Topic 9- Crime Prevention Strategies

Question 1

what are the 3 types of crime prevention strategies?

Answer 1

• situational crime prevention
• environmental crime prevention
• social and community crime prevention

Question 2

which sociologist is linked to situational crime prevention?

Answer 2

clarke

Question 3

what are the 3 characteristics of reducing opportunities for crime?

Answer 3

• directed at specific crimes
• managing or altering immediate environment of crime
• increasing effort and risks of committing crimes and reducing rewards

Question 4

what theory underpins situational crime prevention?

Answer 4

rational choice theory

Question 5

what is rational choice theory?

Answer 5

• idea that criminals make a decision about the costs and benefits of the crime before committing it
• they will only commit if the benefits outweigh the costs

Question 6

what does situational crime prevention assume about crime?

Answer 6

opportunistic

Question 7

what is an example of situational crime prevention?

Answer 7

• target hardening like locking windows and doors, increased surveillance like CCTV, making petrol pay by card only instead of cash (reduces reward)

Question 8

what is an example of situational crime prevention in NYC?

Answer 8

Felson and bus terminal
* poorly designed and provided opportunity for criminal behaviour
* theft, rough sleeping, homosexual liasons
* they reshaped the physical environment to stop the crimes
* large sinks got swapped to single hand basins so homeless people couldnt bathe in them

Question 9

give 4 evaluations of situational crime prevention

Answer 9

• displacement
• focus on opportunitic street crime, ignores white collar
• assumes criminals make rational decisions, ignores the fact drugs or alcohol could have influenced them
• ignores root causes of crime e.g. poverty and poor socialisation

Question 10

what are the 5 types of displacement and explain them

Answer 10

• spatial- moving somewhere else to commit the crime
• temporal- committing it at a different crime
• target- choosing a different victim
• tactical- using a different method
• functional- committing a different type of crime

Question 11

what theory and sociologists are associated with environmental crime prevention?

Answer 11

• wilson and kelling
• broken window theory

Question 12

what is the broken window theory?

Answer 12

visible signs of crime, antisocial behavior and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime

Question 13

what is an example of an environmental crime prevention strategy?

Answer 13

zero tolerance policing

Question 14

who’s theory is 0 tolerance policing and what is it?

Answer 14

• Wilson and Kelling’s
• idea that disorder and the absence of control leads to crime. Their solution is to crack down on any disorder

Question 15

what is the evidence of environmental crime prevention in New York?

explain what it is

Answer 15

• Kelling’s Clean Car Program on the subway in New York
• state would remove carriage if it had graffitti on and only return when was clean
• did it until the point that people did not graffitti in them anymore

Question 16

give 4 evaluations of enviromental crime prevention and zero tolerance

Answer 16

• There were also 7,000 extra officers deployed in New York, which may be the real reason why crimes were reduced.
• There was a general decline in the crime rate in major US cities at the time – including ones where police did not adopt a zero tolerance policy.
• There was a decline in the availability of crack cocaine so less opportunities for crime to take place.
• While deaths from homicides fell sharply, attempted homicides remained high. It’s been argued that the fall in the murder rate owed more to improved medical emergency services than policing.

Question 17

what is social and community crime prevention?

Answer 17

• place emphasis firmly on the potential offender and their social context
• remove the conditions that predispose individuals to crime in the first place.
• These are longer term strategies, since they attempt to tackle the root cause of offending

Question 18

what is the evidence of social and community crime prevention?

Answer 18

• perry pre school project
• The project targeted a small sample of 3-4 year-old black children who participated in an intellectual enrichment programme.
• They were compared to a control group who were not part of the programme.
• They were more likely to:
  Graduate from high school.
  Be in stable employment.
  Not be in prison.

Question 19

what are evaluations of social and community crime prevention?

Answer 19

• only tackles crime by the working class
• Marxists would argue that even where such programmes have produced some limited improvements in social conditions, they do nothing to tackle the structural inequality inherent in the capitalist system.
• Some (such as Michel Foucault) would argue that these sorts of schemes really provide the state with new opportunities to put the public under surveillance and are about control and power rather than crime prevention.
• things like perry pre shcool project take time and are expensive