Crime prevention and control(Topic 9)

Question 1

Situational crime prevention

Answer 1

A pre emotive approach that relies not on improving society or its institutions but on reducing opportunity for crime

• Directed at specific crimes
• Managing/altering immediate environment of crime
• Increase the efforts and risk of committing crime

Question 2

Example

Answer 2

Target hardening measure such as locking doors and windows increasing the effort the burglar needs to make
Increased surveillance with CCTV increasing likelihood of shop lifter being caught

Question 3

Approach

Answer 3

Opportunity/ rational choice theory of crime which views that criminal as rationally weighing up costs and benefits before committing a crime
Contrasts with theories that stress root causes such as capitalism

Question 4

Displacement

Answer 4

A criticism is that it does not remove crime only displace it by moving criminals to areas with softer targets
Types : spatial, temporal, target, tactical, functional

Question 5

Evaluation

Answer 5

• Focuses on opportunistic petty street crime ,ignoring white collar, corporate and state crime
• Assumes criminals make rational calculations which is unlikely in crimes of violence

Question 6

Environmental crime prevention

Answer 6

Wilson + Kelling use ‘broken windows’ to refer to the signs of disorder and lack of concern in neighbourhoods e.g graffiti, littering arguing leaving this unprepared sends out signals that no one cares

Question 7

Zero tolerance policy

Answer 7

Their solution is to respond to all disorder firstly by being repaired then making the police adopt a zero tolerance policy tackling even the slight sign of disorder

Question 8

Support

Answer 8

Great success of the strategy in New York e.g the ‘clean car programme’ on the subway which removed cars with graffiti on them returning them clean which resulted in graffiti being removed from the subway

Question 9

Social and community crime prevention

Answer 9

Places emphasis on the potential offender and their social context so the aim is to remove the conditions that create crimes to commit such as poverty, unemployment. Creating social reform programmes

Question 10

Perry pre school project

Answer 10

Project for disadvantaged black children in Michigan - experimental group of 3 to 4 year olds were offered a two year intellectual enrichment programme
By age 40 they had fewer lifetime arrests , more had graduated and were employment