Crime Prevention And Control Flashcards
key things in crime control, punishment and victims
Crime prevention and control
Surveillance
Punishment
Victims of Crime
Three main crime prevention strategies
Right Realist:
Situational crime prevention - reduce the opportunities to commit crime
2. Environmental crime prevention - improve the environment
• Left Realist:
3. Social and Community crime prevention - improve social conditions and community ties
Situational crime prevention sociologist
Clarke
Situational crime prevention
Ron Clarke (1992) describes situational crime prevention as a pre-emptive approach that relies, not on improving society or its institutions, but simply on reducing opportunities for crime’.
Three features of situational crime prevention
He identifies three features 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.
Types of situational crime prevention
For example, ‘target hardening’ measures such as locking doors and windows increase the effort a burglar needs to make, while increased surveillance in shops via CCTV or security guards increase the likelihood of shoplifters being caught.
Underlying situational crime prevention approaches is an ‘Opportunity’ or rational choice theory of crime. This is the view that criminals act rationally, weighing up the costs and benefits of a crime opportunity before deciding whether to commit it. Clarke argues that most theories offer no realistic solutions to crime. The most obvious thing to do, he argues, is to focus on the immediate crime situation, since this is where scope for prevention is greatest. Most crime is opportunistic, so we need to reduce the opportunities.
Study of situational crime prevention
Marcus Felson (2002) gives an example of a situational crime prevention strategy. The Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City was poorly designed and provided opportunities for deviant conduct. For example, the toilets were a setting for luggage thefts, rough sleeping, drug dealing and sexual activity. Re-shaping the physical environment to ‘design crime out’ greatly reduced such activity. For example, large sinks, in which homeless people were bathing, were replaced by small hand basins.
Critic of situational crime prevention
Displacement
Displacement as a critic of situational crime prevention
One criticism of situational crime prevention measures is that they do not reduce crime; they simply displace it. After all, if criminals are acting rationally, presumably they will respond to target hardening simply by moving to where targets are softer. For example, Chaiken et al (1974) found that a crackdown on subway robberies in New York merely displaced them to the streets above.
Forms of displacement
Displacement can take several forms:
• Spatial - moving elsewhere to commit the crime.
• Temporal - committing it at a different time.
• Target - choosing a different victim.
• Tactical - using a different method.
• Functional - committing a different type of crime.
Evaluation of situational crime prevention
Situational crime prevention works to some extent in reducing certain kinds of crime. However, with most measures there is likely to be some displacement.
• It tends to focus on opportunistic petty street crime. It ignores white collar, corporate and state crime, which are more costly and harmful.
• It assumes criminals make rational calculations. This seems unlikely in many crimes of violence, and crimes committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
• It ignores the root causes of crime, such as poverty or poor socialisation. This makes it difficult to develop long-term strategies for crime reduction.
Environmental crime prevention sociologist
James Q. Wilson and George Kelling’s (1982) article, Broken Windows
Environmental crime prevention
Wilson and Kelling use the phrase ‘broken windows to stand for all the various signs of disorder and lack of concern for others that are found in some neighbourhoods.
This includes undue noise, graffiti, begging, dog fouling, littering, vandalism and so on. They argue that leaving broken windows unrepaired, tolerating aggressive begging etc, sends out a signal that no one cares.
In such neighbourhoods, there is an absence of both formal social control (the police) and informal control (the community). The police are only concerned with serious crime and turn a blind eye to petty nuisance behaviour, while respectable members of the community feel intimidated and powerless. Without remedial action, the situation deteriorates, tipping the neighbourhood into a spiral of decline. Respectable people move out (if they can) and the area becomes a magnet for deviants.
Solution to environmental crime prevention
Zero tolerance policing
wilson and Kelling’s key idea is that disorder and the absence of controls leads to crime, Their solution is to crack down on any disorder, using a twofold strategy. First, an environmental improvement strategy; any broken window must be repaired immediately, abandoned cars towed without delay etc, otherwise more will follow and the neighbourhood will be on the slide.
Secondly, the police must adopt a zero tolerance policing strategy. Instead of merely reacting to crime, they must proactively tackle even the slightest sign of disorder, even it it is not criminal. This will halt neighbourhood decline and prevent serious crime taking root.
Evidence of zero tolerance
Great successes have been claimed for zero tolerance policing, especially in New York (where Kelling was an adviser to the police). For example, a ‘Clean Car Program’ was instituted on the subway, in which cars were taken out of service immediately if they had any graffiti on them, only returning once clean. As a result, graffiti was largely removed from the subway. Between 1993 and 1996, there was a significant fall in crime in the city, including a 50% drop in the homicide rate - from 1,927 to 986.
Eval of zero tolerance
However, it is not clear how far zero tolerance was the cause of the improvements.
• The NYPD benefited from 7,000 extra officers.
• There was a general decline in the crime rate in major US cities at the time - including ones where police did not adopt a zero tolerance policy.
• The early 1990s had seen a major recession and high unemployment, but from 1994 many new jobs were being created.
• There was a decline in the availability of crack cocaine.
• While deaths from homicides fell sharply, attempted homicides remained high. It has been suggested that the fall in the murder rate owed more to improved medical emergency services than policing.
Nonetheless, zero tolerance has been very influential globally, including the UK, where it has influenced antisocial behaviour policies.
Social and community crime prevention
social and community prevention strategies place the emphasis firmly on the potential offender ares their social context. The aim of these strategies is to remove the conditions that predispose individuals to crime in the first place. These are longer-term strategies, since they attempt to tackle the root causes of offending, rather than simply removing opportunities for crime.
Because the causes of crime are often rooted in social conditions such as poverty, unemployment and poor housing, more general social reform programmes addressing these issues may have a crime prevention role, even if this is not their main focus. For example, policies to promote full employment are likely to reduce crime as a ‘side effect.
Study of social crime prevention
Perry pre school project
Perry pre school project
One of the best-known community programmes aimed at reducing criminality is the experimental Perry pre-school project for disadvantaged Black children in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
An experimental group of 3-4 year olds was offered a two-year intellectual enrichment programme, during which time the children also received weekly home visits.
A longitudinal study followed the children’s subsequent progress. It showed striking differences with a control group who had not undergone the programme. By age 40, they had significantly fewer lifetime arrests for violent crime, property crime and drugs, while more had graduated from high school and were in employment. It was calculated that for every dollar spent on the programme, $17 were saved on welfare, prison and other costs.
Eval of social crime prevention
• Marxists argue situational crime tends to focus on petty crime
• Left Realists argue it fails to address the causes of crime
• Strategy has been more successful preventing suicides
• Replacing toxic household gas of 1960s with less toxic gas of 1997
Meaning of surveillance
Surveillance can be defined as:
the monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population or crime control. It therefore involves observing people’s behaviour to gather data about it, and typically, using the data to regulate, manage or ‘correct’ their behaviour.
Sociologist behind surveillance
Foucault
Foucaults study
Birth of prison
Foucault and the birth of prisons
Michel Foucault’s (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison opens with a striking contrast between two different forms of punishment, which he sees as examples of sovereign power and disciplinary power