control and prevention Flashcards
What are the three ways to control criminal behaviour, reduce crime and prevent crime?
- Control and prevent (LR and RR)
- Control and prevention through punishment (imprisonment and rehab)
- Control and prevent through surveillance (surveillance)
outline the three crime prevention strategies Control and prevent (LR and RR)
- Situational crime prevention strategy - Right Realism
- Environment Crime prevention strategy - right realism
- Social and community crime prevention strategy - left realism
Situational crime prevention strategy - Right Realism
- They are directed at specific crimes (e.g burglary)
- They involve managing or altering the immediate environment
- They aim to increase the foot and risks of committing crime and reducing reward
examples:
- Target hardening - tightening ip on locking doors and windows
- CCTV and security in shops increases likelihood of shoplifters to be caught
- replacing coin-operated gas meters with pre-payment cards reduces the bugler rewards
SCP uses - Ron Clarke’s rational choice theory (weighing up cost and reward)
Clarke - Newman’s defensible space - whereby changing environment such as housing estates, could make them safer.
Examples of applications
Port Authority Bus terminal in NYC (poorly designed e.g toilets encouraged luggage theft)
large sinks replaced with small ones to prevent homeless from bathing - re-shaping the physical enviornemtn of the toilets aimed to ‘design crime out’
5 forms of displacement
- Spatial - moving the crime
- Temporal - committing crime at a diffrerent time
- Target - choosing a different victim
- Tactical - using a different method
- Functional - committing a different type of crime
does displacement always occur -
NO
- SCP has had a big impact on reducing suicide
- early 1960s, all early suicides were done by gassing in Br. - less toxic gas replaced this to prevent this
- 1997 suicide rate because of gassing had massively decreased and the general suicode rate - meaning people weren’t turning to other methods - no displacement
Situational crime prevention strategy - Right Realism evaluation
- no they move crime to other aress
- if criminals are acting ‘rationally’ then strategies such as ‘target hardening’ or re-designing environment will only lead to criminals moving to ‘softer’ spots
- Chaiken et all - a crackdown on subway robberies in NYC just displaced these to the streets and increased mugging on the streets of NYC
- only really focuses on opportunist street crime (robbery) and ignores white collar crime which is more harmful (Snider - Marxist)
- ignores root causes of crime such as poverty and poor socialisation - agues by LR, Marx, Feminists
- assumes that criminals make rational calculations about committing crime - that about violence, drug-related crime and alcohol related crime
Environment Crime prevention strategy - right realism
Broken Window’s Thesis - Wilson and Kelling
- represents various signs of disorder and lack of concern found in neighbourhoods e.g vandalism and littering
- by not repairing ‘broken windows’ it creates the impression nobody cares
- these areas don’t contain formal (police) or informal (community) social control
- without remedial action the area will tip into a spiral of decay - respectable people move out and more deviants move in - Theory of Tipping (Baldwin and Bottoms)
Disorder + Absence of Controls = Crime
2 strategies to crack down on disorder
1 - Environmental and Improvement Strategy - repair all broken windows
- Zero Tolerance Policing - police must proactively tackle all small signs of disorder
eg the clean car program on subway trains NYC
Environment Crime prevention strategy - right realism evaluation
the fall in crime could be due to
- NYPD gaining 7,000 new officers
- There was a general decline in crime of other cities, even ones which didn’t adopt the zero tolerance policies (part of New Labour’s anti-social behaviour policies)
Social and Community Crime Prevention (SCCP) (left realism)
social and community strategies focus on the potential offender and their social context
remove the conditions that predispose individuals to crime/ root causes
root causes:
- Poverty
- Unemployment
- Poor Housing
(many programmes will have an element of crime prevention without that being the main task - e.g programmes promoting ‘full employment’ will reduce crime)
example:
Perry Pre-School
- longtitudinal experiment group of black disadvantaged 3-4 year olds offered a 2 year intellectual enrichment programme
- by age 40 they had fewer violent crime, drugs etc than the control group
- more had graduated high school and higher employment
Farrington’s risk factors:
- Low income and poor housing
- Living in run-down neighbourhoods
- High levels of hyperactivity and impulsiveness
- low school attainment
- Poor parental supervision
- Family conflict, single parent families, conflict with parents
(intervening in the ‘risk factors will lower offender rates)
Garland
- the development of social and community based crime prevention were characteristics of much wider shifts with the CJS
- traditional methods of crime prevention such as ‘eval welfarism’ (catch, punish, rehab) have been overtaken by a more complex model concerned with preventing crime by reassuring communities
- rehab has not been successful with 60-70% reoffending rates after prison
what are the 2 elements of the “Culture of Control”
- Adaptive response - leads gov to identify potential offenders and then intervene at an early age with programmes such as HomeStart
- Expressive Strategy - politicians are using crime for their own ends - key focus in to change public perception on crime + get them to believe that crime is declining, NOT on effective measures to limit crime
Actuarialism and SCCP
Feeley and Simon
‘new penology’ has developed in crime control
CJS seeks to ‘identify and manage unruly groups’ (rather than catch, punish and rehab) - known as ‘actualism’
there has been a movement in social control FROM controlling deviant behaviour TO controlling potentially deviant people - police can work out who is at greater risk of offending
leads to police patrolling working class, ethnic min areas - while priv. security firms police shopping centre, monitoring potential troublemakers, such as poor, young, homeless
Penetration into society
Foucalt and Cohen - risk of the rise of community safety has allowed the gov to diffuse their power through the community
public concern over crime allows Govs to intervene in much broader social activity
now, family, community and the school are all redefined as potential causes of crime
evaluating all 3 approaches
criminal focus
- generally only focus on low level/inter personal crimes –> tend to ignore crimes of the powerful and environmental crime
- the definition of the ‘crime problem’ is reflected in the priorities of politicians and agencies dealing with crime prevention
Whyte
- in the NW of England, police were targeting vehicle crime, burglary and drug related crime
- Environmental Agency notes that in the NW, there was a glut of environmental crimes by companies - included 2 companies being responsible for 40% of all the factory-produced cancerous chemicals in the UK each year
demonstrating the Police’s attention is on w/c, street, visible crime and ignores investigation into corp crime/ environmental crime
Criminal Justice System’s Role in Crime Control and Prevention
Garland - most of the 20th century had a focus on reforming the offender (rehab) - yet, since 1970s there has been a growing emphasis towards retributive justice with harsher punishment
New-born - criminals go their ‘just deserts’ by going to prison - reflected by a DOUBLING in the prison population between 170s and 2014
politicians have kept the ‘cracking down hard on crime’ rhetoric - to protect the public
concern that prison (expense) and rehab (re-offending rates) isn’t working - Crawford and Evans - movement away from crime reduction of the 1980s where we wanted to prosecute and punish retributively
shift away from causes of crime (left realist) to consequences of crime (right realist) such as social control, harsher punishment, measures to reduce opps for crime
Cohen - rise of community-based controls has simply cast the net of control over more people and increased range of sanctions available allows control to penetrate ever deeper
restorative justice processes leads to unpaid community service rather than imprisonment and the label of criminals–> which would drive them to deviant subcultures
Braithwaite - restorative justice is more effective when it involved ‘reintegrative shaming’ - offenders face victims and are publicly named and shamed - societally shame them into conformity
Does prison prevent crime:
- Right Realists - prison is a way of deterring offending by increasing costs of crime - however, whilst policies on being tough on crime were implemented - they only reduced crime by 5%
- Ministry of Justice - 47.5% of prisoners released re-offended in the same year and for juveniles it was 70!
- Social factors are not eliminated through imprisonment
- Rehab is not effective
- Stigmatisation/Master Status
Growth in incarceration
Garland
737/100,000 are in prison - this figure began a rapid rise since the 1970s and there are over 2 million prisoners in the US
Downes - the US prison system soaks up about 20-40% of the unemployed , thereby making capitalism look more successful
movement away from ‘penal warfare’ (as previously stated) into ‘tough on crime’ policies = more prisoners
the US is 5% of the worlds population and holds 25% of the world’s prisoners
Trends of incarceration
African Americans and Hispanics comprise 58% of all prisoners in 2008 yet they only make up 25% of the population
1 in 6 black men had been incarcerated as of 2001
contributing factors
African Americans represent 12% of monthly drug users but comprise 32% of persons arrested for drug possession
zero tolerance policies (because of problems of school violence) have adverse affects on black children
Effects of incarceration
jail reduces work time of young people over the next decade by 25-30% when compared with arrested youths who were not jailed
jails and prisons are recognised as settings where society’s infectious diseases are highly concentrated
Reasons why imprisonment is not an effective way
- High re-offend rate
- Poor rehab
- Expensive
- ‘Service-led’, safe havens
- Lack of control
- Goffman - Prisons have their own subcultures - training inmates into a self fulfilling prophecy master status
Alternatives to prison
increase in community-based control e.g curfews - yet increased numbers of this in custody
Cohen - rise of community-based controls has simply cast the net of control over more people + increasing range of sanctions available allows control to penetrate ever deeper into society
Theoretical Perspectives on the Role of Punishment - functionalism
Traditional society - Retributive - mechanical solidarity based on a strong collective conscience - strong punishment responses against wrongdoer
Modern Society - Restitutive Justice -organic solidarity based on interdependence on each independent person - aim is to restore things to how they were before the offence - strong punishment to express collective emotions
Erikson - ‘degredation ceremonies’ (dramatized) act to degrade the individual and reaffirm boundaries of society e.g James Bulger/Stephen Lawrence cases- public expression reinforces social solidarity
seen through courtroom shows such as Judge Judy in the US (UK doesn’t have many of these)
Durkheim - punishment doesn’t remove crime but maintains collective sentiments against it + shared norms and values of anti-criminals –> without it there would be anomie
Theoretical Perspectives on the Role of Punishment - marxism
punishment is a way of maintaining ruling class control by condemning anyone who challenges the system
rules are created by the r/c thus they are not caught or condemned
Althusser - prisons are a part of the repressive state apparatus and ideological state apparatus as they shape people’s minds into thinking capitalism is right (goes unchallenged)
forms of punishment reflect economic base of society as Rusche and Kircheimer argue each type of economy has its own corresponding penal system e.g money fines are impossible without a money economy
Melossi and Pavarini - imprisonment reflects capitalist relations of production - capitalism puts a price on the worker’s time, so too prisoners ‘do time’ for their crime
Theoretical Perspectives on the Role of Punishment - Right Realism
law is an important mechanism in social control and where this is weak crime occurs
punishment of prison acts as a deterrent to would-be criminals (based on Clarke’s rational choice theory)
focus on a ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards crime - tackling crime as it occurs rather than structural causes
focus on ‘alternative community based’ methods of punishment e.g tagging or curfews as these are less expensive than prison (this has become an issue in recent years with budgets for prisons decreasing and numbers of inmates increasing)
increase of those in prison doesn’t mean the system isn’t working - just emphasises people should take greater responsibility for their own actions or they will face punishment
Control and prevention - postmodernism
Foucalt - punishment has changed - study on ‘Disciple and Punish: the birth of the prison’ makes a contrast between 2 different forms of punishment: sovereign power and disciplinary power (more on next card)
Foucalt - disciplinary power took over from sovereign power simple because surveillance is more effective at controlling people e.g The Panoptician - Bentham (prison refromer) designed a prison with no doors but the knowledge of surveillance allowed for control
Disciplinary power of surveillance has increasingly been adopted by other institutions in contemporary society - aim to induce conformity through self-surveillance
Sovereign power - typical before 19th century - e.g bodily impairments + public execution –> shows in Elizabethan England (Faustus)
Disciplinary power - dominant from 19th century - governing the mind and body through government and surveillance
Control and prevention - postmodernism evaluation
Noris - whilst CCTV does reduce crime (in car parks) it has little effect on other crime and may even cause displacement
Gill and Loveday - few robbers etc are put off by CCTV - its real function may be to lull the owner into a false sense of security (it makes no real different
Foucalt exaggerates the extent of control - Goffman’s work on inmates in mental hospitals and prisons demonstrated that they were able to resist control
