoods is disorder
• Disorder


  Can be physical (graffiti, vandalism,littering) or social (e.g. drugs, gangs and prostitution)
• According to Wilson and Kelling

  Disorder arises when people fear crime. When people fear crime they tend to avoid contact with others, stay inside. When minor crime happens without being challenged, this can lead to more serious crime like muggings
• Zero tolerance


  A type of policing that involves dealing with ALL kinds of crime, rather than just serious offences
• Principles of zero tolerance

  • Address all types of crime in order to prevent escalation to more serious types of crime
  • Police officers should be confident to challenge even the lowest level crimes and antisocial behaviour that come within the remit of the law
  • Low-level crime can be tackled with low-intensity, humane methods by officers to create an environment that is then inhospitable to more serious crime
• Effects of zero tolerance policy

  • Following this policy, arrests for more serious crimes fell by 22% as fewer crimes were being committed on the streets
  • However, there could be other explanations for this reduction in crime such as the recruitment of 70,000 extra officers and the crack cocaine epidemic in the early 1990's
• How 'order maintenance' prevented crime

  • Foot patrol officers got to know the community - understanding who was a 'regular' or a 'stranger'
  • Establishing informal rules to keep order e.g. drunks could sit on steps but not lie down, begging was forbidden, drinking was kept off the main streets
  • Both officers and residents maintained these rules
  • Residents felt more confident to report disorder because they felt something would be done; breaking the rules led to arrests
  • The use of police vehicles was a physical and mental barrier to engaging with members of the community and having their presence felt