Crime Prevention
Crime prevention refers to the strategies and measures aimed at reducing the likelihood of criminal activities occurring within a community or society. This can include initiatives such as community policing, public education, environmental design, and rehabilitation programs for offenders. The goal of crime prevention is to create safer environments and reduce the impact of criminal behavior on individuals and communities.
8 Key excerpts on "Crime Prevention"
eBook - ePubCrime Prevention
International Perspectives, Issues, and Trends
- John A. Winterdyk(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The developmental Crime Prevention programs are targeted at children and young people, as well as their parents, identified as “at risk” of offending. Neighborhood renewal programs: are strategic, usually government-funded improvements of neighborhoods, public places, sidewalks, streetlights, and other public infrastructure intended to make people feel better and safer. Improvements may also include increasing access to services, improving government responsiveness, and promoting health and well-being. Situational Crime Prevention: involves the management design or manipulation of the immediate physical environment aimed to reduce the spatial opportunities for specific crimes. Social Crime Prevention: incorporates “inclusive” interventions and measures aimed at tackling the root causes of crime and the dispositions of individuals to offend. It is based on an assumption that real changes regarding diminishing deviancy and crime rates can be achieved mainly through solving social problems, such as social inequality, a low education level, structural unemployment, poor employment opportunities, discrimination, poverty, and social exclusion. Social policy: refers, in broad terms, to public policy that relates to social issues. More particularly, it refers to guidelines, principles, legislation and activities that affect the citizen’s living conditions and quality of life. Social root causes of crime: are social factors that contribute to delinquency and crime (such as social discrimination and inequality, neighborhood instability and change, rapid turnover of households, decline of labor market, loss of services and transportation, visible deterioration of buildings, and radical physical alteration, such as demolition and construction of housing stock, etc.). Discussion Questions 1. What is social Crime Prevention? 2. Can you briefly outline the key historical developments of the concept of social Crime Prevention? 3...
eBook - ePubCrime Prevention
Theory, Policy And Practice
- Daniel Gilling(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Crime Prevention, then, is too vague and broad a term on which to hang a study such as this, and requires further elaboration, for as it stands it has a catch-all nature that defies disciplining, enabling it to embrace a range of areas that would by themselves be worthy of study in their own right. Crime Prevention incorporates not only the practices of the entire criminal justice system, but also those of many other social and public policies, as well as those of private citizens and private enterprise. The situation is further complicated when one considers that the prevention of crime is often not the primary rationale for practices that do, nevertheless, have a crime preventive effect. If we were to unpack the concept of Crime Prevention, we would immediately recognize that crime itself is by no means a precise term, covering a host of qualitatively and quantitatively different acts that, as befits social constructs, vary across time and space. But the real problem lies with the word prevention, which Billis (1981:368) succinctly and accurately describes as “slippery”, and certainly difficult to contain. Freeman (1992) explores the reasons for this by breaking the word down into two constituent parts, namely prediction and intervention. That is to say that in order to prevent the occurrence of something one must first be able to predict where it is likely to occur, and then apply appropriate intervention at this predicted point. Prediction is, however, literally a risky business. It depends upon a theory of causality, and when applied to social constructs such as crime and criminality it is very uncertain, drawing as it does upon social scientific knowledge and understanding that has historically proved to be “more successful at predicting the experience of populations than of individuals.” (Freeman 1992:36). Social science, as Graham (1990:11) observes, “is not an exact science...
eBook - ePub- Russil Durrant(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...As such, these efforts aim to target risk factors in ways that are likely to lead to a reduction in antisocial and criminal behaviour. Important social Crime Prevention initiatives include those that provide preschool enrichment, and education and training programmes for parents. Many such programmes have demonstrated clear benefits in terms of reducing criminal behaviour and should form a core component of any systematic effort to reduce the costs of crime in society. Situational Crime Prevention draws from a range of theoretical perspectives that emphasise how criminal behaviour is powerfully shaped by a variety of situational and environmental factors. As such, the guiding insight of situational Crime Prevention approaches is to alter the situational context in ways that make offending less likely. These include increasing the effort, reducing the reward, and increasing the risks of offending. Available evidence suggests that a number of situational Crime Prevention approaches can, indeed, be effective in reducing crime. It probably doesn’t take a genius to recognise that developmental, community, and situational Crime Prevention efforts have a complementary role to play in reducing offending and are likely to reinforce each other. By addressing, in turn, developmental, community, and situational risk factors for offending, in principle we can reduce both the number of motivated offenders and the opportunities for offending. Future efforts at Crime Prevention may also be informed by the growing influence of biosocial criminology (see Box 11.5). BOX 11.5 BIOSOCIAL Crime Prevention A biosocial approach to Crime Prevention may, at first glance, seem an odd proposition...
eBook - ePub- Sandra Walklate(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...However, first of all, it is important to say something about what is assumed by the idea of Crime Prevention. WHAT DOES PREVENTION MEAN? In general terms, ‘prevention’ is taken to be a ‘good thing’. Whether with respect to health, poverty, or crime, prevention is assumed to be a good thing because social problems are seen to be bad things. However, in any context, understanding prevention involves two connected processes; being able to predict the outcome of a chain of events, and then being able to devise a way of intervening with, or altering that predicted outcome. Within criminology Crime Prevention implies that we can identify the cause of crime and on the basis of this devise policies that can stop crime from happening. (For those of you who have managed to make it this far through this book, you should already be aware of what a tall order this is!) The ever changing nature of crime, and the ways in which it is committed, indicate how complicated a relationship this may be. Nevertheless, policy makers and politicians, sometimes informed by criminologists sometimes not, spend a good deal of time being preoccupied with Crime Prevention. In recent years, however, it has become more popular to talk of crime reduction and/or community safety, or even the notion of resilient communities. This change in terminology sends out the message that the possibility of preventing crime is less likely than reducing it or managing it better as a social problem, in order to make people feel better about crime. The reader will undoubtedly make up his or her own mind on whether this is likely to be the case. As this chapter unfolds it will become clear that there are different ways in which Crime Prevention is understood and subsequently acted upon. Ken Pease (2002), an internationally recognised criminologist who has frequently worked within the Crime Prevention area, argues that there are three broad approaches to the cause of crime...
- Peter Joyce, Wendy Laverick(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...Additionally, social approaches to Crime Prevention may entail identifying factors that increase the risk of criminal behaviour and introducing measures designed to prevent these actions from occurring. Programmes that seek to provide resources to deprived neighbourhoods to be used in ways that include family support services is an example of this. Social approaches to Crime Prevention typically involve the expenditure of considerable sums of public money. In contrast, situational methods of Crime Prevention often entail individuals assuming responsibility for the protection of themselves and their property. A further difficulty with the social approach to Crime Prevention is that of evaluation – unlike many situational methods of Crime Prevention, social approaches to Crime Prevention may not easily lend themselves to analysis on which their effectiveness can be judged. Community safety The term ‘community safety’ involves a variety of measures that are designed to address specific forms of criminal behaviour that occur in particular neighbourhoods. The measures that are put forward to achieve this are usually delivered by a wide range of agencies working in partnership and may employ both situational and social approaches to combating crime. Key idea Community safety has a broader agenda than Crime Prevention and seeks to formally involve a wide range of agencies to work in partnership and initiate actions to tackle both the symptoms and causes of crime in specific neighbourhoods using situational and social methods of Crime Prevention. Additionally, it entails the involvement of local people, giving them some sense of ownership of the processes that are initiated. Community safety has assumed considerable prominence in England and Wales since the end of the twentieth century. The concept was initially proposed in a report entitled Safer Communities: the Local Delivery of Crime Prevention through the Partnership Approach prepared by James Morgan in 1991...
eBook - ePubPsychology and Crime
2nd edition
- Aidan Sammons, David Putwain(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 10 Crime Prevention The goal of Crime Prevention is to reduce the amount of criminal activity and the harm that it causes along with the number of criminal offenders and their victims. Crime Prevention strategies are used by individuals, communities, businesses and government to target those factors that are known to cause crime in order to facilitate a reduction in crime. This chapter surveys some of the ways in which psychology can contribute to reducing crime. It starts by distinguishing between different types of Crime Prevention and then discusses how crime can be prevented by altering the environment, intervening with people at risk of involvement in criminal activity and by helping to rehabilitate offenders. Approaches to Crime Prevention The Public Health Model is an approach to Crime Prevention adopted from the medical profession. The medical approach to, for example, heart disease is not solely based on emergency procedures that occur once someone has already had a heart attack, but on ways in which people can reduce their risk of developing heart disease in the first place (e.g. adopting a healthy lifestyle). In the Public Health Model of Crime Prevention there are three interrelated and coordinated approaches for reducing the seriousness and incidence of criminal behaviour: primary, secondary and tertiary (Mackey, 2012). Primary and secondary preventions are forms of deterrence; they try to encourage people not to commit an offence. Tertiary prevention aims to reform offenders so that they do not reoffend (see Chapter 9). Primary Crime Prevention refers to proactive attempts to prevent crime before it happens. These include strengthening resiliency factors that help individuals to avoid criminal behaviours, and reducing risk factors that increase the likelihood of criminal behaviour...
eBook - ePub- Elin Waring, David Weisburd(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For many scholars and policy makers, this meant simply that we had to rethink our assumptions about criminality and how offenders might be prevented from participation in crime. But others suggested that a more radical reorientation of Crime Prevention efforts was warranted. They argued that the shift must come not in terms of the specific strategies that were used, but in terms of the unit of analysis that formed the basis of Crime Prevention efforts. This new Crime Prevention called for a focus not on people who commit crime, but on the context in which crime occurs. This approach, which is often associated with situational Crime Prevention, looks to develop greater understanding of crime and more effective Crime Prevention strategies through concern with the physical, organizational, and social environments that make crime possible (Brantingham and Brantingham 1990; Clarke 1980, 1983, 1992, 1995a; Cornish and Clarke 1986). The situational approach does not ignore offenders, it merely places them as one part of a broader Crime Prevention equation that is centered on the context of crime. It demands a shift in our approach to Crime Prevention, from one in which we are concerned primarily with why people commit crime to why crime occurs in specific settings. It moves the context of crime into central focus, and places the traditional focus of crime, the offender, as one of a number of factors that impact upon it. In the sections that follow, I will argue that reorientation of Crime Prevention research and policy from criminals to criminal contexts provides much promise. But I will also suggest that there is much more work to be done before we can assume that this shift in focus will indeed provide for more successful Crime Prevention...
eBook - ePubRational Choice and Situational Crime Prevention
Theoretical Foundations
- Graeme Newman, Ronald V. Clarke(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Within these groups are found a growing number of the mentally ill and drug addicts. Because of their chronic personal problems and degrading lifestyle, these people cause alarm among other members of society. In addition, their treatment requires forms of psychosocial intervention which the health system is not able to provide (Russo and Salomone, 1996). At this point, at least in Italy, a breach has arisen between a seemingly irrelevant criminological discourse and society’s insecurity and demands for greater levels of repression. Criminology seems weighed down, for the most part, by its tradition of overlooking personal responsibility on the part of offenders, and its deterministic heritage. Criminological literature appears completely unrelated to the new forms of criminality and society’s perceptions of the same. Criminology is thus placed in the position of having to take up new strategies and develop new models of victim-oriented Crime Prevention. Situational Crime Prevention falls within these new models of prevention. It is capable of providing answers to society’s demands for safety through immediate and testable solutions which can function independently of the criminal justice system. Possibilities for Situational Crime Prevention Situational Crime Prevention can be applied to a wide range of criminal behaviour, even violent crime, where there does not seem, at first sight, to be much likelihood of intervening in situational factors. In fact, the availability of a weapon, in other words a situational factor, is an essential element in the interactions and circumstances which lead to murder (Cook, 1991; Russo, 1983). For example, incidents where weapons were more easily available resulted in more serious injuries than when weapons were not so easily available. Often it is the mere presence of a weapon that compels the offender to use it...
