3.4 crime prevention and control

Question 1

What do left realists recognise about crime prevention?

Answer 1

• both the offenders and the victims of the crimes that worry people most are found in the more disadvantaged communities

Question 2

What do left realists emphasise?

Answer 2

• the need to tackle the material and cultural deprivation - such as poverty, unemployment, poor housing and education
• these generate anger and frustration, and are the risk factors dfor crime

Question 3

What should crime prevention involve, according to the left realists?

Answer 3

• building community cohesion and strong communities
• multi-agency working, where a variety of agencies work together with local people to tackle crime
• more democratic policing
• tackling social deprivation
• intensive parenting support

Question 4

What are some criticisms of left realist crime prevention strategies?

Answer 4

• they downplay the role of the offender in choosing to commit crime
• they ignore white-collar and corporate crimes
• neighbourhood policing might be seen as an extension of control and surveillance by the state over the whole population

Question 5

What do right realist approaches focus on?

Answer 5

• individuals and the specific location of crime rather than on wider social issues

Question 6

What do right realists emphasise?

Answer 6

• individuals choose crime and must be persuaded not to do so, by reducing the opportunities for crime and increasing the chances of being caught and punished

Question 7

What is meant by environmental crime prevention?

Answer 7

• Wilson and Kelling ‘broken windows’ thesis
• if a briken window isn’t repaired then others are likely to be broken and further neglect will follow
• to prevent deterioration it is necessary to keep environments in good physical condition
• the police should have a policy of zero tolerance

Question 8

What is meant by routine activity theory?

Answer 8

• Felson and Clarke(1998) = suggest that a crime occurs as part of everyday routines, when there are 3 conditions present

Question 9

What are the 3 conditions in routine activity theory?

Answer 9

1. there is a suitable target for the potential offender: a person, place or an object
2. there is no ‘capable guardian’ to protect the target
3. there is a potential offender present, who thinks the first two conditions are met and then makes a rational choice whether or not to commit the crime§

Question 10

What is meant by situational crime prevention?

Answer 10

• this is achieved by ‘designing out crime’ and ‘target hardening’ measures
• e.g. hostile architecture, CCTV, anti-climb paint
• aims to reduce opportunities for crime and disorder in particular locations

Question 11

What are criticisms of situational crime prevention?

Answer 11

• it removes the focus from other forms of crime prevention
• doesn’t pay sufficient attention to catching criminals
• displacement theory = doesn’t prevent crime but simply displaces it to other areas

Question 12

What does Chaiken argue about displacement?

Answer 12

• spatial displacement = moving elsewhere to commit crime
• temporal displacement = committing crime at a different time
• target displacement = choosing a different victim
• functional displacement = committing different types of crime

Question 13

How will increased social control prevent crime?

Answer 13

• individuals are encouraged to choose conformity over deviance and crime when there are strong social bonds integrating them into communities

Question 14

What are some general criticisms of right realist approaches to crime prevention?

Answer 14

• zero tolerance policing may divert police resources away from more serious offences
• ignore white-collar and corporate crimes
• don’t address the wider social causes of crime
• assume offenders act rationally in choosing crime

Question 15

What is the postmodernist approach to crime prevention?

Answer 15

• involves a need for the CJS to recognise the diversity of identities leads them to emphasise more informal localised arrangements for preventing and controlling harms

Question 16

What are some strengths of the postmodernist approach?

Answer 16

• it draws attention to the diversity of identities
• provides insights into teh way contemporary developments like extensive surveillance can reduce the harms caused by crime and disorder

Question 17

What are some weaknesses of postmodernist approach?

Answer 17

• doesn’t recognise the importance of social inequality
• doesn’t recognise that decentralised and more informal arrangements for crime control to respond to more local identities

Question 18

What is meant by surveillance?

Answer 18

• the monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population/crime control

Question 19

How is surveillance carried out in late modern society?

Answer 19

• involving the use of sophisticated technology, including CCTV cameras, biometric scanning, ANPR and electronic tagging

Question 20

What is meant by sovereign power?

Answer 20

• control was asserted by inflicting disfiguring: a visible punishment on the body
• punishment was a brutal, emotional spectacle e.g. public execution

Question 21

What is meant by disciplinary power?

Answer 21

• a new system of discipline that seeks to govern not just the body, but the mind or ‘soul’ through surveillance

Question 22

According to Foucault, why has disciplinary power replaced sovereign power in Western societies?

Answer 22

• they became more civilised BUT also it is a more effective way of controlling people

Question 23

What is the panopticon and how does it lead to self-surveillance?

Answer 23

• the Panoptican is designed for the prisoner cells to be visible to the guards BUT the guards aren’t visible to the prisoners and they don’t know if they are being watched, so the surveillance turns into self-surveillance

Question 24

What is the difference in outcomes between disciplinary power and sovereign power?

Answer 24

• unlike sovereign power, disciplinary power involves intensively monitoring the individual with a view of rehabilitating them

Question 25

What are some institutions that subject individuals to disciplinary power?

Answer 25

- mental asylums - barracks - factories - workhouses - schools

Question 26

What are some criticisms of Foucault?

Answer 26

- the shift from sovereign power and corporal punishment to disciplinary power and imprisonment is less clear than he suggests - he wrongly assumes that they expressive aspects of punishment disappear in modern society

Question 27

According to **Gill and Loveday**, what function do CCTV cameras perform?

Answer 27

- they perform an ideological function, falsely reassuring the public about their security, even though it makes little difference to their risk of victimisation

Question 28

According to **Mathiesen**, how do the media enable surveillance?

Answer 28

- the media enables the many to see the few - there is an increase in the top-down, centralised surveillance BUT also in surveillance from below

Question 29

What is meant by the **synoptican**?

Answer 29

- where everybody watches everybody

Question 30

According to **Ditton et al**, how does the use of CCTV show evidence of labelling?

Answer 30

- the cameras were capable of zooming in on vehicle tax discs from hundreds of metres away to see whether the tax had expired