CJE3444
Crime Prevention
Chapter 2
Crime Prevention
Dr. Elizabeth C. Buchholz
Crime Prevention
 Crime prevention is not a new idea.
 “‘New’ crime prevention ideas and techniques are often little more than reincarnations of
past practices or extensions of basic approaches in the (distant) past” (Lab, 2010).
CRIME PREVENTION (CP) THROUGH THE AGES
 Earliest responses to crime were left to the individual and his family
 Retribution, revenge, and vengeance were the driving forces
CP THROUGH THE AGES
 England 1066—obligatory form of avocational citizen policing
 male citizens were required to band together into groups for the purpose of
policing each other
 watch and ward rotated the responsibility for keeping watch over the town or
area, particularly at night, among the male citizens
 watcher raised the alarm and call for help—hue and cry
 Statutes of Winchester (1285)
 required men to have weapons available for use when called—assize of arms
 outlined the role of a constable
Code of Hammurabi
 The oldest complete legal code in existence (about 1750-1795 BC).
 8.2-foot carving, found in Iraq in 1902 (now on display in the Louvre in Paris)
 Outlined retribution by the victim and/or his family
History of Crime Prevention
 Lex talionis – Eye for an eye
 Was a driving principle in the Hammurabic law
 Laws provided legitimacy to individual citizen action
History of Crime Prevention
 Early Crime Prevention was citizen based:
 Hue and Cry
 Common citizens—watchers—would raise the alarm and call for help
when threats were identified
 Watch and Ward
 Citizens who rotated responsibility to protect the community and one
another, particularly at night.
History of Crime Prevention
 Assize of Arms

Required men to have weapons available for use when called
1
 Constable

An unpaid position responsible for coordinating the watch and ward
system and overseeing other aspects of the law.
History of Crime Prevention
 Movements toward more organized policing and crime prevention included:
 Parochial Police
 Hired by the wealthy to protect their homes and businesses
 Vigilante Movement
 Posses of citizens that formed when an offender needed to be
apprehended and punished.
 Mirrored early ideas of "hue and cry"
 Major component of enforcing law and order in the growing frontier
 Thief takers
 Voluntary bounty hunters
History of Crime Prevention
 Metropolitan Police Act (1829)
 Key idea was crime prevention
 Sir Robert Peel
 Formalized policing
Early Prevention Tactics
 Alternative approaches to protective action:
 Walls
 Moats
 Drawbridges
 Surveillance
 Watch and ward
 Restriction of weapon ownership
History of Crime Prevention
 The change of crime prevention & policing in the United States:
 Early attempts were similar to hue and cry
 Expanded to more Biological and Psychological understandings
 Emerging fields of psychology and sociology in the late 1800s , early 1900s
 Moved away from simple responses involving repression, vengeance,
retribution
 More prevention oriented functions into criminal activity
History of Crime Prevention
 The change of crime prevention & policing in the United States (cont’d):
 Juvenile courts were developed to deal with poverty, lack of education, poor
parenting in lower classes
 Parens patriae
 Argued youths needed help and not processing in adult courts that are
geared toward punishment rather than prevention.
2
History of Crime Prevention
 Chicago School & Chicago Project (1931)
 Shaw and McKay found that the constant turnover of residents resulted in
an inability of the people to exert any informal social control over the
individuals in the area.
 Sought to work with residents to build a sense of pride and community.
Modern Crime Prevention
 Traced to the changes in crime in the 1960s
increases in crime and delinquency
large-scale social unrest
 Architectural interest in physical design of communities
Jacobs’s (1961) “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”
focused on urban decay and the natural and social environments, and their impact
on crime and deviance
Jeffery’s (1971) “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design”
possible to curtail offending by removing environmental cues that reinforce the
offending behavior
Modern Crime Prevention
 Newman’s (1972) “Defensible Space: People and Design in the Violent City”
called on architects to change the physical environment in such a way as to maximize
territoriality and natural surveillance by residents and create an image of an area as cared for and
protected
prompted the U.S. Department of Justice, other government agencies, and private
corporations (such as Westinghouse Electric) to fund demonstration projects
 Results of these projects led to the development of many different crime prevention
efforts
neighborhood watch
"Take A Bite Out Of Crime"
citizen patrols
lighting projects
Modern Crime Prevention
 Situational Crime Prevention in 1983
British Home Office
refocused attention from broad social/community change to target time- and place-specific
efforts that would remove the opportunities for crime
 Since the 1960s there has been a growing movement toward bringing the citizenry back
as active participants in crime prevention
DEFINING CRIME PREVENTION
 Ekblom (2005)
“Crime prevention is intervention in the causes of criminal and disorderly events to reduce
the risks of their occurrence and/or the potential seriousness of their consequences.”
addresses both crime and its impact on individuals and society
 While most definitions of crime prevention incorporate the ideas of lessening the actual
levels of crime or limiting further increases in crime, few deal with the problem of fear of
crime and perceived crime and victimization
3
DEFINING CRIME PREVENTION
 Class working definition:
Crime prevention entails any action designed to reduce the actual level of crime and/or the
perceived fear of crime.
 Not restricted to the efforts of the criminal justice system and include activities by
individuals and groups, both public and private
Defining Crime Prevention
 Crime prevention and crime control are not synonymous.
Crime prevention is an attempt to eliminate crime either prior to the initial occurrence or
before further activity.
Crime control is maintenance of a given or existing level and the management of that amount
of behavior.
control also fails to adequately address the problem of fear of crime
Crime Prevention Classifications
 Crime Prevention/Public Health Model
classifies prevention as either primary, secondary, or tertiary
 Primary prevention
Identifies conditions of the physical and social environment that provide opportunities for or
precipitate criminal acts.
 Environmental design
 Neighborhood watch
 General deterrence
 Private security
 Education about crime
 Crime prevention
CP Classifications
 Primary prevention
 Environmental design techniques
 Make crime more difficult for the offender
 Make surveillance easier for residents
 Spread feelings of safety
 For example:
 Building plans conducive to visibility
 Additional lights and locks
 Marking of property for ease of identification
CP Classifications
 Primary prevention
The first step in crime prevention
Neighborhood watches
Citizen patrols
 Exert control over their neighborhood for residents
 Add risk of observation for potential offenders
CP Classifications
4
 Primary prevention
Criminal justice system activities
 Police presence
 Affects attractiveness of an area for crime
 Lowers the fear of crime
 Court and Corrections
 Increase perceived risk of crime for offenders
 Public education
 Affects perceptions of crime
CP Classifications
 Primary
Private security
 Adds to the deterrent efforts of formal justice agencies
CP Classifications
 Primary
Social prevention
 Alleviating
 unemployment
 poor education
 poverty
CP Classifications
 Crime Prevention/Public Health Model (cont.)
 Secondary prevention
Prediction and identification
“engages in early identification of potential offenders and seeks to intervene” (Brantingham
and Faust, 1976)
CP CLASSIFICATIONS
 Crime Prevention/Public Health Model (cont.)
 Prior to commission of illegal activity
Implicit is the ability to correctly identify and predict problem people and situations
Most recognizable form of secondary prevention is the idea of situational crime prevention
Sir Robert Peel (1829)
 “The police are the public and the public are the police. The police being the only
members of the public that are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are
incumbent on every citizen, in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
CP Classifications
 Secondary (cont’d)
 Situation Crime Prevention
Identifying existing problems at the “micro” level and institution interventions that are
developed specifically for a given problem.
5
Physical design changes
Altering social behaviors
Improving surveillance
Community policing
Uses citizen involvement in problem-solving approach to neighborhood problems.
SARA
Eck & Spelman (1987)
 Scanning
o Identifying the problem
 Analysis
o Learning the problems causes, scope, and effects
 Response
o Acting to alleviate the problem, that is selecting the alternative solution or
solutions to try
 Assessment
o Determining if the response worked
o
Solving problems with new thinking
New Ideas for Old Problems
 Lose the “cuff ‘em and stuff ‘em” attitude
 Address the cause, not the symptom
 Is the real problem what is listed as the arrest title or the title on the offense report?
 What alternative solutions can be derived?
 “A problem well stated is a problem half solved!”
Exercise:
Solution-Oriented Policing
There are several complaints regarding noisy teens who gather outside a particular teen’s
house everyday after school
 Scanning
Identifying the problem
 Analysis
Learning the problems causes, scope, and effects
 Response
Acting to alleviate the problem, that is selecting the alternative solution or solutions
to try
 Assessment
Determining if the response worked
CP CLASSIFICATIONS
 Crime Prevention/Public Health Model (cont.)
Tertiary prevention
“deals with actual offenders and involves intervention . . . in such a fashion that they will not
commit further offenses” Brantingham and Faust (1976)
6
CP Classifications
 Tertiary prevention
Intervention and future deterrence
Deals with offenders
Majority of prevention rests with CJ system
Arrest
Prosecution
Incarceration
Treatment
rehabilitation
CP CLASSIFICATIONS
 Alternate Classifications
van Dijk and de Waard (1991)
add a second dimension resulting in a 3-by-3 configuration of primary/secondary/tertiary on
one axis and victim-oriented/community-neighborhood-oriented/offender-oriented on the other
axis
Crawford (1998)
offers two-dimensional typology that uses the primary/secondary/tertiary view as a starting
point, and adds a distinction between social and situational approaches within each category
CP Classifications
 Alternative Classifications (cont’d)
 Hunter (2010)
divides crime prevention into micro, meso, and macro levels, while maintaining the primary,
secondary, and tertiary distinctions
Micro Level – crime prevention targets individuals, small groups, small areas, or small
businesses
Site-specific
Target individual vulnerabilities
Meso Level – prevention looks at larger communities or neighborhoods, or larger groups of
individuals or businesses
Towns, villages
Chain of specialty stores
Macro Level – crime prevention looks at large communities, society as a whole, or other
very large collectives
Large-scale social changes
Major shifts in educational practices
Major new employment opportunities
CP CLASSIFICATIONS
 Alternate Classifications (cont.)
Tonry and Farrington (1995)
Divide crime prevention into four categories: developmental, community (primary),
situational, and criminal justice (tertiary)
Universal – targeting coplete population
Selected – targeting high-risk subgroups
Indicated – already manifested cases/offenders
7
CP Classifications
Crime Science (Laycock, 2005)
Application of the methods of science to crime and disorder
Uses a wide range of disciplines to fight crime such as sociology, psychology, criminology,
criminal justice, engineering, biology, physics, architecture, genetics, communications, computer
science, education, and others
Brings divergent disciplines together into a functional, coordinated response to crime
8