Why Situational Crime Prevention Can Not Fully Address a Communitys Crime Problems - Essay Example

Why Situational Crime Prevention can not fully Address a Community’s Crime Problems s Introduction Welsh and Farrington defined crime as an act or omission which is against the law and it is punishable upon conviction1, while Sherman and others defined situational crime prevention as a concept that applies a preventative approach by focussing on methods to lessen the crime opportunities2. The theory behind situational crime prevention concentrates on the creation of safety mechanisms, which will help in protecting the general public from by making criminals feel that they would be in a situation where they may be detected or caught, or might be unable to commit crimes, which will lead to them being unwilling to perpetrate crimes where such mechanisms are in place The first stage of any situational crime prevention intervention is to identify the crime. Generally, individual events do not require intervention, due to the fact that it is not cost-efficient to do so. The second stage is to diagnose the opportunities which enable offending. The final stage is the elimination of criminal opportunities. This can be attained by designing or redesigning the space and routines of people. Crime prevention through environmental design principles shows us how to do it. Situational crime prevention does not change criminal disposition of offenders. It only removes or reduces crime opportunities. Situational crime prevention bases its argument on the grounds that an individual’s security is simply another person’s vulnerability. Therefore, when criminals are deterred from committing a crime in an area that has tight security or neighbourhood surveillance, they would simply move their criminal activities elsewhere. This makes it difficult to eradicate the crime problem in the community3. There are usually two options when preventing crime which include trying to eliminate the criminal dispositions that offenders have and removing the crime opportunities that offenders have. This essay will review the literature for the part of the second option which is situational crime prevention. The study will proceed to discuss why situational crime prevention may not be able to fully address a communitys crime problems. Discussion Criminological theory has long seemed irrelevant to those who deal with offenders in the real world such as those advocating for situational crime prevention. This irrelevance is attributed to the causes of crime to distant factors such as genetic make up, child-rearing practices, and psychological or social processes4. Clarke argued that situational crime prevention is usually directed at highly specific forms of crime. Clarke added that it involves the management, manipulation and design of the immediate environment in a systematic and permanent way5. The advantage of situational crime prevention is that it makes crime more risky and difficult, or less rewarding and excusable as judged by several offenders6. However, it leads to crime displacement, thus leaving the community with crime problem. For example, a bank robber deterred by the installation of a state-of-the-art security system in the local bank may switch his/her attentions to the local building society instead. This is because offenders are almost markedly adaptable and they can turn their hand to anything to perpetuate crime. Hogg and Brown argued that situational crime prevention suggests a fatalism about dealing with more fundamental individual and social factors which that influence the levels of crime. The criminology researchers also added that situational crime prevention is a defensive strategy with little relevance to high crime communities or to certain crimes, in addition to also leading to displacement of crime7. McCord also found that some crime prevention efforts such as situational approach usually displace crime. Generally, this refers to geographical displacement that involves crime moving from one location to another8. However, one study conducted by Hessling 1994 reported no evidence of displacement in the 22 studies he examined and in the remaining 33 studies, he pointed out some evidence of displacement, even though in no case was there as much crime displaced as prevented9. On the contrary, there has been increasing evidence that other than displacing crime, the preventive measures such situational crime prevention approach may actually lead to a ‘diffusion of benefits’, which is the decline in crime beyond the immediate focus of procedures introduced10. As a consequence, this fails to adequately address the crime problem in the community. Crime prevention has six types of displacements namely spatial, temporal, target, crime type, method, and perpetrator displacement11. First, temporal displacement involves the change in time of the crime. For instance, robbers switching from day time to night time robbery. Next, spatial displacement entails the change in location of crime. For example, money launders stop doing business in one neighbourhood and start it in another. Third, target displacement means that the offender changes the target such as offenders stopping to steal a particular type of car and commence stealing another kind which is viewed as less secure. Fourth, method displacement entails an alteration in the manner in which an attack is carried out by an offender, for instance, when committing crime offenders stop using knives and start making use of guns. Next crime displacement is type displacement. It involves a change in the kind of crime being carried out. An example is when drug dealers stop selling drugs and start engaging weapons trade and money laundering which are regarded as being more lucrative. Lastly, perpetrator displacement consists of a change of old offenders with new ones, like a criminal gang employing new drug dealers when old ones get caught by law or killed12. To sum up, these crime displacement effects usually worsen the crime problem. In this perspective, the situational approach employed is bound to fail in addressing the problem of crime in the community. Although Hessling found that displacement is almost never total and that in most cases it does not have great major impact13, Clarke also added that if effective situational programs are established criminals will move to other areas or to other types of offenses14. Certainly, the examples of situational programs that lead to crime displacement include: when a few houses situated on a block are installed with alarm systems potential burglars will easily move to adjacent houses; by closing down an urban drug market, crime will shift since most drug addicts have a non-elastic demand for drugs. In that respect, situational crime prevention may not be able to fully address the crime problems of a community. Garland reported that earlier crime prevention efforts focused on social reform programs such as building social prevention programs, community regeneration and job creation which extremely benefited the community in addressing the problems of crime15. On the other hand, the new situational crime prevention efforts appear not to benefit the undeserving poor, to disturb the market freedom, or to imply a social critique. Its growing appeal usually is based on being distributed trough the market as customised products, rather than delivered by state agencies. Felson and Cohen pointed out that the theories that underpin situational crime prevention include: First, rational choice offender. It weighs up the benefits and costs and benefits of committing a crime, if an opportunity exists, the rewards are great and there is a low chance of detection, there is a higher probability that the offense will be committed16. Secondly, the routine activities theory as outlined by Felson and Cohen noted that the ever changing structure of modern society may have contributed to a reduction in the pace of primary group activity within households by removing people from homes and their relatives in the context of carrying out their daily tasks. As a consequence, this appears to have contributed to more repeated convergence of criminogenic circumstances within communities17. The theory stipulates that a crime can occur if a likely offender meets a suitable target. From the offender’s view point, the attributes that can influence a target’s risk of attack comprise of weight of the item, value, access and visibility18. Thirdly, the crime pattern theory stipulates that crime concentrates in areas that are familiar to offenders through their routine actions. This signifies that activity nodes are expected to present bigger prospects for offending. This perspective maps the movement of communities and considers how opportunities for crime are detected through the populace’s movement patterns19 . Areas that are viewed as crime- neutral neither generate crime nor attract crime by producing opportunities. This makes it very hard to initiate a situational crime prevention program. Besides, crime is usually both clustered in space and time, as well as the victim’s level. In 1992, a British crime survey in reported that 40 percent of the populace formed the victims of all crimes and 4.3 percent of the population was victimised in 43.5 percent of all incidents20. Extensive social scientific research has refined our understanding on criminal offending. Garland reported that a mass of evidence has indicated that criminal acts are usually produced and embedded in definite social and psychological relations21. The rational choice offenders’ theory sweeps aside all these complexities and empirical findings. The theory with certainty of economic modelers and armchair philosophers insists that crime is simply a matter of individual choice. The rational choice criminology has resulted to shift towards harsher sentencing laws and significant utilisation of deterrent threats. Katz highlighted the limitations that are associated with rational choice offender model. Katz established that there are numerous motivations for offending, besides material gain22. Wright, Tibbetts and Daigle added that the rational offender model has been undermined by the recent advancements in neuroscience. It was found out that the available evidence implied that the adolescent brain is usually under constant change. With the onset of puberty, the grey matter in the frontal cortex increases. It will then reduce throughout the rest of adolescent periods and into adulthood. Furthermore, the adolescents may neither fully realise the social consequences of their behaviours, nor comprehend completely how their emotional outburst and unpredictable attitudes impacts those who are around them23. Contrasting to rational actors who weigh the benefits and costs of any action, under particular situations, the adolescents may simply act without regard to the costs24. The rational choice theory was developed by Clarke and Cornish (1985) and rests on the fact that people can have several options when they want to satisfy their needs. Whilst some of these may be officially authorised, others may not. In that perspective, the preference of criminal options relies in various variables like demographic factors such as social class, gender and neighbourhood, and individual factors such as background and individual temperament25. Due to the variability of human behavior, the aforementioned variables pose a challenge in preventing crime in the community. Clarke argued that the decision to offend is usually psychologically and socially determined. Some social values can drive people into delinquent behaviour in pursuit of widely accepted social values and goals. Criminal behaviour may be attributed to the strain to get what actually one does not have. Some of the strain is due to deteriorated neighbourhoods, high poverty rates, political and socio-economic factors. The strain theory explains that certain social structures exist within the society that drive people to engage in crime. It highlights the reason why crime has become synonymous within urban and poverty stricken regions. Poverty typically lays a foundation of discontent and anger; illegitimacy and breakdown of families, which often lead to people engaging in crime26. This means that we need to concentrate on the factors that lead to criminal behavior which include the criminal’s background or the environment which may cause one to commit crime, for instance, poor education, poverty, deteriorated neighbourhoods. Furthermore, the biological theory can be used to explain crime because it is devoted to the theoretical advances in the areas of evolution and cognition with particular emphasis on the conceptual integration an attribute associated with crime. The theory ascertains that criminal behaviour has physiological origin. The theory bases its argument on the fact that an individual engages in crime including some are born criminals and is embedded in their genes. Therefore, it sums up that criminal behaviour is actually genetic and the biological observations typically explain one’s criminal mind, because some criminal traits are passed from the parent to the offspring. This means that irrespective of the crime prevention measure directed towards the person, this makes the situational approach not be able to fully address a communitys crime problem27. Since neither fear of crime nor crime is distributed homogeneously across the community, crime prevention needs to be directed and implemented differently in different areas. However, situational crime prevention tends to direct its preventive efforts in a homogenous manner28, which as a result fails to address crime in the community. Additionally, alterations to values and lifestyle, increased professionalism and changes in peer groups influence the decisions whether an individual wants to quit crime or not. Other arguments by Felson and Clarke are that situational crime prevention usually overlooks the offender’s moral culpability and punishment, it actually punishes the law abiding citizens by infringing upon their privacy and freedom, and it diverts the attention from the root causes of crime by concentrating on situations29. This makes the community to continue to be entangled in the crime problem. As a result, the safest communities are those that take detailed approach to crime prevention and making use of a combination of several programs. For instance, closed circuit television and better lighting may decrease crime in a certain building; the community in the long run ought to implement a social development program so that in the long-run the number of motivated offenders is reduced and the community will not be obliged to depend on defensive strategies so as keep crime rates low. This is quite effective as compared to using situational crime prevention strategies alone. Although the environmental design encourages a sense of cohesion and enhance the quality of life in a community, there are elements within that community, that no amount of environmental intervention will produce a reduction in crime. Therefore, those areas which could most benefit from crime prevention strategies are least likely to show an improvement. These areas are characterised by disorder including physical disorder like neglected buildings and social disorder like prostitution30. Consequently, situational crime prevention may not be able to fully address the communitys crime problems. Schneider acknowledged that social variables, such as the income level, the percentage of families on welfare benefits, the percentage of single-parent families and the ratio of teenagers to adults, are more closely related to crime rates than are the design features of the immediate environment, which is advocated by the situational crime prevention31. Harrower added that changes in design by them­selves could not produce long-term reductions in crime, like removing overhead walkways32. Linden concluded that situational crime prevention is only a temporary solution and that social development is more effective in curbing crime in the neighbourhood since it removes the root causes of crime and thus decrease crime rates. Additionally, situational crime prevention approach is difficult to implement. For instance, it is quite challenging to implement a large-scale demonstration project33. Major social programs are already being targeted at various conditions by other social entities, the same programs which proponents of social development are attempting to alter, and therefore the incremental changes that can be obtained in the name of crime prevention are only marginal. Although studies have shown that situational crime prevention approaches can be actually be implemented and be effective on a small scale, it has also been shown that it is very difficult to change the lives of a large number of individuals by means of social development programs to have a significant effect on the overall crime rates. Besides, the crime prevention social development programs take long to have an effect. For example, it is quite difficult to explain to a group of senior people that in order to eliminate muggings on their way to work or shopping, a pre-natal mentoring program for expectant mothers will make sure that the community will be safer in 12-14 years to come when the children would be teenagers. As a consequence, this situational crime prevention approach may not be able to fully address a communitys crime problems34. Besides, politicians and the general public have directed their attention to increasing penalties than on preventing crime, in spite of numerous studies showing that locking people up is not a cost-effective way of reducing crime35 (Waller 2006). Conclusion Crime is a multi-faceted problem that can not be fixed easily. In that sense, situational crime prevention may not be able to fully address a communitys crime problems, since the approach displaces crime from one segment of the community to another. For example, when a few houses situated on a block have alarm systems potential thieves will move to adjacent houses and a burglar may be discouraged by the increas­ing number of domestic alarms and as an alternative to satisfy his need for cash, he/she may switch to muggings. Additionally, the prevention approach only serves just one class, and costs of prevention borne by another social class of the society, and prevention may be attentive to victimisation risks of the minorities and disempowered segments36. The displacement argument which is regarded as the most common criticism of situational crime prevention emphasizes that it does not solve the problem, but displaces it. To sum up, situational crime prevention may not be able to fully address a communitys crime problems, since it is usually not always possible to change the routine of people, or change the in people’s routines may not be enough to prevent crime. As a consequence, communities continue to experience problems. Several academicians and practitioners have viewed social development as an acceptable way of preventing crime. They have argued that the society needs to address the root causes of crime37. Words 3428 Reference List Ainsworth, P. B. Psychology and Crime, New York: Longman 2000. 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