crime prevention + control Flashcards
CLARK - situational crime prevention
- relies on reducing opportunities for crime
- involves managing/altering the environment of the crime
- increasing the effort and risks while reducing the rewards
- e.g. anti climb paint, alarms, CCTV etc
- target hardening measures: locks, CCTV, security guards
- supports the idea that crriminals think logically - weight up costs and benefits
- most criminal acts are opportunistic - need to reduce the opportunities
FELSON - example of SCP strategy
- port authority bus in new york
- badly designed - toilets idea for luggage theft, drug dealing, rough sleeping, and drug taking
- redesigning the building reduced the opportunity to commit crime
criticisms of situational crime prevention
- no reduction - criminals act rationally and adopt different strategies
- spatial - move elsewhere
- temporal - committing crimes at different times
- target - changing victims
- tactical - use different methods
- functional - commit different crimes
- ignores white collar crime
- not all crime is rational - e.g. drunken behaviour
- ignores root causes of crime - poverty, educational failure etc
- CCTV camera operators may look for certain stereotypes
environmental crime prevention
WILSON AND KELLING - broken windows study
- right realism
- looked at social and physical deterioration in neighborhoods
- no sense of community - police turn a blind eye to petty nuisance behaviour so the situation gets worse
solutions are:
- environment improvement - stop begging, alcohol free zones, remove all signs of deterioration, hostile architecture
- zero tolerance policing - more arrests, more stop and searches
evidence of environmental crime prevention:
- these policies have shown great success
- in NYC carriages were taken off the subway as soon as graffiti appeared - tackled anti-social behaviour
- this approach was also applied to the citys precincts - serious reduction in crime there too
evaluation: did environmental crime prevention policies work?
- NYPD benefitted from 7,000 new officers
- most cities experienced a decline in crime - even those not involved in zero tolerance policies
- 1994 recession coming to an end - more jobs available
- decline in the availability of cocaine
- homicides decreased - attempted homicides remained high - improved medical services helped to save victims
difference between environmental and situational crime prevention
environmental crime prevention focuses on altering the built and natural environment to reduce crime opportunities
while situational crime prevention concentrates on modifying specific situations or environments where crime occurs to make it more difficult or less rewarding
social and community crime prevention - left realism
- focuses on offenders / potential offenders
- long term strategies to attempt to tackle the root causes of crime, such as poverty and unemployment
- social reform programmes to reduce crime
what is the perry pre-school project experiment
- michigan usa - experimental group of 3-4yrs
- two year intellectual enrichment programme
- longitudinal study
- by the age of 40 most children had not been arrested and were now in employment
- every dollar spent on the programme saved at least 17 dollars on welfare, prison costs
- non-programme group - 55% had been arrested by age 40
surveillance as social control
- surveillance involves monitoring behaviour for control
- oberserving people to gather data - then using this data to control people
- made easier through technology - CCTV, numberplate recognition, electronic tagging
- data passes that collate information from various sources to produce profiles of groups
- digital footprint - traces people leave behind online
FOUCALT - how punishment has changed
- abolished death penalty in 1965
- most severe punishment is a life sentence
- from public spectacles to civilised methods
- these forms of punishment relate to societies power structures
- physical punishments used to demonstrate power of monarch
- as monach’s power declined, disciplinary power was introduced, this involves control by surveillance
FOUCALT - sovereign power
- before 19th century
- based on inflicting visible pain on the body
- emotional spectacle
FOUCALT - disciplinary power
- after 19th century
- done through surveillance
- controls not just the body, but mind and soul
- more effective
FOUCALT - panopticon
- design for prisons - all cells are visible to guards, who are not visible to prisoners
- self-surveillance: do not know if they are being watched
- other institutions (school, factories, mental asylums) have adopted this
- disciplinary power has infiltrated every part of society
criticisms of FOUCALT
- assumes that the expressive, emotional aspect of punishment has dissapeared
- overestimates power of surveillance: dosen’t stop crime, just helps solve it
what are CCTV cameras a form of?
- form of panopticism
- we are never sure wether they are recording
- not necessarily effective in preventing crime
GILL AND LOVEDAY (feminists) - CCTV
- argue most burglars, shoplifters, fraudsters are not put off by them
- their function is ideological - makes people feel safter
- contribute to male gaze - women are more visible to the voyeurism of male camera operators
later surveillance theories (synoptic surveillance)
THOMPSON + MACCAHILL
- social media allows the many to see the few (bottoms up)
- synopicon - where everybody watches everybody
- THOMPSON - powerful groups/politicians are fearful of the media uncovering info about them
- videocameras on phones
- MACCAHILL - this cannot reverse hierarchies as police have the power to confiscate phones
HAGGERTY + ERICSON - manipulation of digital data
- surveillance now manipulates data
- moved towards combining technologies into powerful surveillance assemblages e.g. CCTV using facial recognition
FEELY + SIMON - actuarial justice/risk management
- ‘technology of power’ is emerging
differs from foucault:
1. focuses on groups
2. not interested in rehabilitating, but preventing offenders
3. uses calculations of risk
- argue this approach is increasingly used
- airports screen passengers before they come into an airport
- awarded points based on gender, age, ethnicity, convictions - the more point, the more likely you are to be stopped at customs
DAVID LYON - social sorting and categorical suspicion
- purpose of sorting is to be able to categorise people so they can be treated differently based on risk
- subjects people to ‘categorical suspicion’ - become suspects simply because they are a certain age, ethnicity etc
- e.g. 2010 west midlands police saught to introduce counter-terrorism scheme around two mainly muslim suburbs of Birmingham with 150 surveillance cameras
NORRIS + ARMSTRONG - labelling and surveillance
- found CCTV operators target young black males based on racist stereotypes
- creates self-fulfilling prophecy
- criminalization of black youths is increased because their offences are being observed on camera
- criminalization of other social groups is being ignored - not observed on camera
