Perspectives on Crime Reduction

Tim Hope

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351744454
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2000: The papers in this volume are concerned with the prevention of crime. Like other books in the International Library, the text is intended primarily for reference by those who need to reflect upon what criminology has had to say about important, contemporary concerns of criminal policy. The papers present a kind of history of ideas which together trace the emergence of some key components of contemporary thinking about reducing crime.

Part I

Frameworks

[1]

CRIME & DELINQUENCY

July 1976

A Conceptual Model of Crime Prevention

PAUL J. BRANTINGHAM

Associate Professor, School of Criminology, Florida State University

FREDERIC L. FAUST

Associate Professor, School of Criminology, Florida State University

Crime prevention is the professed mission of every agency found within the American criminal justice system. In practice, the term “prevention” seems to be applied confusingly to a wide array of contradictory activities. This confusion can be avoided through the use of a conceptual model that defines three levels of prevention: (1) primary prevention, directed at modification of criminogenic conditions in the physical and social environment at large; (2) secondary prevention, directed at early identification and intervention in the lives of individuals or groups in criminogenic circumstances; and (3) tertiary prevention, directed at prevention of recidivism. The use of such a conceptual model helps to clarify current crime prevention efforts, suggests fruitful directions for future research by identifying current lacunae in practice and in the research literature, and may ultimately prove helpful in addressing the seemingly endless debate between advocates of “punishment” and advocates of “treatment.”

PREVENTION, probably the most overworked and least understood concept in contemporary criminology, might be defined simply as any activity, by an individual or a group, public or private, that precludes the incidence of one or more criminal acts. But caution is warranted here, for the simplicity is deceptive. Can crime prevention be logically conceived to encompass such divergent actions as long-term incarceration and pretrial diversion from the justice system? Solitary confinement and remedial reading instruction? The improvement of automotive antitheft devices and the development of neighborhood recreation centers? Or psychosurgery and the levying of fines? Considering the goal definition of crime prevention, the answer might well be “yes.” But where means are concerned, the matter is heavily clouded by definitional ambiguity and theoretical contradiction.

The purpose of the following discussion, then, is threefold: (1) to examine briefly the philosophical roots and related definitional issues of crime prevention; (2) to outline a conceptual framework that will provide a more useful understanding of crime prevention; and (3) to specify the most fruitful direction for the development of theory, research, and programing in crime prevention. Considering the present state of competing and contradictory views on the prevention of criminal behavior, we judge this to be a timely endeavor.

Punishment, Treatment, and Crime Prevention

Punishment is a persistent problem for social theorists: its definition is elusive and its justification is debatable.¹ Nevertheless, a definition of the standard case of punishment, roughly acceptable to utilitarians, seems to have evolved from the work of Antony Flew.² Under this definition, punishment is (1) a painful or unpleasant consequence (2) intentionally imposed by other persons (3) upon an offender (4) for his offense against legal rules (5) under authority of the legal system against which the offense was committed.³ The paramount utilitarian justification for the imposition of punishment has been that it will prevent crime.⁴

Recent scholarship has shown, however, that the ethical issues involved in the application of painful or unpleasant consequences to individual men by agents of legal systems cannot properly be circumscribed by the concept of punishment. Troublesome children, retarded people, madmen, and drug abusers are all currently subject to treatment through legal process at the hands of what Kittrie has called the “therapeutic state. “⁵ The actual consequences accruing to people being treated differ very little from the consequences accruing to people being punished.

Herbert Packer has observed that punishment and treatment can be distinguished primarily by the purpose for which the consequence is imposed: crime prevention or retribution, or both, in the case of punishment; social protection or individual betterment, or both, in the case of treatment.⁶ But that distinction blurs when social protection is equated with prevention of social harms (including crimes) in the more aggressive literature of deterministic criminology.⁷ This blurring of a weak distinction increases in many legislative formulations. “Prevention of harm to self or others,” for instance, is the seventh most frequently mandated ground for exercise of juvenile court jurisdiction in American juvenile court legislation.⁸ The British Mental Health Act of 1959 provides for compulsory hospital commitment of the retarded, psychopathic, or mentally ill person in the interest of his health or safety, or for the protection of others.⁹

Though punishment and treatment are generally regarded as closely related concepts, one common conceptual tie has not been developed. Both the general justification of punishment and treatment and the specific justification of particular forms of punishment and treatment, as well as hybrid peno-therapeutic practices such as probation and halfway house confinement, are considered to be crime prevention. We suggest that analysis of this common conceptual goal–crime prevention—may be the key to a better understanding of the definitional and ethical distinctions between punishment and treatment.

One of the more striking features of the Anglo-American system of criminal justice is a divergence between systemic activity and systemic ideology. The system¹⁰ in action deals in post hoc assessment of culpability and assignment of punishment. Police arrest offenders after the offense occurs; courts adjudicate offenders after the offense occurs; prisons punish offenders after the offense occurs.¹¹ Yet each major element of the criminal justice system professes a special calling to prevent crime. Thus, says the American Bar Association, “Police administrators. . .characterize prevention as their primary goal.”¹² The President’s Crime Commission pointed out that “It is generally assumed that police have a preventive.. .role as well.”¹³ And the recent report by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals defined the primary goal of police as crime prevention.¹⁴

According to the American Law Institute, the prime purpose of a penal code is “to forbid and prevent” crimes, and the principal purpose of sentencing and treatment of offenders is “to prevent the commission of offenses.”¹⁵ Since courts necessarily make contact with suspected actual offenders and convicted offenders rather than potential offenders, prevention takes two forms: general deterrence through exemplary sentencing and special deterrence through selective sentencing involving combinations of punishment and treatment. The goal of sentencing courts is crime prevention.¹⁶

The preventive purpose of correctional agencies is less directly expressed than that of police or courts but appears strongly in the American Correctional Association’s equation of modern penology with “rehabilitation”—the reform or control of offenders so that they will not commit new crimes when released from custody or supervision.¹⁷ Of course, the historical penitentiary was designed to serve general and special deterrence purposes. The goal of the correctional subsystem, then, is to prevent recidivism.

Outside of the criminal justice system, many community organizations and agencies engage in activities of which crime prevention is at least one of the major purposes. These include such diverse programs as parent education, mental health services, recreational activities, vocational education and employment counseling, drug abuse treatment services, remedial academic classes, public information programs on protection of self and property, crisis intervention telephone services, school programs on youth and the law, and so forth. Every public reference to crime prevention is coupled with a proposal for some form of further community involvement in reducing the opportunity for, deterring, or treating criminality.

Clearly, with each of the major criminal justice subsystems as well as several noncriminal justice systems being committed to crime prevention, the concept must have wide temporal and behavioral scope—so wide, in fact, that it is of dubious value without definitional refinement.

A Paradigm for Analysis of Crime Prevention

A legitimate argument may be made that each of the subsystems referred to above poaches on the crime prevention functions of the others—business organizations engage in security and law enforcement activities, community agencies provide services to probationers and parolees, police engage in adjudication and correctional activities through informal probation and cautioning schemes, prosecutors and probation officers become involved in detective work, and correctional officers investigate and adjudicate rule violations by incustody offenders. Most of the time, however, the preventive activities of noncriminal justice programs, police, courts, and correction are substantially different. The points of distinction may be identified most clearly by the level or stage in the development of criminal behavior at which intervening activity is implemented. Since it is similarly conceived as intervention at different developmental levels, the public health model of disease prevention is analogous and useful.¹⁸

The public health model posits three levels of activity.¹⁹ Primary prevention identifies disease-creating general conditions of the environment and seeks to abate those conditions (e.g., sewage treatment, mosquito extermination, small-pox vaccination, job-safety engineering, personal hygiene education). Secondary prevention identifies groups or individuals who have a high risk of developing disease or who have incipient cases of disease and intervenes in their lives with special treatments designed to prevent the risk from materializing or the incipient case from growing worse (e.g., chest x-rays in poor neighborhoods, special diets for overweight executives, rubella vaccinations for prospective but not-yet-expectant mothers, dental examinations). Tertiary prevention identifies individuals with advanced cases of disease and intervenes with treatment to prevent death or permanent disability (e.g., stomach pumping for poisoning, open-heart surge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I FRAMEWORKS
• PART II PARADIGMS
• PART III ACTIVATING THE COMMUNITY
• PART IV OPPORTUNITIES AND RISKS
• PART V PREVENTING CRIMINALITY
• PART VI POLITICAL PROGRAMMES
• PART VII THE NEW POLITICS OF CRIME PREVENTION
• Name Index