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SITUATIONAL CRIME PREVENTION

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2012, situational crime prevention, effective guardianship, developmental crime prevention, Community Crime Prevention

Situational Crime Prevention is premised on the belief that most crime is opportunistic rather than being the outcome of those driven to commit a crime no matter what.

Situational Crime Prevention attempts to reduce the opportunities for crime rather than just relying on the police after the crime has occurred. This approach is also called ‘effective guardianship’.

Evaluating Situational Crime Prevention Using a Young People's Survey 
Part II Making Sense of the Elite Police Voice 
Kate A. Painter and David P. Farrington, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. 
The main aim of this research is to evaluate the impact of improved street lighting on crime in a local authority housing estate in Dudley, West Midlands. It is argued that high quality evaluation designs, for example, comparing experimental and control areas and including before and after measures of crime, are needed to evaluate situational crime prevention initiatives. Previously, in a design of this kind using household victimization surveys to measure crime, we demonstrated that crime decreased after the street lighting was improved. The main aim of this paper is to investigate whether the same results are obtained in a self-report survey of young people, also given in experimental and control areas before and after the improved street lighting. It is argued that self-reported delinquency is a valid and reliable measure of offending. The self-report results corroborated the victimization survey results in showing that offending decreased in the experimental area compared to the control area. - 
bjc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/41/2/266

The Politics and Practice of Situational Crime Prevention 
CRIME PREVENTION STUDIES, Volume 5.
Ross Homel, editor, Criminal Justice Press, Monsey, New York, U.S.A. 1996. - popcenter.org/Library/CrimePrevention/Volume%2005/index.htm

Value for money? A review of the costs and benefits of situational crime prevention 
BC Welsh and DP Farrington, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge 
In recent years, in the United Kingdom and other industrialized countries, there has been a growing interest in the economic costs and benefits of efforts to prevent crime. Little is known, however, about the economic value of the principal strategies. This paper reviews the costs and benefits of situational crime prevention. Thirteen situational crime prevention studies permitted the calculation of benefit to cost ratios, enabling an assessment of programme efficiency. In general, benefits were calculated more conservatively than costs. There were no consistent relationships between the studies' benefit-cost ratios and either the primary intervention technique employed or the primary crime targeted by the intervention. Current knowledge suggests that situational prevention can be an economically efficient strategy for the reduction of crime. However, future evaluations need better designs, more adequate estimates of costs and benefits and longer follow-up periods. - bjc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/39/3/345

Serious Criminality at U.S. Colleges and Universities: An Application of the Situational Perspective - Don Hummer, University of Massachusetts-Lowell 
This research builds on data collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Law Enforcement and Management and Administrative Statistics program, which administered a questionnaire to larger (enrollment more than 2,500 students) colleges and universities throughout the United States. The primary focus of the original Bureau of Justice study was to assess the structure and functions of campus public safety departments. However, data were also collected on a number of variables indicative of the tenants of situational crime prevention, as well as data on serious (Part I) offending from the sampled institutions. This research will help determine whether crime prevention initiatives derived from the situational perspective are successful in ameliorating serious offending in the campus environment. - cjp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/4/391

Reduction of Suicides in Jails and Lockups Through Situational Crime Prevention: Addressing the Needs of a Transient Population - Christine Tartaro 
S.I. Newhouse Center for Law and Justice, Rutgers University, 15 Washington Street, 11th Floor, Newark, NJ 07102. Phone: 973-353-1954. 
The problem of jail suicide has been widely publicized in many articles and corrections reports, yet seldom is this work organized in a framework. The current paper organizes the existing literature on suicide in jails and lockups within Clarke's (1997) framework of situational prevention and Clarke and Lester's (1989) work on suicide prevention. Due to the transient nature of lockup and jail populations, long-term strategies such as counseling or other programs may not be feasible. The opportunity-reducing techniques presented in this paper are tailored toward institutions that are faced with helping inmates through temporary periods of despair. Suggestions are discussed for reducing opportunity while attempting to avoid further isolation and depression of inmates. - jcx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/235

Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention
Edited by Andrew von Hirsch, David Garland and Alison Wakefield
Oxfrod, U.K.: Hart Publishing, 2000
Book Review: ‘Situational crime prevention’ refers to crime prevention strategies that aim at reducing criminal opportunities in the routines of everyday life. Methods of situational crime prevention (SCP) include ‘hardening’ potential targets, improving natural surveillance, controlling access to property, and deflecting offenders from settings in which crime might occur.” The editors go on to ask the central question: “‘does SCP work?’, ‘does it merely displace crime to other locales’1 and ‘do its assumptions match what we know about prospective offenders and victims?’”. In fact, one of the many fascinating issues explored in this quite valuable text is the extent to which SCP practices result in communicating to the public that crime is a normal risk of everyday life to be managed by the police. Of course, the corollary proposition is also tested in the course of the twelve chapters: in light of the fact that the police cannot protect everyone at all times, especially in certain areas and at certain times, to what extent are “victims” to be blamed if harm is visited upon them? 

Community crime prevention is a general category of prevention strategies which focus on the community itself.

This general category of community crime prevention includes strategies such as ‘developmental crime prevention’, ‘effective guardianship’ or ‘situational crime prevention’.

Developmental Crime Prevention

Developmental crime prevention is an approach to crime prevention which focuses on the way a crime occurs or a victimization happens. 

For example, the community may focus on helping teachers develop self-control in young people, providing follow-up on violent behaviour by young people or educating the public to make their property more secure. 

In general developmental crime prevention approach to crime prevention tries to prevent the development of a motivated offender.

Developmental Crime Prevention 
Richard E. Tremblay, Wendy M. Craig
Crime and Justice, Vol. 19, Building a Safer Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime Prevention (1995), pp. 151-236
Abstract: Prevention experiments with children have targeted the development of antisocial behavior and confirm the hypothesis that early childhood factors are important precursors of delinquent behavior and that a cumulative effect model best fits the data. Experiments have aimed to prevent criminal behavior or one of three important delinquency risk factors: socially disruptive behavior, cognitive deficits, and poor parenting. Experiments with juvenile delinquency as an outcome demonstrate that positive results are more likely when interventions are aimed at more than one risk factor, last for a relatively long period of time, and are implemented before adolescence. Experiments featuring early childhood interventions with socially disruptive behavior, cognitive deficits, or parenting as an outcome generally have positive effects. The majority of studies, small-scale confirmation or replication experiments, need to be followed by large-scale field experiments that test the efficacy and cost of implementation in regular service systems. - jstor.org

Developmental and early intervention approaches to crime prevention
ISSN 1448-1383 1 July 2003 
View paper (HTML) - http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/crm/crm004t.html
PDF print version (PDF 118kB) - http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/crm/crm004.pdf
Abstract: Developmental and early intervention strategies for the reduction and prevention of crime can operate across all three levels of prevention: primary, secondary and tertiary.
Developmental prevention is intervention early in developmental pathways that may lead to the emergence and recurrence of criminal behaviours and other social problems. It does not just mean early in life, although inevitably many of the critical moments for effective intervention will occur during the early years. 
Developmental prevention emphasises investment in strategies and programs for creating "child friendly" institutions and communities. It also focuses on the manipulation of multiple risk and protective factors at crucial transition points across a lifetime. Such points can be around birth, the preschool years, the transition from primary to secondary school, and subsequent transitions to higher education, employment, and so on.
In Australia, developmental prevention programs typically cover areas such as parenting and early childhood support, health care assistance and home help, literacy training and alternative learning programs, anti-bullying initiatives in schools, programs addressing violence reduction, self-esteem and self-empowerment development and training, job skills training and development, establishment of theatre and arts groups, sport and youth centres for recreation, and early school-leavers' programs.
The growing interest in developmental and early intervention for the prevention and reduction of crime is mainly driven by two closely related factors:
frustration at the apparent failure of conventional strategies to prevent the long-term growth and recurrence of crime in the community; and 
evidence from a small number of well researched and evaluated initiatives which strongly suggest that significant long-term benefits (particularly financial) will accrue from effective developmental and early intervention programs. 
The most significant challenge for developmental and early intervention crime prevention remains moving the research evidence into effective everyday programs.

Homel, R. et al. 1999, Pathways to Prevention: Developmental and Early Intervention Approaches to Crime in Australia, Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department, Canberra.

Tremblay, R.E., and W. Craig 1995 Developmental crime prevention.

“Developmental and Early Intervention Approaches to Crime Prevention” - Dr Linda Gilmore, Psychologist and Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Dr Linda Gilmore is a developmental psychologist who lectures in educational and developmental psychology and disability at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She holds undergraduate degrees in psychology and education, a Master’s degree in educational psychology and a Doctor of Philosophy in special education. Dr Gilmore is a member of the
Developmental Crime Prevention Consortium which produced the 1999 report Pathways to prevention: Developmental and early intervention approaches to crime in Australia, and is currently co-authoring a book about developmental approaches to crime and crime policy for Cambridge University Press. As a psychologist in clinical practice, she has a particular interest in working with at-risk children and their families to develop effective early interventions for promoting optimum development, and she has undertaken research across a range of developmental and disability areas including intellectual disability, self-regulation, developmental problems and parenting. 
Presentation Abstract: This topic addresses the developmental pathways that lead to criminal behaviour, and considers the evidence base for effective early interventions. Developmental and early intervention approaches to crime prevention highlights new directions in developmental prevention. - ncpc.gov.sg/icpc2004/speakers.htm

Effective guardianship

Effective guardianship is an aspect of the routine activities approach to understanding crime and in particular victimization.

This approach argues that three key factors are required for crime to happen: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and ineffective guardianship of that target.

Effective guardianship would include having locks on bikes, security lights in the backyard, or putting goods in the trunk of the car. Measures like this should reduce the risk of being victimized.

Crime occurs when there is an intersection in time and space of a motivated offender, an attractive target, and a lack of capable guardianship. People’s daily routine activities affect the likelihood they will be an attractive target who encounters an offender in a situation where no effective guardianship is present. Changes in routine activities in society (e.g., women working) can affect crime rates.

Using Random Utility Maximization Models to Explain Location Choice of Offenders - ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/denver2002/Bernasco.ppt
Wim Bernasco (Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement) - The Sixth Annual International Crime Mapping Research Conference
A theory of location choice of criminal activities attempts to explain why motivated offenders commit crimes at the places they do, instead of elsewhere. This paper argues that the integration of random utility maximization theory and the (statistical) conditional logit model makes it possible to test simultaneously both location-based and offender-based factors, without assuming a random spatial distribution of either criminal opportunities or offenders. The project hypothesizes that for each individual the probability of choosing a particular neighborhood is a positive function of the wealth of the neighborhood, the absence of effective guardianship in the neighborhood, and the proximity of the neighborhood to his own neighborhood.

Male peer support and a feminist routing activities theory: Understanding sexual assault on the college campus
Authors: Schwartz, Martin; DeKeseredy, Walter; Tait, David; Alvi, Shahid
Source: Justice Quarterly, Volume 18, Number 3, September 2001, pp. 623-649(27)
Abstract: Routine activities theorists traditionally have assumed offenders' motivation and victims' suitability from demographic correlates, and have done little to study effective guardianship. In this paper we ask questions directly of male date rape offenders to test the proposal that male peer support provides motivation; we ask lifestyle questions directly of both female victims and male offenders; and we discuss the extent to which abusive peers eliminate guardianship. Data from the Canadian National Survey support routine activities theory, and show that men who drink two or more times a week and have male peers who support both emotional violence and physical violence are nearly 10 times as likely to admit to being sexual aggressors as men who have none of these three traits. - ingentaconnect.com

Specifying the Influence of Family and Peers on Violent Victimization 
Extending Routine Activities and Lifestyles Theories 
Christopher J. Schreck, Rochester Institute of Technology 
Bonnie S. Fisher, University of Cincinnati 
Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 19, No. 9, 1021-1041 (2004) DOI: 10.1177/0886260504268002 © 2004 SAGE Publications
The fact that crime and victimization share similar correlates suggests that family and peer contexts are potentially useful for explaining individual differences in violent victimization. In this research, we used routine activities and lifestyles frameworks to reveal how strong bonds of family attachment can promote more effective guardianship while simultaneously making children less attractive as targets and limiting their exposure to motivated offenders. Conversely, the routine activities perspective suggests that exposure to delinquent peers will enhance risk. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we found that family and peer context variables do correspond with a higher risk of violent victimization among teenagers, net controls for unstructured and unsupervised activities and demographic characteristics. The role of family and peer group characteristics in predicting victimization risk suggests new theoretical directions for victimization research. - jiv.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/9/1021

Compulsory treatment of alcoholism: the case against 
Authors: MacAvoy, Michael1; Flaherty, Bruce1
Source: Drug and Alcohol Review, 1990, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 267-271(5)
Abstract: The need for compulsory detention in the management of alcohol-dependent persons is reviewed with a particular focus on legislation in New South Wales (NSW). It is argued that there is no justification for the severe loss of civil liberties in order to provide a general power of involuntary alcoholism treatment since such treatment is basically ineffective and in any case little treatment is actually given to those detained. The selective operation of the NSW Inebriates Act (in terms of class and race biases) is noted. The special circumstances of those who suffer severe alcohol-related brain damage and those who are in acute life-threatening circumstances are discussed. It is suggested that these cases are adequately covered by existing Mental Health and Guardianship legislation, obviating the need for special legislation such as an Inebriates Act. .... effective guardianship legislation before repeal ... - ingentaconnect.com

The Span of Collective Efficacy: Extending Social Disorganization Theory to Partner Violence 
Christopher R. Browning
Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 64 Issue 4 Page 833 - November 2002 doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2002.00833.x Volume 64 Issue 4 
This research applies the social disorganization perspective on the neighborhood-level determinants of crime to partner violence. The analysis brings data from the 1990 Decennial Census together with data from the 1994–1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey, the 1994–1995 Chicago homicide data, and data from the 1995–1997 Chicago Health and Social Life Survey. The findings of this study indicate that collective efficacy—neighborhood cohesion and informal social control capacity—is negatively associated with both intimate homicide rates and nonlethal partner violence. Collective efficacy exerts a more powerful regulatory effect on nonlethal violence in neighborhoods where tolerance of intimate violence is low. Collective efficacy also increases the likelihood that women will disclose conflict in their relationships to various potential sources of support. - An emphasis on the crime-inhibiting role of effective guardianship rooted in collective efficacy suggests that socially organized neighborhoods should exert ... - blackwell-synergy.com

Conventional Crime (From Criminology: A Canadian Perspective, P 242-269, 1987, Rick Linden, ed. -- See NCJ-108160) 
Author(s): D J Koenig 
Hindelang and associates have developed a lifestyle/exposure theory to explain the correlates of crime against persons, and Cohen and Felson have extended the theory to property crimes. 
Abstract: According to this perspective, the probability of criminal victimization varies by time, space, and social setting and by the extent to which routine activities increase target suitability and reduce effective guardianship. The patterns and correlates of conventional crimes are consistent with this approach. Crimes against property tend to be committed disproportionately against those whose lifestyle leave their possessions least effectively guarded. Crimes against persons have some different correlates than do crimes against property, but most of these differences are consistent with the lifestyle/exposure theory. For typical crimes, victims (and offenders) are most likely to be young, male, and engage in evening activities away from home. Thus, their lifestyles place them in social settings with a higher risk of criminal victimization. Strategies for crime control consistent with this theory would include those to increase effective guardianship and reduce the availability of motivated offenders. ... increase target suitability and reduce effective guardianship. ... - ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=108172

Routine Activities Impending Social Change and Policing 
Journal: Canadian Police College Journal Volume:7 Issue:2 Dated:(1983) Pages:96-136
Author(s): D J Koenig ; E P DeBeck 
This article discusses selected socioeconomic trends which should be of concern to the police manager in producing long-range forecasts which entail assumptions about future social trends and their impact on crime trends and policing functions. 

Abstract: After revealing inconsistent data support for the conventional wisdom relating crime rates to urbanization, population, age structure, and economic factors, a theoretical framework is provided whereby changing crime patterns are viewed as a normal response to changing routine activities of society that affect the motivation of potential offenders, target suitability, and effective guardianship of people and their property (formal and informal social controls). A discussion of the necessity of differentiating short-term fluctuations from long-range trends is followed by a forecast of various social trends expected to affect crime patterns to the year 2000. Highly probable changes include relative economic deterioration, centralization, public sector fiscal restraint, innovations in the computer and telecommunications industries, continuing increases in the private security industry, a continuing boom in economic crime, population redistribution away from central Canada, intensified metropolitanization, and a trend for more activities to take place outside the home. The effects of such social trends on target suitability, motivated offenders, and effective guardianship are outlined. Implications for various aspects of policing operations are drawn. ... target suitability, and effective guardianship of people and their property ... - ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=92157

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