Download Crime Prevention: Understanding Different Approaches and Their Impact on Crime Rates and more Exams Criminal Justice in PDF only on Docsity! Prepared by Garner Clancey Page 1 Crime Prevention – Introductory Concepts 1. There have been major fluctuations in reported crime in recent decades. Some of the broad changes in reported crime are captured by the following: a. “From the early to mid‐1990s, many industrialised countries experienced major falls in crime. They occurred first in the United States where serious violent crime including homicide fell by 40 percent ... In England and Wales, violent crime fell 49 percent, burglary 59 percent, and vehicle theft 65 percent between 1995 and 2007” (Farrell, G.; Tseloni, A.; Mailey, J. and Tilley, N. (2011) ‘The Crime Drop and the Security Hypothesis’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 48, No. 2: 148) b. “From 2001, motor vehicle theft in Australia ... plummeted and had fallen 55 percent by 2007” (Farrell et al, 2011: 151‐152) c. In “the 10 years between 2001 and 2010 the rate of household burglary recorded by NSW Police fell by half and the current rate of household burglary is considerably lower than it was 20 years ago” (Fitzgerald, J. and Poynton, S. (2011) ‘The changing nature of objects stolen in household burglaries’, Crime and Justice Statistics Bureau Brief, Issue Paper No. 62, NSW BOCSAR, Sydney: 1) 2. Various explanations for these changes in key crime rates have been advanced and include: a. “Early in 2001, Australia experienced an acute heroin shortage that forced the price of heroin up and the purity of heroin down. The result was an immediate drop in the rate of fatal heroin overdose and a slower but nonetheless substantial drop in levels of property crime. The fall in property crime has been widely attributed to a fall in heroin use. One problem with this explanation, however, is that property crime rates continued to fall long after heroin use had stabilised, albeit at a lower level ... The results indicate that the downward trend in property crime was assisted by the fall in heroin consumption, but other factors also played an important role. These include a real increase in average weekly earnings, an increase in the number of heroin users returning to treatment, an increase in the imprisonment rate for convicted burglars and, possibly, a fall in long‐term unemployment” (Moffat, S.; Weatherburn, D. and Donnelly, N. (2005) ‘What caused the recent drop in property crime?’, Crime and Justice Bulletin, No. 85, NSW BOCSAR, Sydney: 1). b. “It is proposed that changes in the quantity and quality of security have played a major part in driving crime falls in most industrialised societies. More specifically: i. Security improvements, including specific security devices, vary for different crimes but have been widely implemented. ii. Different security measures work in different ways to reduce the crimes to which they are applied: they increase actual or perceived risk to the offender; and/or they reduce actual or perceived reward for the offender; and/or they increase actual or perceived effort for the offender. iii. The different ways in which security measures work produces variations in expected changes in crime patterns associated with crime drops. These comprise expected security device crime change ‘signatures’. iv. The specific falls in crime produced by improvements in security alongside their associated diffusions of benefit (preventive effects spilling out beyond the operational range of measures) to other targets and methods of committing crime are not matched by equivalent displacement” (Farrell, G.; Tseloni, A.; Mailey, J. and Tilley, N. (2011) ‘The Crime Drop and the Security Hypothesis’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 48, No. 2: 151) Prepared by Garner Clancey Page 2 3. Multiple definitions of crime prevention have been developed over the years. One that is commonly cited is as follows: “the total of all private initiatives and state policies, other than the enforcement of criminal law, aimed at the reduction of damage caused by acts defined as criminal by the state” (van Dijk, J. and de Waard, J. (1991) ‘A Two‐ Dimensional Typology of Crime Prevention Projects’, Criminal Justice Abstracts: 483). 4. There remains some dispute about the meaning and use of the term ‘crime prevention’: a. “In practice, the term ‘prevention’ seems to be applied confusingly to a wide array of contradictory activities” (Brantingham, P. J. and Faust, F. L. (1976) ‘A Conceptual Model of Crime Prevention’, Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 22: 284). b. “Crime prevention is one of those ubiquitous terms that increasingly is being used in criminology and within the various criminal justice systems to mean just about everything and anything” (White, R. (1997) ‘The Business of Youth Crime Prevention’, in O’Malley, P. and Sutton, A. (eds) Crime Prevention in Australia: Issues in Policy and Research, The Federation Press, Sydney: 169). 5. As stated, there is often some confusion about the use of particular terms related to crime prevention. Crime prevention, community safety, crime control and crime reduction are terms often used interchangeably without any real distinction between each. Chainey and Ratcliffe have attempted to distinguish these terms. The following definitions have been adapted and/or replicated from Chainey and Ratcliffe.1 They have been listed in descending order of specificity of focus. That is, the terms become increasingly more focused on responding to specific criminal incidents. Term Definition Community Safety “Community safety is realized through an integrated consideration of diverse harms to the public, and ‘refers to the likely absence of harms from all sources, not just from human acts classifiable as crimes’ (Wiles and Pease, 2000). Community safety also provides a strategic viewpoint on community harms by focusing attention towards the development of programmes that set targets to manage risks and aims to maiximise public safety” (2005:17‐18). Crime Prevention Crime prevention involves any activity by an individual or group, public or private, which attempts to eliminate crime prior to it occurring or before any additional activity results. By drawing on the public health model, some theorists have distinguished between primary crime prevention (universal), secondary crime prevention (at‐risk) and tertiary crime prevention (known offenders). Crime Reduction “Crime reduction is concerned with diminishing the number of criminal events and the consequences of crime. Crime reduction is applied within the bandwidth of an available resource input (e.g. financial input) and needs to be considered as an action that brings net benefits, fear of crime and the impact of other programmes that may have contributed to any specific crime reduction activity. Crime reduction promotes a spirit of optimism that actions towards a problem will reduce crime or reduce the seriousness of criminal events … it aims to intervene directly in the events and their causes” (2005: 19). Crime Control “Crime control considers that crime has already happened and that some management of these criminal activities is required to ensure that it does not spiral out of control. It points to the need for maintenance of a problem, one where crime is keep to a tolerable level, and not to a situation where crime can be prevented” (2005: 18‐19). 6. Different typologies of crime prevention are used by different theorists. Common typologies include: a. The Public Health or Disease Prevention Model: i. Primary prevention: “directed at modification of criminogenic conditions in the physical and social environment at large” 1 Chainey, S. and Ratcliffe, J. (2005) GIS and Crime Mapping, John Wiley and Sons, England.