Crime prevention
The three approaches to preventing crime – in blue
Situational Crime Prevention:
This is basically putting measures in place when criminals and
victims come together.
It is based on rational choice theory and Cohen and Felson's Routine
activity theory, which emphasise the opportunistic nature of crime.
Approaches to situational crime prevention include:
Target hardening
Designing out
Target Hardening:
Target hardening: decreases the opportunity for crime with measures
like window locks, window shutters, car security features, anti-climb paint,
CCTV, etc.
These things effectively make it harder to commit crimes such as
burglary and graffiti.
Designing out:
This is an interesting concept that refers to re designing the city to
prevent crime
Some examples of this include sloping seats on bus shelters to prevent the
homeless sleeping on them.
Some more extreme examples include homeless spike, and spikes placed
on building to prevent people climbing for burglary or graffiti purposes
These measures also help the criminal justice system catch and prosecute
offenders (e.g., the use of CCTV footage in court or anti-theft paint to
identify stolen items) but the main reason for their use is to deter the
crimes in the first place.
Pros:
These measures can be very popular with councils and businesses as they
can be effective at a relatively low cost.
No question, based on evidence from the police as well as from a range of
criminological studies, that burglar alarms, CCTV and improved car
security features all have a significant impact on reducing specific crimes.
Cons:
Bauman situation crime prevention turns contemporary cities into
"fortress cities" where people are controlled and kept safe. In his image of
the future development of cities, he imagined people not daring travel far
from the "fortresses" just as people sought protection in medieval fortified
towns.
The three approaches to preventing crime – in blue
Situational Crime Prevention:
This is basically putting measures in place when criminals and
victims come together.
It is based on rational choice theory and Cohen and Felson's Routine
activity theory, which emphasise the opportunistic nature of crime.
Approaches to situational crime prevention include:
Target hardening
Designing out
Target Hardening:
Target hardening: decreases the opportunity for crime with measures
like window locks, window shutters, car security features, anti-climb paint,
CCTV, etc.
These things effectively make it harder to commit crimes such as
burglary and graffiti.
Designing out:
This is an interesting concept that refers to re designing the city to
prevent crime
Some examples of this include sloping seats on bus shelters to prevent the
homeless sleeping on them.
Some more extreme examples include homeless spike, and spikes placed
on building to prevent people climbing for burglary or graffiti purposes
These measures also help the criminal justice system catch and prosecute
offenders (e.g., the use of CCTV footage in court or anti-theft paint to
identify stolen items) but the main reason for their use is to deter the
crimes in the first place.
Pros:
These measures can be very popular with councils and businesses as they
can be effective at a relatively low cost.
No question, based on evidence from the police as well as from a range of
criminological studies, that burglar alarms, CCTV and improved car
security features all have a significant impact on reducing specific crimes.
Cons:
Bauman situation crime prevention turns contemporary cities into
"fortress cities" where people are controlled and kept safe. In his image of
the future development of cities, he imagined people not daring travel far
from the "fortresses" just as people sought protection in medieval fortified
towns.
