Situational Crime Prevention RR

Question 1

Overview

Answer 1

Clarke (1992) describes situational crime prevention as a pre-emptive approach that focuses on reducing opportunities for crime in society. He identifies three features of measures aimed at situational crime prevention:

1. They are directed at specific crimes.
2. They involve managing or altering the immediate environment of the crime.
3. They aim at increasing the effort & risks of committing crime & reducing the rewards.

E.g. ‘target hardening’ measures such as locking doors & windows or having a burglar alarm increase the effort a burglar needs to make, while increasing surveillance in shops via CCTV or security guards increase the likelihood of shoplifters being caught. SCP like target hardening is attractive to policy makers because it potentially allows crime to be reduced through relatively cheap & simple initiatives.

Question 2

1

Answer 2

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 & benefits or a criminal opportunity before deciding whether to commit it. Felson (1998) argues that reshaping the physical environment to ‘design out’ crime has been proven to reduce crime rates.

He cites an example in New York City where a major bus station was redesigned in such a way that all areas were visible with better lighting, it was easier to keep clean (e.g. by using graffiti resistant stone walls) & smaller sinks were fitted in the toilets which made it harder for the homeless to wash in them

Question 3

Evaluation

Answer 3

• Works to some extent in reducing certain types of crime but often displaces crime rather than reducing it. If it is assumed that criminals act rationally, they will respond to target hardening simply by moving to where targets are softer. E.g. Chaiken et al (1974) found that a crackdown on subway robberies in New York merely displaced them to the streets above. Displacement can take a number of forms including moving elsewhere to commit the crime, committing it at a different time, choosing a different victim or method, etc.
• It tends to focus on opportunistic petty street crime. Marxists would say it ignores white-collar, corporate & state crime, which are more costly & harmful.
• This right realist approach assumes criminals make rational calculations. This seems unlikely in many crimes of violence, & crimes committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
• It ignores the root causes of crime, such as poverty or poor socialisation which make it difficult to develop long-term strategies for crime reduction & prevention.
• CCTV surveillance has been criticised for being biased & relatively ineffective in actually preventing crime – e.g. camera operators focus disproportionately on young males