Topic 9: control, punishment, victims

• Situational Crime Prevention - Clarke


  Reducing opportunities for crime by altering the immediate environment, based on rational choice theory
• Situational crime prevention - Felson


  The Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City provided opportunity for deviance such as theft and drug dealing. By re-shaping the bus terminal, they 'designed crime out'.
• Displacement


  The argument that situational crime prevention doesn't prevent crime but just displaces it/ changing it.
• Types of crime displacement

  spatial (place)

  temporal (time)

  target (victim)

  tactical (method)

  functional (type of crime)
• Environmental crime prevention - Wilson and Kelling


  Broken Window Theory - leaving things unrepaired sends the message that no one cares. Causes zero tolerance policies
• Result of New York's zero tolerance policy

  between 1993 and 1996 there was a 50% drop in homicide rates
• Social and community crime prevention


  Aims to remove conditions predisposing individuals to crime in the first place.
• The Perry pre-school project


  4-5 year old's offered a 2 year intellectual enrichment program with weekly home visits. By age 40 they had significantly fewer arrests fir violent crime, property crime and drugs and more had graduated from highs= school compared to the control group.
• dispersal of discipline


  surveillance has penetrates all elements of society. e.g. the workplace, asylums, schools etc.
• synoptic surveillance


  surveillance is now carried out by a rane of sources. e.g. media allows surveillance of celebrities and police. Leads to 'control the controllers
• Surveillance assemblages - Haggerty and Ericson


  technology allows manipulation of digital data. The combination of technology allows 'surveillant assemblages' where we can create a 'data double' of individuals.
• Risk management - Feeley and Simon


  technology can calculate the risk of a certain type of person committing a crime using info such as age, sex, religion etc. which is used to predict and prevent crime.
• Social sorting and categorical suspicion - Lyon


  people can be treated according to their level of risk. However, this places whole communities under risk and can cause self-fulfilling prophecies based on typification of offenders.
• Aims of punishment

  deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, retribution
• instrumental aim of punishment


  aims to reduce crime
• expressive aim of crime


  aims to express society's outrage
• Durkheim's functionalist perspective of punishment


  expressive function and upholding social solidarity and shared values
• Marxist view of punishment


  Maintains social order through repressive state apparatus. Under capitalism, prison is the dominant form of punishment which Melossi and Pavarini see as reflecting capitalism ( prisoners do time to pay for crime) and encouraging subordination and loss of liberty
• reoffending rate


  25%
• Era of Mass Incarceration - David Downes


  This has an ideological function - US prisoners account for about 30-40% of the unemployed so taking them out of society makes capitalism look more successful. The move towards 'tough on crime' policies create an almost limitless supply of offenders
• Trend towards transcarceration


  individuals become locked into a cycle of control as the boundaries between the CJS and welfare agencies blur
• What percentage of the prison population are care leavers?

  25%
• Cohen's 'net of control'


  By increasing the range of sanctions, control penetrates more deeply into society. However, community controls can actually push young people into the CJS such as sentencing for antisocial behaviour.
• Christie's view of victimisation


  victim is socially constructed. The stereotype of the 'ideal victim' is weak, innocent and blameless
• Positive victimology


  Miers - aims to identify factors producing patterns, focusing on interpresonal crime and the role of the victim
• Positive victimology - victim proneness


  Hans von Hentig identifies 13 characteristics of victims e.g. female, elderly and lifestyle that 'invite' victimisation
• Wolfgang's study (positive victimisation)


  Studies 588 homicides and found that 26% involved victim precipitation where the victim triggered events leading to he homicide.
• Evaluation of positive victimology

  - Ignores wider social structures

  - Victim blaming
• Critical criminology


  Focuses on structural factors such as patriarchy and poverty as well as the states power to apply or deny the label of victim
• Tombs and Whyte (critical criminology)


  'safety crimes' where employers violate laws leading to injuries are often blamed on the worker so has the power to deny victimisation. The ideological function is to hide the crimes of the powerful.
• Hierachy of victimisation


  powerless are more likely to be victims but also more likely to be denied the label of victim
• Evaluation of critical criminology

  - Disregards the role the victim might play

  - draws attention to victim status and the ideological role of this
• Class and victimisation


  More poor, unemployed and homeless victims
• Age and victimisation


  infants under 1 at most risk of murder, teenagers more vulnerable to offences like assault, sexual harassment and abuse, elderly also at risk of abuse

  Overall, youth more at risk
• Ethnicity and victimisation


  Minority groups at greater risk, more likely to feel under-protected and over-controlled
• Gender and victimisation


  Males at greater risk of homicide and women of DV and sexual violence
• Repeat victimisation


  About 60% have not been victims of any crimes in a given year but a mere 4% account for 44% of all crime victims in that year. Supports victim proneness.
• Impact of victimisation

  Pynoos et al found that children who witness a sniper attack continued to have grief-related dreams a year after

  Crime of minorities affect the whole group the victim represents
• Secondary victimisation


  Individuals may also suffer victimisation by the CJS. e.g. police poorly treating rape victims
• Fear of victimisation


  Women more likely to fear attack but it is actually young men who are the main victims of violence from strangers.