Situational Crime Prevention

Critically discuss the rationale and effectiveness of using situational crime prevention strategies to reduce crime

Introduction

The concept of situational crime prevention strategy is not something everyone is accustomed to as it has been showed off from the perspective of how crime and criminology to the vast majority of people through TV series and cinemas. The department of crime and criminology administration of a country essentially has various theoretical concepts or framework that works towards predicting the course of action in case of imaginary occurrences of crime or crimes. As it has been defined by Clarke (1995), the way of situational crime prevention is to identify or point out the opportunities of a crime or possible criminal activities and a course of action is to be planned to tackle such associated risk.

In this essay, we shall discuss the concept of situational crime prevention strategy and critically discuss how effective the implementation of this strategy has been in reference to real life case studies and example.

Situational Crime Prevention Strategy

The concept of situational crime prevention strategy has been defined by Clarke (1995) as the issue of an approach towards calculating different societal risk factors in reference to different crime incidents and implements methods of actions to combat the situation in terms of future events. Hence, the concept of SCP revolves around predicting and keeping necessary course of action up the sleeve. The basic of this strategy is to identify not just why a crime happened but how a crime can happen. The situational crime prevention strategy considers the environmental and societal effect of how a crime can happen and a predictable course of action is to be designed for that.

Situational crime prevention strategy goes to a deeper level of preventing crime than the normal course of being. As it has been researched and proposed by Shariati & Guerette (2017), situational crime prevention strategy essentially focuses on altering the environment that is suitable for happening of a crime and prevents the occurrence of a crime on a deeper level. Thus, the four basic elements of situational crime prevention strategies are (Clarke, 1983)

Rationale thought process, with the help of which the criminologist shall understand the how factor of a crime by calculating the thought process of the criminals.

Specific evaluation of the current crime statistics, which shall provide the police administration with predictive set of crimes and the chance of that happening under a certain environment. Also, this is necessary to understand the perspective of the offenders as well.

A structure of opportunity, which shall provide the administration with the information of the victims along with the offenders and it shall provide the administrators with a map of how a crime takes place and how it has been executed herein.

Technical prevention measures to combat the abovementioned analysis in respect to a certain situational crime.

The Practicality of Situational Crime Prevention Strategies – Is it effective in reducing crime?

The reduction of crime is one of the important aspects of many of the Western Countries – the concept of grab the happening of the crime at the root. While some of the scholar such as Trasler (1986) mentions that the implementation of situational crime prevention only benefits against instrumental crimes such as theft, burglary etc but it is useless against more expressive crimes such as murder, homicide or rape, many empirical literature on this very subjects suggest something else. According to Eck (2006), the implementation of situational crime prevention strategy can be of great help in reducing crime that is violent in nature. However, in this regard, Trasler (1986) holds the complete opposite view.

What are the common strategies to Situational Crime Prevention course?

Some of the needed and most used situational crime prevention strategies are mentioned herein:

Increasing formal surveillance – The examples of formal surveillances are CCTV, electronic alarms, police patrolling of an area or private patrolling of an area. From the Campbell Review, it has been seen that the use of CCTV has only reduced the happening of a crime in car parking areas (Welsh & Farrington, 2008). However, it has been also observed that the effect of formal surveillance might be modes and slow but it is significant as it has been collected from a study of 44 areas where CCTV was installed in England.

Increasing Natural Surveillance – The example of natural surveillance is the use of street light. From the research conducted by Jacobs (1961), it can be found that street lights are considered to be an efficient form of natural surveillance as a well-lit street always attracts less offenders. Also, according to Welsh & Farrington (2006), the course of natural surveillance has reduced crime effectively in the year of UK it was experimented and the margin of such reduction is about 21%.

Increasing access and exit control – Controlling the entry and the exits point to a particular property or an area and special surveillance of the person entering an area has proved to be very successful in reducing crime (Newman, 1996). According to a case study, it has been seen that after the entry and exit point in a particular street, populated by prostitutes was done, the occurrence of crime in that particular area reduced by almost 50% (Mathews, 1992). Also, from the case study in Birmingham revealed that after entry and exits of alleys were controlled, the happening of burger in the dark alleys of the city reduced by 80%.

Restriction in accessing crime tools – From the research of Ekblom & Tilley (2000), it has been seen that the availability of crime tools and objects often helps in increasing the occurrence of that particular crime. Thus, a restriction imposed on accessing certain crime tools reduces several crimes such as mugging, burglary etc. These tools are often referred as the crime facilitator.

Reduction of provocation – Provocation is considered to be one of the crime facilitator and thus in order to reduce the provocation, it is essential the identify the crowds that tend to be provoked and behave in a way that would provoke others to commit a crime such as in a sports event, the rival teams are more likely to be engaged in a fight or in bars and pubs where young men tend to fight and engage in assaulting each other after being drunk (McIntyre & Homel, 1997).

Case Study - Kirkholt burglary-reduction project

The Kirkholt Burglary reduction project initiative in England is one of the greatest examples of the effectiveness of the situational crime prevention strategy and this project had two separated phase to understand how situational crime prevention can be implemented and with the help of this initiative, the concept of situational crime prevention strategies were adopted more and more in the United Kingdom. This project had its two phases in 1987 and 1990.

In the first phase, it was seen that 49% of the Kirkholt burglary involved the theft of the meter cash and thus, the prepayment of fuel meters was implemented. Also, a paid exit gate was introduced to restrict the swift exit from the parking lot to prevent the happening of a burglary. In support of the victims, a support group or ‘cocoon’ was formed that was to work in the neighborhood and better household security was implemented in order to support and protect the victims (Forrester et al, 1990).

In the second phase, different community service or probation group work was introduced that usually involved cleaning up the public places and schools were to add recreational projectsor activities after the school hour to prevent vandalism and several petty crimes committed by the school kids. Also, several amenities were provided to the victims of burglary and petty crimes in the second phase (Forrester et al, 1990).

Kirkholt was chosen for this project due to its high rates of crimes in burglary and even though it had means to prevent it, there were hardly any steps that were taken against the occurrences of burglary. This is the project of Situational crime prevention concept that had provided with the results on the effectiveness of the SCP strategies.

As a result of this project, it was seen that in the 1987, the rate of burglary reduced by a margin of 40%. It was observed that during the first five months of implementing the second phase of the project, burglary reduced by a margin of 72% by the end of the third and final year (Bennet, 2006).

The Effectiveness of implementing Situational Crime Prevention Strategie

Apart from a well designed project like the Kirkholt burglary project, there were several other initiatives as it has been mentioned above such as installing CCTV, installing street lights and a conclusive result could be derived from that. According to researcher Poyner (1993), more than 122 crime prevention projects in the city of England have postulated the positive effect of the Situational crime prevention strategy.

According to Bowers et al (2004), it was seen from different 21 projects of the Home Office Burglary initiative that the right marketing or publicity of the situational crime prevention strategy is extremely important to attain a result in the field. The same view was upheld by Laylock (1985) and it was also observed that without the right publicity, a SCP often fails or is slower to attain its result.

Again there are several other several other domestic burglary projects that shows the positive effect of the situational crime prevention strategies and how such strategies that helped in warn the general public and reduce the occurrence of the crime by margin of almost 45% in England (Bowers, 2003).

Critical Analysis of The positive aspect of effectiveness of crime prevention strategies

The abovementioned discussion and the case study on the conclusion of the situational crime prevention strategies provides us with a positive picture of this prevention strategy and it could be seen that SCP has a great effectiveness in preventing crime in several cities and areas which are reported to be high with burglary, theft and other many petty crimes and vandalism. However, in critically assessing the contribution of the situational crime prevention strategy, it can be seen that almost all of the case studies or projects in regard to SCP relates to the instrumental crimes which resonate the thoughts of Trasler (1986). In critically analysis of the same, it can be seen that the conclusiveness of situational crime prevention strategy has very little effect in combating more grave crimes such as homicide or rape. It can be critically held that SCP only proves to be useful in preventing property crime and the study always shows positive result of SCP in cases of property crime.

However, in case of statutory crime in the nature of human body which includes homicide, rape or sexual assaults etc., situational crime prevention strategy cannot be said to have any practical effect as of now. There are not enough studies available to that effect and no conclusive proof can be gathered to understand whether in cases of expressive crime, SCP method works or not.

If we critically analyze the implementation of SCP in cases of crimes of human body, it can be argued that the frequency of such crime is almost not bound within an area and it is tough to pin point an area and exercise SCP. It is not necessary that a place where a sexual assault took place, it will continue to do so. Thus, implementing SCP in such cases is more presumed, experimental in nature and expensive.

Conclusive

Hence, it can be said that even though the strategies of the criminology department of UK in reference to SCP is only effective in preventing a certain kinds of crime and not all of them. To combat crime against human body or crimes which are more expressive in nature and depends on the human emotion than the environment, SCP almost has zero effectiveness. Thus, in order to exercise the effectiveness or usefulness of SCP in combating crimes of serious nature, different approach needs to be established herein. Discover additional insights on crime essay samples by navigating our resource hub.

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