Situational Crime Prevention
Situational Crime Prevention
Student’s Name
Institution
Situational Crime Prevention
Definition
Situational crime prevention is made up of opportunity minimizing mechanisms that are aimed at extremely precise forms of crime. It entails the manipulation, management and design of the immediate environment in an enduring and organized manner as possible. In the end it makes crime more uncertain and challenging or even less executable and less satisfying by all offenders Brantingham, 2010).
Situational crime prevention ensures that situational mechanisms are personalized to highly particular crime categories. This means that variations must not be established between wide groupings for instance burglary and robbery instead between the various offences that fall under these categories. For instance it is argued that the prevention of domestic burglaries that target electronic gadgets may require distinct measures from those that are required to avert the domestic burglary targeting jewelry or money. This is because of the various disparities that exist in the commitment of these two types of crimes (Chaiken, 2009).
When electronic goods are targeted the crimes have been found to occur in newer suburbs and the criminals come in vehicles. The vehicles are used in transporting the goods and are usually parked near the houses but not too close as this could attract attention. The housing layout in new suburbs facilitates these crimes. The preventive mechanisms include: installing surveillance devices in road ways as well as in parking lots of new residential areas. The customization of measures to combat crime in certain areas does not imply that criminals are specialists rather it means that for certain crimes to be committed there must be a collection of certain environmental prospects which have to be blocked by all means feasible.
Secondly situational crime in its definition indicates that criminals could be involved in offences that have very high stakes. It further postulates that everyone can commit a crime if found in a situation that facilitates them to do so. In Situational prevention of crime there is no differentiation between criminals and ordinary folks any of them can commit a crime of given a chance. A change of environment is premeditated to impact evaluations made by likely offenders about the advantages and disadvantages related to committing certain crimes. These decisions depend on particular features of the circumstance at hand and establish the probability of the occurrence of the crime. This indicates that there is rationality and a substantial level of adaptability by offenders (Challinger, 2011).
Criminals’ decisions are calculated founded on their assessments of the moral benefits of offending. They could all be ready to steal some items from unsuspecting people but few of them could be prepared to mug old grandmas on the streets. This means that in the eyes of offenders not all crimes are reprehensible. Consequently efforts being made to make it difficult for criminals to commit a crime sometimes pay off as a successful reduction methodology. Apart from that disparities in the moral tolerability of several crimes induce limits on the possibility of displacement.
Finally situational prevention of crime in its definition is general in nature for it does not focus on a particular category of crime. Situational prevention is for this matter pertinent to all types of offences. As much as homicides are highly subjective to the availability of guns, all criminals first take into account the risks involved in a certain situation.
Discussion
This form of crime prevention fundamentally departs from the other criminology orientations in its formations. Stemming from an assessment of situations that result in various kinds of crime, it provides distinct environmental and administrative changes that reduce the likelihood of those crimes occurring. It therefore pays attention to the crime settings instead of those who commit the crime. It looks forward at minimizing the incidences of crime, rather than detecting and sanctioning offenders. It does not seek to prevent crime from occurring rather it seeks to differentiate and sanction criminals. At the center of this venture is not the criminal justice system rather it is a multitude of private and public agencies and organizations which include parking lots, schools, pubs, hospitals, entertainment facilities, transit systems, local parks, shops, phone companies, malls and manufacturing businesses (Clarke, 2008).
Situational crime prevention has been documented to have been successful in various instances including through: augmented record keeping procedures and stock taking for retail outlets and warehouses, surveillance cameras for parking facilities and subway systems, training in conflict management for bouncers and publicans, defensible space architecture in public housing, alcohol controls at sporting fixtures and festivals, targeted hardening of apartment blocks, traffic plans for suburban neighborhoods, electronic admission for telephones and cars (Brantingham, 2010).
Most of these successes were registered by hard pressed managers who sought practical ways of dealing with recurring crime issues that were faced in their agencies or businesses. It is only in rare occasions that they were helped by criminologists who apart from a few researchers have shown little interest in this form of crime prevention. Apart from that, situational crime prevention has seldom featured in policy debates on the control of crime particularly in the US. This disregard stems from current technology’s two mistakes: Firstly, the challenge of investigating crime has been bewildered with that of investigating criminals (Sloan, 2006).
Numerous criminological theories are apprehensive about explaining why particular persons or cohorts are exposed to certain social or emotional effects or specific inherited mannerisms are likely to engage in crime or law-breaking behavior. For a crime to be committed it requires not only motivated criminals rather it also needs the opportunity for crime. In addition to that it also requires the nonexistence of a competent guardian and the accessibility of an appropriate target. This means that it would be a mistake to relate crime to only criminal dispositions. It also has to be exhibited how such characters interrelate with situational factors that favor crime to generate a criminal act.
The other blunder in contemporary criminology is the fact that it confuses managing crime with apprehending criminals. The best way of minimizing crime has been assumed to be a focus on offenders or likely offenders. They have thus focused mainly on informal and formal control of crime. Formal control is a reference to society’s properly composed legal establishments and the justice system that is required to sanction criminals through confining or rehabilitating them in order to deter crime in an entire population. Informal social management is the attempt by the society to stimulate compliance through the socialization of the youth into societal norms and individuals supervision of each other’s behavior; toughened by censure, rule making and admonition. In spite of whether they are informal or formal these control mechanisms are aimed at offenders whether real or likely (Trasler, 2007).
It is argued that one critical outcome of a failure to deal with offenders and managing crime has been to reroute the criminal justice system from its critical role of propagating justice. More connected to this discussion is the fact that this malfunction has resulted in the strategic and criminological disregard of a third critical cohort of crime control mechanisms supplementary to informal and formal mechanisms but entangled with and reliant on them. They are the wide-ranging routine precautions upheld by organizations and individuals. On a daily basis people routinely guard their purses, lock their doors, advice their children and protect their valuables in an effort to minimize the occurrence of crime (Chaiken, 2009).
In addition to that people also buy houses in neighborhoods they consider safe, they also stay away from dangerous individuals and places while investing in burglar alarms all for security reasons. In the same breath shops, schools, offices, factories and a horde of numerous organizations characteristically take several safety measures to protect themselves, their clients and employees from criminals. Situational Crime Prevention fits in this category of crime management mechanism. It can in the real sense be viewed as the systematic arm of habitual preventions premeditated to make them more beneficial and successful to the entire society (Sloan, 2006).
Policy forecasters and criminologists make assumptions that the most important value of these safety measures is not in minimizing the rate of crime but protecting agencies and individual persons from being victimized. This is partially so because situational mechanisms focused on certain places or very exceedingly specific groupings cannot make considerable intuition on the sum total of crime statistics. It is presumed nonetheless that faced with obstacles criminals will simply focus their attention in other places resulting in no mitigation of crime (Challinger, 2011).
This presumption directly stems from the dispositional miscalculation of modern criminology and is not sustained by any empirical research. The reduction of crime opportunities can in the real sense result in considerable crime reductions. As this proof becomes wide spread and situational prevention is more seriously undertaken by policy makers the debate is likely to move on to the ideological and moral repercussions of situational mechanisms. This is already evident in nations such as Holland and the UK where situational prevention is rapidly changing into a fundamental but diminutive constituent of government crime policy. These nations have witnessed a shift in the mechanisms of crime management that is no longer perceived to be the exclusive preserve of government machinery rather it is a phenomenon that needs to be shared equally by members of the public. As a consequence numerous private and public stakeholders have now found that their daily precautions are a matter of public obligation. More importantly governments seem to be advancing a set of preventive mechanisms that have been objected by a majority of individuals in the political continuum (Clarke, 2008).
Conclusion
Various schools of thought categorized as the right, left and liberals have different perceptions on situational crime prevention. The right especially in the US perceives situational intervention as an inappropriate response because it overlooks issues of reprimand and moral responsibility. The left characterize it as socially and politically inexperienced in its disregard of economic and social imbalances of political influence and causation. Liberals postulate that by tinkering with indicators it distracts concentration from the need to deal with crime’s root causes for instance inconsistent parenting, unemployment, inadequate schooling, racial discrimination and substandard housing. In spite of these evaluations situational prevention of crime has proven to be effective.
References
Brantingham, P. (2010). “Trends in Canadian Crime Prevention.” In: K. Heal and G. Laycock (eds.), Situational Crime Prevention: From Theory into Practice. London, UK: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office
Chaiken, J.M., (2009). “Exact Fares on Buses.” In: R.V Clarke (ed.), Situational Crime Prevention: Successjul Case Studies. Albany, NY: Harrow and Heston.
Challinger, D. (2011). “Less Telephone Vandalism: How Did it Happen?” In: R.V. Clarke (ed.), Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies. Albany, NY: Harrow and Heston.
Clarke, R.V. (2008). “Introduction.” In: R.V Clarke (ed.), Situational Crime Prevention: Successjul Case Studies. Albany, NY: Harrow and Heston.
Sloan-Howitt, M. (2006). “Subway Graffiti in New York City: ‘Gettin up’ vs. ‘meanin it and cleanin it.'” In: R.V. Clarke (ed.), Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies. Albany, NY:Harrow and Heston.
Trasler, G. (2007). “Situational Crime Control and Rational Choice: A Critique.” In: K. Heal and G. Laycock (eds.), Situational Crime Prevention: From Theory into Practice. London, UK: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
