crime prevention

• Situational crime prevention: A pre-emtive approach which relies on reducing opportunities to commit crime by managing and altering the enviroment to make it harder to break the law, by increasing the risk of commiting crime & reducing the rewards.
• Sit.

  One example of this is 'target hardening', implemetning barriers such as doors, window locks, CCTV. This reduces the opportunity to break into buildings and commit robbery.

  Another aspect of situational crime prevention is 'designing out' certain features of an area that may enable crime. such as installing sloped seats at bus stops or adding armrests in the middle of park benches to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them, barbed & spiked wire to make it difficult to climb

  • a meta-analysis of studies show that CCTV decreased drug related crimes by 20%
• Criticism of sit

  1. Instead of removing crime it just displaces it. Functional(commits dif type) spacial (commit crime elsewhere) temporal (commited at dif time) tatical (commit crime in a dif way)
  2. Ignores the causes of crime. Common crimes like petty theft or rough sleeping often due to poverty, deprivation & inequality. Doesnt have a long term strategy
  3. Only focuses on 'street crime'. ignoring white collar & state crimes
• Sit

  Felson: Examined a bus terminal in New York. Bathrooms were used for drug dealing, thefts, rough sleeping, and sex. Felson said that this was partly due to the design of the building as it provided too much space for criminals to move in and poor sight lines. So better lighting was installed, toilet attendents were employed & sinks were made smaller (homeless ppl couldnt bathe in them)
• Enviromental crime prevention: focuses on a combination of formal and informal social controls to prevent crime/ preventing areas from deteriorating so crimes become endemic. Its based on RR Wilson & Kellings 'broken windows' theory'.

  Their solution is to crack down on any disorder through a 'zero tolerance policing policy', where even minory deviancy is treated the same as serious crimes in order to discourge them.
• Evaluation of enviro

  • Is quite effective. ZTP in 1990s new york reduced crime significantly , homicide decreasing by 50%
  • However the level of crime had already started declining before policy was introduced, as it was happening in other cities too , such as LA. as it was a time when high unemployment was decreasing (poverty is a bigger factor?)
  • ZTP often disproportionalty affects ethnic minorities due to biases. Meaning they can face severe consequences, such as losing their jobs. Can give people criminal records even if they did not commit any crimes.
• Social and community crime prevention: Focuses on individual crime offenderes and the social contexts within which they offend, aiming to treat the causes of crime rather than the symptoms.
• social: They target troubled families and vulnerable children, in order to reduce criminality & other social problems, such as enrolling children in pre-school classes and adults in parenting classes. This attempts to correct low educational attainment and family conflict - both on which may lead to crime. EG ' The troubled families programme' established in the UK. these have proven successful.
• social strengths:

  • If utilised correctly, can significantly change the lives of ppl inclined towards criminal behaviour by giving htem a chance at an honest life. Also can benefit the state and society by turning potentional criminals itno employed taxpayers and productive members of society. Therefore the results can be long term as it addresses the root causes.
  • Proved sucessful. Troubled families showing that the proportion of adults and juveniles recieving custodial sentences significantly reduces after joining
• social limiatations;

  • The most expensive crime prevention method, so difficult to impliment on a large enough scale
  • Donzelot: intervention-focused mechanisms have little to do with tackling crime. rather theyre just more opportunities for state survelliance and controlling the public.
  • Social and community based approaches only target working class crime & urban communities, leaving elite crime inresolved. EG corporate & green crime
• Foucalt: at the possibilty of being surveilled, poeple act accordingly just in case. EG prisoners in the panopticon, a prison designed in which each prisoner in his own cell is visible to the guards in the central watch tower, but the guards arent visible to the prisoners. Prisoners only know that they might be being watched, and act accordinly just in case.