Crime prevention

• SCP strategies: right realist approach 


  Pre-emptive approach relying on reducing opportunities for crime, criminals act rationally by weighing up risks and rewards of a criminal opportunity

  • target specific crimes by managing/altering environment
  • aim to increase risks of committing crime and reducing rewards
  • target hardening measures: locking doors, security guards, re-shaping environments to 'design crime out' on an area
• Evaluation of situational crime prevention

  • SCP measures may displace crime > moves to different place, time, victims
  • Approach may explain opportunistic petty street crime but not white collar crime
  • Assumes criminals make rational calculations > may not be true of violent/drug related crimes
• Environmental crime prevention, right

  Wilson and Kelling = 'broken windows' not dealt with > send out signal no one cares > promotes spiral of denial

  • absence of formal (police) and social control (community) > members of community feel vulnerable and intimidated
  • leads to crackdown on disorder through environmental improvement strategy and zero tolerance policing strategy
• Evaluation of environmental crime prevention

  • Supports claim policies in New York in 90's led to significant fall in crime
  • Critics claim it had more to do with increasing police numbers and falling unemployment
• Social and community crime prevention, left

  Looks at dealing with social conditions that lead to some individuals committing crime

  • poverty = major cause of crime > general social policies may have a crime prevention role (e.g. full employment policies may have the side effect of reducing crime)
• Social and community example: Perry School Project

  Experimental group of disadvantaged 3-4 year olds given a two year intellectual enrichment programme

  • longitudinal study following progress into adulthood showed fewer arrests for violent crime etc. compared with peers not included in programme
• Evaluation of social and community

  Long term strategies attempting to tackle the root of causes of offending rather than short term removal of opportunities for crime
• Actuarial justice and management, right

  Feely and Simon see actuarial justice as a new form of surveillance

  • uses actuarial analysis (statistical calculations of risk) to predict likelihood of people offending
  • focuses on groups; not interested in rehabilitating, only prevention
  • able to put measures in place to prevent offending
  • focuses on groups > certain groups more likely to be targeted > over policed
• How actuarial justice management works

  1. Individuals can be profiled using 'known offender' risk factors (class, gender, ethnicity) giving each person a risk score
  2. Anyone scoring above a certain level can be stopped and questioned
  3. Lyon = purpose of social sorting > categorise people > treated differently according to level of risk they pose
  4. Offender profiles often complied using official stats > show certain groups more likely to offend
• Evaluation of actuarial justice and risk management

  • Profiling leads to police targeting these groups > more arrests and convictions
  • Linked to labelling and SFP > interactionism
• Labelling and surveillance

  Norris and Armstrong found CCTV targets young black males based on racist stereotypes > creates SFP > offences are revealed while criminalisation of others is lessened because their offences are ignored