Crime Prevention & Control: Right Solutions (AQA A Level Sociology): Revision Note

Situational crime prevention (SCP)

• Right realist solutions focus on controlling, containing, and punishing offenders rather than tackling deeper social causes (like poverty or inequality)

Three features of SCP measures

• Clarke (1992) describes SCP as a way of reducing opportunities for crime because it:

  • is directed at specific crimes

  • involves managing or altering the immediate environment of the crime

  • aims at increasing the effort and risks of committing a crime and reducing the rewards

• Measures involve:

  • target hardening, e.g., locks, CCTV, security guards, increases the likelihood of shoplifters being caught

  • designing out crime e.g., well-lit streets and gated communities, makes crime less attractive

Key idea

• SCP is based on rational choice theory, where criminals weigh up costs and benefits of a crime opportunity before acting

• Clarke argues that prevention works best when focusing on the immediate crime situation, not deep-rooted causes

• Since much crime is opportunistic, reducing opportunities means reducing crime

Evaluation of situational crime prevention

Strengths

• Effective in reducing some crimes

  • According to Felson (2002), the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City provided opportunities for deviant behaviour, e.g., theft, drug dealing and rough sleeping

  • Redesign greatly reduced deviancy; e.g., large sinks where homeless people were bathing were replaced by small hand basins

• Reduction in suicides by gassing

  • When toxic coal gas was replaced by natural gas in the 1960s, suicides by gassing fell sharply

  • Importantly, people did not simply switch to other methods so there was little displacement

Criticisms

• Risk of displacement

  • Crime might not be reduced, only moved elsewhere (different place, time, target, or method). If offenders are acting rationally, they’ll simply seek softer targets

  • Chaiken et al. (1974) found that subway robbery crackdowns in New York displaced robberies onto nearby streets

• Doesn't deal with the cause of crime

  • SCP ignores root causes such as poverty, inequality, and poor socialisation

  • This makes it difficult to design long-term strategies for reducing crime overall

• Not all criminals are rational

  • SCP assumes offenders carefully weigh up risks vs rewards

  • Many crimes (e.g., violent attacks, offences committed under the influence of drugs/alcohol) are impulsive, emotional, or irrational, so opportunity reduction may not work

Environmental crime prevention (ECP)

• This approach to crime prevention is linked to Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows theory

• Visible disorder, such as graffiti, vandalism, and litter, signals that no one cares, encouraging further disorder and crime

How it works

• In disorderly neighbourhoods:

  • formal control is weak, as police ignore petty crime

  • informal control is weak, as residents feel powerless/intimidated

• Without action, the area falls into a spiral of decline:

  • Respectable residents leave

  • Deviants move in

Solutions

• Environmental improvement: repair vandalism, clean streets, and tow abandoned cars quickly

• Zero tolerance policing: proactive action against even minor disorder reinforces control

• Community engagement: build local pride to strengthen informal social control

Evaluation of environmental crime prevention

Strengths

• Evidence from New York

  • Clean Car Programme: graffiti-covered subway cars were removed until cleaned, which saw graffiti virtually eliminated

  • Follow-up crackdowns on fare dodging, drug dealing, and begging contributed to crime rates falling between 1993 and 1996

• Wider influence

  • Zero-tolerance policing became a model worldwide

  • It influenced UK anti-social behaviour policies and similar approaches in other countries

Criticisms

• Causation is unclear

  • Crime decline may not have been caused by zero-tolerance policing but due to 7000 extra NYPD officers and economic recovery after the 1994 recession, which saw new jobs being created

  • Young (2011) claimed NYC’s zero-tolerance success was a myth, as crime had already been falling since the mid-1980s

• Risk of displacement

  • Cracking down on disorder may simply push crime elsewhere

  • It does not guarantee overall crime reduction

• Problems with fairness

  • Right realist solutions focus on petty offences (e.g., graffiti, begging) while ignoring serious harms like corporate crime

  • Gives police wide discretion, leading to accusations of discrimination (e.g., disproportionate stop-and-search of minorities, youth, and homeless people)