In-depth notes on Control, Punishment and Victims in terms of Crime and Deviance. It includes the necessary sociologists and recent statistical data to take your grade to the next level. Exams come pre-highlighted to focus on the essential aspects needed in an essay/exam. These notes gave me an A* ...
Crime and deviance - Topic 9: Control, Punishment and Victims
Crime prevention and control-sociologist list
Key:
Heheh-Sociologist Heheh-Important information
Situational crime prevention
● Clarke (1992)
- Situational crime prevention → a pre-emptive approach that relies, not on
improving society or its institution
- Three features aimed at situational crime prevention:
1. Directed at specific crimes
2. Involves managing/altering the immediate environment of the crime
3. Aim at increasing the effort and risks of committing a crime and reducing the
rewards
- Example → ‘target hardening’ measures such as locking doors and window
increase the efforts a thief needs to make, and increased surveillance in
shops via CCTV to increase the likelihood of shoplifters getting caught
- Rational choice theory of crime → criminals weigh up the costs and benefits
of acting out a crime opportunity before deciding whether to commit it
- Contrasts with other theories of crime → e.g. the socialisation of criminals
or capitalist exploitation
- Most theories of the reasons for crime do not offer solutions to crime
- Clarke’s solution → focus on the immediate crime and prevent it from
happening
- Most crime is opportunistic so preventing those opportunities will prevent
crime from happening
● Felson (2002)
- A crime prevention strategy for the Port Authority Bus Terminal NYC
- Was poorly designed and provided opportunities for deviant acts
- Examples → toilets were used for luggage thefts, rough sleeping, drug
dealing and homosexual promiscuity
1
, - Solution → re-shaping the physical environment (e.g. smaller hand basins to
prevent homeless people from bathing)
Displacement
● Chaiken et al (1974)
- Criticism of situational crime prevention → does not remove it, but
displaces it (target hardening means criminals will move to conduct deviant
acts where targets are softer)
- Several forms of displacement:
1. Spatial → moving elsewhere to commit crimes
2. Temporal → committing it at a different time
3. Target → choosing a different victim
4. Tactical → using a different method
5. Functional → committing a different type of crime
- Example → Britain and Suicide in the 1960s
- Half of all suicides were a result of gassing, and it came from highly toxic coal
gas
- By 1997, the gas had been replaced with less toxic gas and the suicide rate for
gas killing fell to zero
- Most people used gas to commit suicide, so there was no displacement (no
other known methods of committing suicide)
Evaluation
- Situational crime prevention works to some extent to reduce some crimes,
however, there is likely to be displacement
- Tends to focus on opportunistic petty crimes, and ignores white-collar and
corporate crime, which are more costly and harmful
- Assumes criminals make rational decisions → not likely with drug/alcohol-
induced criminals
- Ignores the root cause of crime (e.g. poverty) → difficult to develop long-
term crime prevention strategies
2
, Environmental crime prevention
● Wilson and Kelling (1982)
- Downes (1999) → ‘perhaps the most influential single article on crime
prevention ever written’
- ‘Broken windows’ → various signs of disorders and lack of concern for
others (e.g. begging, graffiti, vandalism, etc)
- If ‘broken windows’ are unrepaired, crime will continue as it seems as if no
one cares about the crimes committed
- Neighbourhoods → absence of both formal ASC (Agencies of Social
Control → e.g. the police) and informal control (the community)
- Police are only concerned with serious crimes, and the community feels
intimidated and powerless
- If no action happens then the area becomes a magnet for deviants, and people
try and move away from the area
Zero tolerance policing
● Wilson and Kelling (1982)
- Disorder and the absence of control lead to crime
- Solution → use a twofold approach/strategy
1. Environmental improvement strategy → broken windows need immediate
repair (e.g. towing of abandoned cars)
2. Zero tolerance policing strategy → Police must proactively tackle even the
slightest sign of disorder, even if it is not criminal (outcome → prevent
crime and reduce neighbourhood decline)
The evidence
● Wilson and Kelling (1982)
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