Control, punishment and victims Flashcards
How does Clarke describe situational crime prevention?
‘As a pre-emptive approach that relies not on improving society or its functions but simply on reducing opportunities for crime’
What 3 features does Clarke identify of measures aimed at situational crime prevention?
- They are directed at specific crimes
- They involve managing or altering the immediate environment of the crime
- They aim at increasing the effort and risks of committing crime and reducing the rewards
What is ‘target hardening’?
- Measures such as locking doors and windows increase the effort a burglar needs to make
What is the underlying situational crime prevention approach?
Is an ‘opportunity’ or rational choice theory of crime
- This is view that criminals act rationally, weighing up the costs and benefits of a crime opportunity before committing it
What was Felson’s situational crime prevention strategy in NYC?
- The Port Authority Bus Terminal was poorly designed and provided opportunities for deviant conduct
- Re shaping the physical environment to ‘design crime out’ greatly reduced such activity
What is a main criticism of situational crime prevention?
- They do not reduce crime but simply displace it, if criminals act rationally presumably they will respond to target hardening simply my moving to where targets are softer
What did Chaiken et al find regarding displacement?
- Found that a crackdown on subway robberies in NY merely displaced them to the street above
What are the 5 forms of displacement?
- Spatial
- Temporal
- Target
- Tactical
- Functional
What is the most striking example of successful situational measures?
- Is not about crime but suicide, half of all deaths in Britain where from the result of gassing
- They replaced coal gas with less toxic natural gas and suicide rates fallen to near zero, there was no displacement
What are 3 other criticisms of situational crime prevention?
- Focuses on opportunistic petty crime and ignores white collar/corporate crime
- Assumes criminals make rational calculations
- Ignores the root causes of crime such as poverty and poor socialisation
What was Wilson and Kelling’s article, Broken Windows about? How did this link to environmental crime prevention?
- Use the phrase ‘broken windows’ to stand for all various signs of disorder and lack of concern for others
- They argue that leaving broken windows unrepaired sends out a signal that no one care (lack of social control)
What is Wilson’s and Kelling key idea of controlling crime?
- An environmental improvement strategy, any broken windows must be repaired immediately
- A zero tolerance policing strategy
What is the evidence for Wilson’s and Kelling approach on crime prevention?
- ‘Clean Car Program’ was instituted on the subway as well as removing graffiti and a crackdown on ‘squeegee merchants’
- Between 1993-1996 there was a significant fall in crime including a 50% drop in homicide rates
What are some criticisms of the evidence of zero policing?
- There was a general decline in crime rate in major cities at the time including where police did not adopt a zero tolerance policy
- Decline in the availability of crack cocaine
What is the role of social and community prevention strategies?
- Place an emphasis on the potential offender and their social context
- Aim is to remove the conditions that predispose individuals to crime in the first place
What was the Perry pre-school project?
- One of the best known community programmes aimed at reducing criminality for disadvantaged black children who were offered a 2-year intellectual enrichment programme
- A longitudinal study followed the children’s progress and it showed striking differences to the control group, by age 40 they had significant fewer lifetime arrests and more graduated from high school
What’s the difference between sovereign power and disciplinary power by Foucault?
Sovereign power- typically the period before the 19th century, the monarch had absolute power over people and their bodies, control was asserted by inflicting visible punishment
Disciplinary power - became dominant from the 19th century, control took a form of governing the the mind or ‘soul’ through surveillance
How does Foucault illustrate disciplinary power through the Panopticon?
- From the tower, a guard can see every cell and inmate but the inmates can’t see into the tower, so prisoners will never know whether or not they are being watched
- As a result they have to behave at all times as if they’re being watched
What is the ‘dispersal of discipline’?
- Disciplinary power has now dispersed throughout society, penetrating every social institution
- The Panopticon is now a model of how power operates in society as a whole
What are some criticisms of Foucault?
- Overestimates the power of surveillance to change behaviour, as some people resist controls
- CCTV is a form of panopticism, Norris argues it doesn’t reduce crime but displaces it
- Can be seen as an extension of the ‘male gaze’
How does Mathiesen criticise Foucault?
- Foucault’s account only tells half the story
- In late modernity, there is a significant increase in surveillance from below, which he calls the ‘synopticon’ – where everybody watches everybody else
According to Thompson how does surveillance control powerful groups?
- Politicians fear the media’s surveillance of them which may uncover damaging information
- This acts as a form of social control over their activities
What is surveillant assemblages suggested by Haggerty and Ericson?
- CCTV footage can be analysed using facial recognition software
- They suggest we are moving towards a world in which data from different technologies can be combined to create a sort of ‘data double’
How does actuarial justice and risk management differ from Foucault disciplinary power?
- Focuses on groups rather than individuals
- Not interest in rehabilitation but preventing them from offending
- It uses calculations of risks of ‘actuarial analysis’ by looking for ‘risk factors’ of likely offenders
