Crime 4.8 - Prevention, Punishment, Control Flashcards
Situational Crime Prevention
CLARKE describes SITUATIONAL CRIME PREVENTION as a pre-emptive approach that simply looks at how the opportunities to commit crime can be reduced.
3 features of SCP
- DIRECTED AT SPECIFIC CRIMES
- MANAGING OR ALTERING THE IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENT OF THE CRIME
- INCREASING RISKS OF CRIME AND REDUCING THE REWARDS
Who advocates for SCP?
Right Realists
What theory does SCP link to from Right Realism?
Rational Choice Theory and Target Hardening
New York Port Authority Bus Terminal (Example of Situational Crime Prevention)
Poorly designed and offered opportunity for deviant behaviour. To tackle this they redesigned the environment and ‘designed crime out’ e.g. large sinks where homeless people were bathing were replaced by small hand basins.
AO3 of SCP
- Displaces crime
- Focuses on street crimes
- Assumes criminals make rational choices
- Ignores the root cause e.g. poverty or poor socialisation
5 ways SCP displaces crime according to Chaiken
- Spatial
- Temporal
- Target
- Tactical
- Functional
Environmental Crime Prevention (ECP) - Wilson and Kelling
Communities have to be kept in order through a policy of ZERO TOLERANCE of any petty crime and by maintaining the physical environment.
Who advocates for ECP?
Right Realists
What theories from Right Realism does ECP link to?
Broken Windows and Zero Tolerance
New York example for ECP
implemented a Zero Tolerance approach to crime both petty and
more serious. They had a clean car approach on the subway meaning that any carriage with graffiti was taken out of action immediately and cleaned up, this resulted largely in graffiti being removed from the subway altogether.
Between 1993 and 1996 the crime rate fell significantly and the murder rate
fell by 50%.
AO3 of ECP and Zero Tolerance
- NYPD benefitted from 7,000 officers
- General decrease in crime across major cities
- There was a decrease in availability of crack cocaine
- From 1994 there were more jobs created which meant less unemployment
So unclear on how far zero tolerance actually impacted the fall in crime
Social & Community Crime Prevention (SCCP)
Social and community crime prevention strategies place the emphasis firmly on the potential offender and their social context. The aim of these strategies is to remove the conditions that pre-dispose individuals to commit crime in the first place.
Which theory advocates for SCCP?
Left Realists
What do LR and SCCP think need to be done?
Tackle the root/ structural causes (relative deprivation, marginalisation and subcultures) – namely poverty, housing and
unemployment.
Perry Pre-School Project (Evidence for SCCP)
Disadvantaged, black youngsters part of an intellectual enrichment programme and these grew up to be more successful and less prone to crime than those who weren’t - showing importance of social factors such as education in predicting criminality.
AO3 of SCCP
- Take for granted the nature and definition of crime placing their focus on low level and interpersonal crimes of violence.
- Disregard environmental crimes and crimes of the powerful
- Whyte found the above in his survey of 26 crime and disorder partnerships in the North West
Key theorist for surveillance?
Michel Foucault
Surveillance - Sovereign Power
During the 19th century the monarch had
control over people. Punishment was public through execution,
branding, limb amputations. Complete control over the body.
Surveillance - Disciplinary Power
Dominant after the 19th century this
involves not only control through our body but more
importantly through the mind and soul. This is done through
SURVEILLANCE.
Surveillance - Panopticon
Foucault refers to the PANOPTICAN which was a design for a prison in which all prisoners’ cells are visible from a
CENTRAL WATCH TOWER, but the guards are not visible to the prisoners.
Impact of the Panopticon Prison
SELF-SURVEILLANCE or SELF-DISCIPLINE.
AO3 of Foucault and Surveillance
- The shift from sovereign and corporal punishment o disciplinary power is less clear than he suggests
e.g. the US, in some states they use both as they still execute people. - FOUCAULT assumes expressive (emotional) aspects of punishment disappear.
- FOUCAULT exaggerates the extent of control e.g. GOFFMAN shows how some inmates resist control
even in such controlled environments, this is the same in mental hospitals. - CCTV cameras are a form of panopticism yet NORRIS found that whilst CCTV reduced crime in car
parks it had no effect on other crime – it may just cause displacement - Use of CCTV assumes criminals will be put off by them, research shows however that few are
deterred. - Feminists see CCTV as an extension of the ‘male gaze’ as it renders women visible to voyeurism.
Mathieson - Synoptic Surveillance
The many can now monitor the few via the media, he calls this the panopticon where everybody can watch everybody.
Haggerty and Erikson - Surveillant Assemblages
Surveillance now manipulates virtual objects. E.g. CCTV can now
be used alongside facial recognition software – these become ‘surveillant assemblages’.
Ditton - Labelling and Surveillance
CCTV operators make discriminatory judgements
e.g. there is a massive disproportionate of black
males targeted by operators for no other reason
than their membership of that social group.
Feeley and Simon - Actuarial Justice and Risk Management
There is a new technology of power replacing disciplinary power:
It focuses on groups
Not interested in rehabilitation but
prevention
It calculates risk ‘actuarial analysis’
Lyon - Social Sorting and Categorical Suspicion
Social sorting is about categorising people so they can be treated
different according to level of risk e.g. more CCTV in Muslim areas as part of counter-terrorism.
Deterrence - Punishment
–Punishing the offender, making an example of them may discourage future offending for the
individual and public at large (acts as a deterrent).
Rehabilitation - Punishment
Idea that punishment can be used to reform offenders includes education and training in order to allow offenders to ‘earn an honest living’ on release.
Incapacitation - Punishment
This physically removes the opportunity to offend this can include imprisonment, execution, cutting off hands and chemical castration.
