crime prevention and control

Question 1

situational crime prevention

Answer 1

clarke - describes situational crime prevention as a pre-emptive approach that relies, not on improving society or its institutions, but on reducing opportunities for crime

three measures aimed at situational crime prevention:
- directed at specific crimes
- involve managing or altering the immediate environment of the crime
- aim at increasing the effort and risks of committing crime, and reducing the rewards

target hardening measures such as locking doors and windows, increase the effort a burglar needs to make, whilst cctv in shops increase the likelihood of shoplifters getting caught

felson - the port authority bus terminal in new york was poorly designed and provided opportunities for deviant conduct. the toilets were a setting for luggage thefts, rough sleeping, deug dealing and sexual activity. reshaping the physical environment reduced this, large sinks replaced with smaller sinks

Question 2

displacement

Answer 2

criticises situational crime prevention measures, they do not reduce crime, they simply displace it

chaiken - a crackdown on subway robberies in new york displaced them to the street above

forms of displacement:
- spatial
- temporal
- target
- tactical
- functional

switching to natural gas in the 1970s was successful because suicide rates from gassing had reduced to zero by 1997

Question 3

evaluation of situational crime prevention

Answer 3

only reduces certain crimes

focuses on opportunistic petty street crime and ignores harmful white collar and state crime

assumes criminals make rational calculations

ignores the root causes of crime, such as poverty or poor socialisation, making it difficult to develop long term strategies for crime reduction

Question 4

environmental crime prevention

Answer 4

wilson and kelling - leaving disorder such as graffiti untreated encourages crime

zero tolerance - proactively tackling the slightest sign of disorder, even if it isn’t criminal to halt neighbourhood decline

for example, in new york, a clean car program was introduced on the subway, in which cars were taken out of service immediately if they had graffiti on them, only returning once clean

Question 5

the perry school project

Answer 5

perry preschool in ypsilanti, michigan

an experimental group of 3 to 4 year olds were offered a two year intellectual enrichment programme, during which time the children also received weekly home visits

by age 40, they had significantly fewer lifetime arrests for violent crime, property crime, and drug, while more had graduated from high school and were in employment

for every dollar spent on the programme, $17 was saved on welfare, prison and other costs

Question 6

surveillance

Answer 6

‘the monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population of crime control’

it involves observing people’s behaviour to gather data about it

during the 14th century plague, communities had to nominate an individual to monitor and record the spread of the plague, the information being used to stop people from moving to uninfected area

Question 7

focault

Answer 7

sovereign power:
- control was asserted by inflicting disfiguring visible punishment on the body
- brutal emotional spectacle, such as a public execution

disciplinary power:
- a new system which sought to govern not just the body but the mind and soul - through surveillance
- one view is that bodily punishment disappeared from western society because people became more civilised and humane
- focault rejects this liberal view - disciplinary power replaced sovereign power because surveillance is more effective

the panopticon
- the prisoner in their cell is visible to the guards from the central watchtower, but the guards are not visible to the prisoners
- prisoners don’t know if they’re being watched or not
- this means they have to behave at all times in case they’re being watched, and so surveillance turns into self surveillance and self discipline

Question 8

evaluation of focault

Answer 8

the shift from sovereign power and corporal punishment to disciplinary power and imprisonment is less clear than he suggests

accused wrongly of assuming that expressive aspects of punishment disappear in modern society

exaggerates the extent of control - goffman shows how some inmates of prisons are able to resist controls

cctv cameras are a form of panopticism, however, norris found that it had little to no affect on crime rates

feminists - criticise cctv as an extension of the male gaze since it renders women more visible to the voyeurism of the male camera operator