Using Material from Item a and Elsewhere, Assess Sociological Views of Crime Reduction Strategies.

In crime, there are two types of prevention, Situational and Social crime prevention. Situational crime prevention makes it harder for people to commit crimes without being caught. Situational strategies of crime prevention may include CCTV cameras which are great for proving that a person committed the crime but do not stop the crime completely. Soial crime prevention strategies include putting children into schooling to prevent them from living on the street and committing

The idea that a broken window left unfixed will cause people to think that no one cares about the community and lead to further damage of property is the essence of "broken windows" theory (Kelling and Wilson). Applying it to crime, criminologists Kelling and Wilson argued that if smaller crimes such as vandalism go unchecked larger crimes will become prevalent in the area. In theory "broken windows" policing is a clever way to deter crime; however, in practice it is criticized for being discriminatory, as minorities and impoverished communities have been most effected. This crime control policy has many pitfalls in practice and created much distrust of the police in targeted communities; however, addressing the imminent issues could allow "broken windows" policing to be an effective strategy for crime control.

There are many acts to cover like; The Anti- Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, Police Reform act 2002, Antisocial Behaviour Act 2003 and a Crime and Disorder Act 1998. But the first one that I will be covering is the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. This is an act which was put into power to cover a range of topics from giving people information about harm in relationships, violence, forced marriages and guns. This will help to protect the victims who were involved in harmful relationships. With the act introducing new powers it gives the

Even after 30 years of the existence of “Broken windows”, its conclusions remains to be ambiguous and broad as it was transferred from paper to policy too quickly. “Even today, after the accumulation of several scientific studies, there is no consensus about the validity of the theory or its individual subcomponents” (Gau, Corsaro and Brunson, 2014). The theory explains that disorder will eventually lead to a social breakdown which usually protects a community from crime and anti-social behaviour, this breakdown then influences further crime (Wilson & Kelling, 1982). Even though crime would be a central feature, other mechanisms such as social control and social cohesion (Sampson & Raudenbush, 1999) in a community it is still yet to be explored on their effective impacts and how they operate with disorder, for instance, how willing are individuals in reporting a petty crime and littering to the police, and the longer they avoid it the problem only starts to grow and becomes more aggressive in the process until they realise that there is no point in calling enforcements because they feel that there is nothing that the police can do anymore.

The crime control model is the “perspective that emphasizes the efficient arrest and conviction of criminal offenders” (Schmalleger, 2015, p. 22). A few of the underlying ideas of this model are keeping public order, preventing future crimes, and controlling unacceptable

The introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners has allowed the public to have a say about the future of policing in their area (Dockley, 2012), and “embed mechanisms through which residents work together with police and other state agencies to tackle crime and other problems” (Bullock and Sindall, 2012, p385). Using routine activity theory, the police are able to target resources to specific issues such as an increased police presence on the streets to ensure the community can see that the police are effectively reacting to the problems within the community (Morgan and Newburn, 1997), for example, Northumbria police have “dedicated neighbourhood teams made up of police officers and police staff who are accessible, visible and known to the communities” (Northumbria Police, 2013). Similarly, the police depend on the public for providing intelligence regarding crime within the area, “increasing the flow of intelligence from citizens to police about offences and offenders, then increases the probability of arrest for crime … [and] also increase police effectiveness at crime prevention through problem-solving strategies” (Sherman,

The strategy is derived from an influential essay entitled Broken Windows by James Wilson and George Kelling. They argue that a disregard for petty infractions, such as graffiti, public loitering, or the breaking of windows, encourages further crime by signaling a degree of public apathy and neglect. By tackling minor offenses, in their view, would not only increase the quality-of -life but also help reduce more serious crime. It is marked by the confidence of the police officers in

Broken Windows was originated by social scientist James Q. Wilson. and George Kelling the model was focused on the important of disorder “broken windows” in generating and sustaining more serious crime. In this case disorder was not directly linked to serious crimes but instead disorder lead to increased fear and withdrawal from residents, which allowed much serious crimes to come about because of the decreased of informal social control. Police can play a key role in disrupting this process If they were to focus less on serious crimes in neighborhoods where it has no yet been overtaken by serious crimes, by doing so they can help reduce fear and residential withdrawal. It leaves criminals free to roam and send a message that law violations are not taken seriously. For example, communities that are not occupied or are taken care for are mostly likely to attract juveniles or criminal gangs that will vandalize other properties because they interpret that to being what’s right and normal in their society, they know that nothing will be done to either stop it or them. The way broken window plays a role into this example is by trying to communicate to societies that if they fix the problem when its minor then other crimes will decrease or would not occur.

They examined 102 evaluations of situationally focused crime prevention projects and evaluated 574 observations by using certain search strategy, inclusion and coding strategies, and quantitative analytical approach, including the gross effect (GE), net effect (NE), the total net effect (TNE), and the weighted displacement quotient (WDQ) (Bowers and Johnson, 2003; Clarke and Eck, 2005). They found that the possibility of diffusion of benefits (27%) was even a little bit greater than the possibility of displacement (26%). This provided the consistent support for the argument that crime did not simply relocate because of the situational intervention, however, its opposite, the diffusion of benefit was more likely to happen. Moreover, even though displacement could happen in some situation, crimes tended to be less than before, so the initiatives were surely

Situational Crime Prevention utilizes advance policing technology and increase presence in area of crime to disperse crime. In the inner city, areas such as where drug dealing occurs, law enforcement will have their officers patrol the areas heavily and make arrests on the spot. Situational Crime Prevention decreases the benefit of committing the crime because the cost increases where the criminal is more likely to get caught and be persecuted. Law enforcement may use hot spot crime prevention where they target heavy areas of crime to decrease crime in that area. The biggest fault of Situational crime prevention is the displacement of crime. Criminals will find another area to commit crime until their area is “safe” to go back to. There will always be something with all crime prevention however, if calculating the cost versus benefit of using Situational Crime Prevention, Situational Crime Prevention would be the benefit since it is budget friendly (Hayward.K.

The purpose of this report is to try and seek to reduce the crime and disorder and its aftermath fear of crime, to make communities feel safer. Hopefully this will be through a series of carefully planned activities that shall be carried within a specific time scale to help achieve this result. Some of the themes that have been included are by Mark Moore and Braga, 2003, commonly known as the seven ‘dimensions of value’ and which shall be achieved by this proposal, and these are:

For the final paper we were given a broad topic on purpose because it allows us to have more discretion as to what we choose to write about. When thinking of what topic to choose for this paper I realized there was a slight difference in ther verbally assigned topic and syllabus assigned topic. This is my attempt to combine both. Throughout my student career as a Criminal Justice major I have learned about many topics that are also covered in our texts that I can elaborate on. Although I did not read the Assigned text cover to cover and I am not sure if it was mentioned, I know the topic of crime prevention through environmental design was discussed in class. And to tie that together with the syllabus I will talk about the criminal justice leader who designed that theory along with the broken windows theory. All of this of course is only important as we can relate it to how police organization and management makes effective decisions to reduce crime with this knowledge of theories.

Communities around the world were once controlled to a large extent by an underlying social fabric. It was this social fabric which allowed certain activities to become acceptable and others unacceptable. As Wilson and Kelling suggest chaos was controlled by everyone and not reliant on policing efforts to maintain order and when this social fabric began to break down, the resultant effect was that disorder was allowed to flourish and grow which over time makes that community attractive to criminal elements (Wilson & Kelling, 1982). There are many theories that discuss how we have arrived at our current state, some believing it is the culmination of an archaic and hierarchal police system in which by its very structure limited any innovative thought processes. Like any successful enterprise, policing strategies must evolve with time and technology to provide reliant strategies to accomplish both the goals of the police as well as ensuring public safety but at the same time, not alienating that very same customer base. In the last 40 years, community policing has become a world-wide strategy to establish a proactive vice reactive means of crime reduction. Community policing takes on many different forms and what works in one community may not work in another which is to say that it is not a one size fits program but can be tailored to fit any given community’s particular needs. The key to it’s success however, is that it is supported by both the police as well as the community

One reoccurring aspect we realised is that there were a lot of bin bags left lying around, streets were not as cleaned and also a lot of walls including vehicles were vandalised. This not only looks unclean but also leaves a bad odour which leads to preventing individuals from walking in that particular area. The broken window theory also supports this reaction, a study made that demonstrated a broken house is more of an open target for crime and vandals. It empathizes the importance of maintaining environments to prevent crimes. (Wilson et

Similar to Park and Burgess who were interested in knowing how the city affects criminal behavior, Shaw and McKay also wanted to know how the social forces influence crime. They used Burgess’s model of Concentric Zone to investigate the relationship in crime rates and delinquency in the different zones of the city. They came with the same conclusion as of Park and Burgess that areas located near the CBD were experiencing high disorganization and were also experiencing high delinquency (Shaw & McKay, 1942). They extended the explanation offered Park and Burgess of ecological theory by introducing their theory of cultural transmission. The argued that delinquent values were established in criminal areas and were then passed on to new generation of youngsters (Tierney, 2006, p. 92). They suggested that this was due to the absence of strong enforced norms from institutions such as the family and the