Crime Prevention

Situational crime prevention - Right Realist

  • Focuses on rational choice theory by Clarke

  • Increases the effort to commit and increases the risk

  • Designing out crime

Target hardening - making it harder for people to commit

  • Adding CCTV

  • Security systems or alarms in homes

  • Blue lights

Felson - Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York

  • Blue lights added in toilets and layout was made more open - crime was reduced significantly

Criticism of situational crime prevention - displaces crime rather than preventing it

Environmental crime prevention - Right Realist

  • Focuses on Broken Windows Theory by Wilson and Kelling

  • Aims to reduce signs of disorder in certain areas

Zero tolerance policing - aims to reduce signs of disorder through things like moving the homeless, shutting down bars and nightclubs

Environmental improvement - makes place look less abandoned by repairing broken windows etc

Criticism of zero tolerance policing - can be used as an excuse to discriminate

Criticism of environmental crime prevention - accused of gentrification (making areas unaffordable for the working class and making the area suitable to the middle class instead)

Social and community crime prevention - Left Realist

  • Focuses on Lea and Youngs 3 theories: relative deprivation, marginalisation, and the formation of subcultures

  • Focuses on tackling crime at the root by making society more equal

  • Influenced by New Labour who created social policies to tackle inequalities and therefore crime

Examples of policies and schemes that influenced this approach:

  • Operation Headstart - encouraging pre-school support for low income families

  • Sure Start - providing help on childcare and family matters for low income families

  • Troubled families intervention

  • Equality Act

  • Building community centres

Community based policing - forming relationships

Early intervention

Criticism of community based policing - hard for the public to form relationships with the police due to their history of being evil - Stephen Lawrence

Criticism of early intervention - victim blaming parents