Crime Prevention

Crime Prevention

"explosion in crime reduction initiatives focused upon prevention rather than cure, consequence rather than causes and offences rather than offenders" (Crawford, 2007)
'Society does not cause crime and policy should not be concerned with addressing root causes' (James Q Wilson) 'wicked people exist'
Ron Clarke, Home Office: dispositional approaches to criminality need to be stopped, instead the use of situational cues and opportunity reduction need to be increasingly used. Offenders are responsible for their acts and responsibility for failing to control crime should be removed from the police.
what is crime prevention?
1. primary: actions directed at general population and places. Aims to address potentially criminogenic factors before the onset of problems.
2. Secondary: involves work with people or places identified as high risk/ at risk.
3. tertiary: actions directed toward the prevention of the recurrence of criminal events in order to reduce offending and/ or harms associated with offending. Targets known offenders, victims or places that are already part of the crime pattern
4. Social: "embodies predispositional assumptions about what causes an individual to offend. It is concerned with preventing criminality or criminal propensities from developing within a person or group, rather than with preventing the opportunities for crime itself" (Crawford 1997)
5. Community: "refers to actions intended to change the social conditions that are believed to sustain crime in residential communities" (Hope, 1995)
6. Situational: "a framework for some practical and commonsense thinking about how to deal with crime" (Clarke, 1995)
  1. Routine activities Theory: likely offender, suitable target and the absence of a capable guardian
Situational Crime Prevention
1. Focuses on situations, not people; an approach that relies on reducing the opportunities for crime; directed at highly specific forms of crime; management, design or manipulation of the environment; increase the efforts and risks, reduce the awards
2. e.g. airport security systems, bike locks, CCTV, neighbourhood watch etc. crash helmets,
3. Crime Free multi housing, e.g. adequate lighting, no dark corners, adequate upkeep of outside areas, no graffiti & adequate outdoor lighting, no dark spots or areas of concealment, e.g. Newman 1972 'defensible space'
  1. e.g. Heygate Estate, built in 1970's and home to more than 3000 people, due to a range of physical design faults, such as poor security, low energy efficiency and environmental issues that estate was knocked down and rebuilt. Jeffrey, 1971, 'secured by design, e.g. cul-de-sacs
  2. there has been a sharp decline in the number of suicides by domestic coal gas, hanging and poisoning, due to SCP? or a prompter identification of those at risk? Carbon monoxide content dropped from 20% to 2.5%
  3. SCP Techniques= increase the effort, increase the risks, reduce the rewards, reduce provocations, remove excuses
4. Criminally inclined individuals will commit more crimes if they encounter more criminal opportunities; regularly encountering opportunities could lead these individuals to look for even more opportunities; even those without a pre-existing disposition toward criminality may be drawn into committing crime by the availability of opportunities and temptations to do so; in particular, normally law-abiding individuals may commit specific types of crime if they regularly encounter easy opportunities to do so.
Social Crime Prevention
1. focused chiefly on changing targeted social environments and the motivations of offenders, and community development initiatives in order to deter potential or actual offenders from future offending (Hughes and Edwards 2005)- prevention of criminality, focus on people, not situations, factors that mean some people/ groups are more likely to engage in criminal activity, reduce risk factors and increase protective ones.
2. improve social conditions, strengthen community institutions (recreational, educational, employment)- a from of SCP?
Developmental Crime Prevention
1. positivism: control theories and dispositional assumptions; young people 'at risk' of offending (secondary); identification of risk, protective and desistance factors; longitudinal research < nipping crime in the bud: risk and predictive techniques. e.g. risk factors: individual= low intelligence and attainment, empathy, impulsiveness, social cognitive skills.. risk factors: family= criminal/ anti social family members, large family size, child-rearing methods, child abuse/ neglect, disrupted families
  1. nurse home visiting experiment, 400 high risk pregnant women, 9 home visits during pregnancy & 23 home visits post natally, nurses promoted: positive health related behaviour, competant care of children, maternal personal development and linked families with needed health care and human services and attempted to involve other family members and friends... by age 15, experimental group reported fewer instances of running away, fewer arrests, fewer lifetime sex partners, fewer cigarettes soked per day, less alcohol consumption, fewer convictions/ violations of probation
  2. risk focused prevention- Perry Pre School project- disadvantaged African American children, pre school, weekly home visits, by age 27, half as many arrests, more likely to have graduated from high school, higher earnings, more likely to be homeowners, higher wages etc.

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	Created by ellie.1001 almost 10 years ago