Prevention and Control

Question 1

What is situational crime prevention?

Answer 1

• Making adaptations to specifc areas to make it harder for the criminal to commit the crime
• This can be done through target hardening such as shutters and designing out features which encourage criminality
• This can also be done through increasing surveillance through CCTV, security guards and neighbourhood watch
• Much crime is opportunistic so if you reduce the opporutnity to commit the crime and increase the risk of getting caught, you reduce the crime rate

Question 2

What is an evaluation of situational crime prevention?

Answer 2

• Anyone can implement them as they are cheap and easier
• CCTV reduces crime by 16% overall
• Newburn points out an obvious link between car security measures and reduced car theft
• Lyng argues that thrill is a cause of crime therefore an extra challenge and level of risk
• Focusses on things that may not be criminal such as rough sleeping
• Bauman argued it would create fortress cities where people stayed for protection in these safe towns rather than travel far
• It only prevents opportunistic street crime rather than protection from corporate or state crime
• Marxists argue it is to control the working class but not the ruling class

Question 3

What is environmental crime prevention?

Answer 3

• Focuses on formal and informal social control to prevent crime
• Based on Wilson and Kelling’s broken windows theory
• This community based approach argues crime occurs where there has been a loss of formal and informal social control
• Low-level antisocial behaviour should be prevented then more serious crime can be prevented
• The government should find ways of strenghtening local communities such as zero tolerance and ASBO’s

Question 4

What is an evaluation of environmental crime prevention?

Answer 4

• There is more emphasis on the role of formal control through the police
• There is not enough evidence to support the broken windows theory
• New York Zero Tolerance suggests the policies work to reduce crime however it could be considered coincidental due to other factors being resposible for the decline in crime
• It is more expensive as it takes more police to patrol and clamp down on anti-social behaviour
• Reiner argues police would be better deployed focussing on serious hot spots rather than minor forms of anti-social behaviour
• ## Gives the police more power to label and lead to criminal careers

Question 5

What is social and community intervention?

Answer 5

• Left realism believe that crime is highest in areas which suffer relative deprivation and marginalisation
• Governments should focus on tackling marginalisation and relative deprivation through community intervention projects
• Programmes such as after school programmes, boot camps and alternative education programmes have been proven to be effective at reducing crime
• They involve local councils to work with members of the local community to provide an opportunity for young people at risk of offending
• They do this through intervention and community in combating crime
• Farrington found various risk factors which correlated with crime
• Examples of this working is the Perry School Project and the Troubled Families Initative

Question 6

What is Neighbourhood Watch?

Answer 6

• They are part of both Left and Right Realist strategies
• They are community groups which work together to implement crime prevention measures in their local communities

Question 7

What do post modernists believe about community prevention

Answer 7

• Communities tend to be unstable, short lived and fleeting therefore the concept of a local community is irrelevant to many people because society is not made up of communities but networks of weaker connections
• These networks mean we become susceptible to a range of new crimes which take place in a virtual space so local communities can prevent such crimes

Question 8

What is an evaluation of social and community crime reduction?

Answer 8

• This focusses on tackling the root of crime
• Marxists argue they tackle deprivation but do not tackle underlying structural inequality
• They target the working class rather that elite crime
• Foucault and Garland interpret these as strategies about surveillance and control rather than real social change