Introduction and Description
Looking at the various theories that have been proposed, the theory of situational crime prevention is one that interested me. There are a few authors who have helped to start up and contribute to this theory becoming an established one. The first was a man named Oscar Newman. He came up with the term called defensible space, which means by designing residences with measures intended to reduce crime, such as having alarm systems installed, well lit areas and other such things, then crime will be reduced or stopped all together. Another person who helped to begin the growing of this theory was C. Ray Jeffery. He published the book, “Crime Prevention through Environmental Design” (Jeffery 1971), which took Newman’s idea that focused on residential areas, and used them in areas that are not residential such as a factory or store. He stressed some of the ideas from Newman’s book, but also suggests things like very strong locks, and having a neighborhood watch in place to help deter criminal activity by limiting the opportunities available to commit crimes. The ideas from Jeffery’s book were actually used in Washington D.C. to help prevent crime in the subway system present there. One of the biggest contributors to this theory, and perhaps the one who really helped get it grounded and fully established is Ronald V. Clarke, author of “Situational Crime Prevention”, which is one of the best compilations of tactical plans for reducing criminal acts. The general concepts of this theory have remained the same since it was beginning to be fleshed out several years ago. It always focuses on putting in safety measure that help to protect people by making criminals feel like they will be unable to commit crimes or that it would be a situation they would be easily caught or discovered in and make them not want to commit a crime in areas with these methods in place. The reasoning behind these methods is rooted within the idea of rational choice regarding crime. By using the idea that every criminal will look at the situation of a possible crime, look at the balance of how much they can gain, and stand it against how much they can loose and how likely they are to fail, they will act accordingly. So if there is a large amount of safeguards put in place to cause a very high probability of failure or capture, then the rational choice for a criminal will be to not commit the crime.
The central concepts of this theory are deeply rooted within the thought process of a rationally thinking criminal. In addition to that theory, the Routine Activity Theory also has influence over this theory of situational prevention. By looking at the key points of routine activity theory, having a motivated offender, a suitable victim, and lack of a capable guardian all present, prevention strategies are set up to deter this. By trying to limit the suitability and ease of accessing victims, having many unseen but implied, or directly stated guardian measures, for example security cameras and good lighting outside a building, or a sign in front of a home with a security system label showing it is part of the security network, the rate of crime should go down. The situational crime prevention theory also has at its core a list of techniques of situational prevention. From the text Ronald V. Clarke published in 1992 there was a revised list of 12 techniques of situational prevention, but in 1997, he and another author, Ross Homel, published “A Revised Classification of Situational Crime Prevention Techniques” which brought the list from 12 to 16. These techniques are placed into one of four major categories. There are techniques that increase the effort needed by criminals to commit crimes, increasing the risks of committing crimes, reducing the rewards available from committing the crime, and in the 1997 revision the category of increasing the guilt or shame felt by criminals who commit the crimes. I will describe some of the strategies and categories that have been outlined.
Within the category of increasing effort there are four subcategories: Target hardening, Access Control, Deflecting Offenders, and controlling facilitators. Target hardening is using devices such as a steering lock for your car, thicker and tougher glass to prevent it being broken and tamper-proof seals on products to make them hard to open and steal the contents while leaving the container behind to minimize suspicion of theft. Access control is a very common and easily observed method of crime prevention. A locked gate, or a fenced in yard, and things like PIN numbers for ATM machined and identification badges at workplaces are ways of keeping people out either by leaving no way of accessing a target physically or by having a system in place to not let people masquerading as others into secure areas or access personal belongings. Deflecting offenders are ways to allow certainly acts that are illegal to be performed in an allocated area. So that if the people who would do such a thing, such as spray-painting graffiti on walls, and perform it in an acceptable area, then they can do what they like, without any damage or problems within a society.
The second of the technique categories revolves around increasing the risks criminals have to face in committing their crimes. The first subcategory is Entry and Exit screening. This isn’t the same as access control, “in that the purpose is less to exclude people than to increase the risk of detecting those who are not in conformity with entry requirements.”(Ronald V. Clarke 1992 pg 16) Customs upon entering another country is a type of entry screening, and exit screening is something like the detectors by the doors or entryways of stores, which will sound if any items have been taken out that haven’t been cleared for being taken out. Formal surveillance is a very common type of security in almost all places with anything to protect. It entails using a security system that is being consistently monitored by personnel to ensure increased security. By having cameras and the eyes of a security force that can notify the police at a moment’s notice always watching, there is a much higher risk for a criminal. Natural surveillance is the final type of risk increasing technique. This is one of the biggest techniques regarding residential protection, “Enhancing natural surveillance is a prime objective of defensible space, and also, more explicitly, of ‘neighborhood watch’.” (Ronald V. Clarke 1992 pg 18) By allowing anyone to look at a building or a home and see if there is something obviously wrong going on, they have the ability to rush and get help instead of there being no knowledge about what is happening.
Reducing the rewards is the next technique set of situational prevention. Identifying property is a technique that has been used for a very long time. Going as far back as cattle branding, and more recently in the previous century of including VIN numbers on automobiles and all theirs largest components are common ways to identifying a person’s property as their own. Inventions such as LOWJACK are also ways to have your property identified and easily located to get it retrieved before it is damaged terribly, and possibly catch the criminals in the act of dismantling it or driving it. Removing inducements is a bit of a more complex technique. It focuses on removing certain items or situations that would be conducive to crimes being committed, “it has also been frequently argued that leaving damaged items unrepaired is to invite further attack.” (Ronald V. Clarke 1992 pg 20) By not having items or situations that might invite crimes to happen, vandalism of already damaged targets or theft of very obvious and open targets like gold jewelry or cars, then there will be a lowered reward for the crime to help prevent them from occurring. The final strategy in this in this category is rule setting. These are a very basic measure of protection. By placing very clear rules, that will cover any kind of ambiguity or any kind of specifically dictated condition that the law should be carried out under, the clientele or employees will know what they can be and will be punished or reprimanded for. The more vague and unspecific a rule is however, and then people will very often find ways to exploit that for their own gain.
The last section of the Situational Prevention Techniques is part of the revised list published in 1997. This contained some revisions to the old list, but it remained largely the same. The main focus of this new list was of the addition to a category heading that focuses on increasing the guilt and shame a criminal will feel in committing an illegal act. In this list the aforementioned technique of Rule Setting does fit under this type of preventative measure. The three new types of techniques are strengthening moral condemnation, controlling disinhibitors, and facilitating compliance. Strengthening moral condemnation covers information campaigns that stress how bad it is to do something like steal or drink and drive, so everyone feels that it is a deplorable act, so the guilt you might feel if others you know find out, you would be heavily judged and thought badly of, which would prevent you from committing the crime in the first place. Controlling disinhibitors are things like the legal drinking age, ignition interlocks in cars and other such devices that will always be known or felt, so that a criminal would be aware that he is obviously going against the set legal settings, either mentally or physically. The final addition is facilitating compliance, wherein by adding things such as increased checkouts, and public lavatories and waste receptacles, rather than commit a minor crime by stealing or putting somewhere it shouldn’t, there is an acceptable outlet to place such things and the methods of complying with the law do not feel cumbersome and unnecessarily long.
General Theory Analysis
Empirical Validity-
This crime theory like all other crime theories can be put up several types of criteria to be analyzed so that its strengths and weaknesses can be seen. There are 5 different sets of criteria I will analyze this theory under, to provide a detailed look at the workings of the theory. The first category to look at this theory is the amount of Empirical Validity it has. There is a definite high amount of empirical validity that this theory can obtain. Because it is looking at preventing or deterring crime from the introduction of certain elements or the removal of them, by altering only one variable in a setting and observing the results, the effectiveness of that act can be measured in how many types of a particular crime went up or down or if there was no effect. By looking at an area of a city that has a specific rate of crime over a month, then putting in a security system that is clearly visible at all times and then looking at how many crimes were committed in that area the next month, if the crime rate went down, it was probably due to the surveillance system. To avoid the risk of there being some random factor that was unaccounted for, by performing this experiment in several areas in many parts of a cit, or a state, or even a country, much better levels of validity can be obtained. The only real issue that might be present with this is the possibility of the technique after being applied having an effect when it is really from an outside factor, but by performing the change or addition to the situation in several areas this should be eliminated if not at least accounted for.
Internal Logical Consistency
Next is the internal logical consistency of this theory. The theory does contain a large level of logical consistency. It has a suggested list of measure that can be taken, and what likely effects it will have on criminals and potential criminals. There is a starting point of initiating the action, and observing what the reaction is in the long run, whether it is effective or not effective. It doesn’t contain any kind of applications that don’t make any sense, as any of the possible techniques to be used have a logical reason to be used and logical result that should occur.
Scope
The scope of this theory is good in that it covers a large variety of crimes that can and are committed regularly, as well as some of the more sever ones. However, it does have a weakness in this respect. This is a theory that is heavily focused on deterrence of small time criminals or simply opportunistic or first time criminals, but it may be that, “other crimes that are more deeply motivated or committed by ‘hardened’ offenders need to be tackled in other ways.” (Ronald V. Clarke 1992 pg 21) There is also the issue of displacement regarding situational crime prevention techniques. Displacement is the idea that while there might be a lowering or prevention of a type of crime in one area, it may just simply have been moved to another location, or turns into another type of crime, or will just be committed later, when the techniques are weakened from people being lulled into a sense of security. There have been studies that have shown that there hasn’t been a large amount of displacement following situational crime prevention techniques. It is now at a point where many people agree that while displacement is a definite possibility, there is not often evidence to support it happening, and never has there been any kind of documentation of complete displacement from one type of crime to another type. The possibility of displacement is one that cannot really be tracked and looked at effectively in an empirical sense which is another possible weakness of this theory.
Parsimonious
How parsimonious a theory is never ceases to be an issue with any scientific theory. It shouldn’t be so complex that it becomes ineffective due to how abstract and unspecific it is. This theory does have a good level of parsimony due to there being a very simply and basic understanding between the general ideas laid out within the theory with there needing to be a large amount of outside knowledge being needed to comprehend it. Most people can use simply logic to see how this theory might be used in a practical sense and how it is described.
Testability
The last part is to look at how testable this theory is. This theory has a great deal of ease regarding testability. All that is needed is to implement some of these plans in certain areas and wait and see the results. There doesn’t need to be any kind of intensive training, or a massive amount of constant observation over a large area. After putting one or more of the techniques, simply looking at crime rates after the period of time before and after is all that’s needed to test this theory. It also has the potential to be tested in a wide variety of areas in many different parts of the world, so there is little problem in starting some of these systems. In addition several of these techniques are used very often in today’s world and can be seen anywhere in many places in most nations. There is little risk for a tautology to be present because the actions this theory takes would be linear, action x will have the possibly of the result of y and it can stay that way, it will not revert back and the go down again constantly. Most of the concepts are measurable and can be studied mathematically and scientifically and there might be the possibility of Ad Hoc to occur, but that can be present with many other theories.
Empirical Test
One of the case studies that have been conducted analyzing situation crime prevention was written by David B. Griswold (Griswold 1992 pg108-112) in which he was looking at residential and commercial areas in Portland, Oregon that had increased levels of lighting and has seen a substantial reduction in burglaries. The theory was a quantitative analysis of the data gathered. The data was gathered from monthly commercial burglaries from police reports from January 1975 to December 1979. There were sheets that had detailed lists of all the crimes reported to the police. The independent variable was the amount of lighting that was present in the areas that the reports were gathered from, and the details of the reports and how many crimes were reported over a period of time is the dependent variable. The results from this case study were that findings supported the combining o f security cameras and good street lighting as having a significant effect in reducing the number of burglaries in the areas this study was conducted in. Since this study was done in 1977, this effect has been maintained. There is the possibility that there were some outside factors that influenced the results of this study but there was no evidence of this being the case. This does support the basis of the theory that adding certain preventative measures, either alone or in tandem with other ones, can have an effect on reducing crime to a degree, but in this case it did not land a massive blow, but it did help it to a decent degree.
Policy Implication
Looking at one of the policies that was enacted in Texas (Bell & Burke 1992 pg205-215), the effectiveness in situational crime prevention can be seen. The situation in was that the on Fridays and Saturdays so many people would out cruising the streets late at night, and a lot of time traffic and other things would be slowed down, if not completely stopped. Having so many people in the later parts of the day brought more litter, under-age drinking, public urination, vandalism and other things. To try and alleviate the situation, the idea was proposed that on those nights, a downtown parking lot would be opened just for these people. It would be staffed with security and police, have portable restrooms, and the next day would be cleaned up. There were many who didn’t think it would work, but it actually proved to be very effective. It is tied to the theory by using one of the techniques of preventing crime, deflecting offenders. By having a legally acceptable outlet for things that would otherwise be done illegally, the person has no need to not obey the law since it is conveniently placed. With the facilities provided, and the constant police presence, the people who would be around this parking garage, would be far less inclined to break the law. The plan was by all means effective, and after the two month trial period had ended, the city immediately renewed the contract, because its usefulness was well worth the reasonable cost of $4,600 a month for expenses.
References
- Birkbeck, C., & LaFree, G. (1993). The Situational Analysis of Crime and Deviance. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 113-137.
- Clarke, R. V. (1983). Situational Crime Prevention: Its Theoretical Basis and Practical Scope. Crime and Justice, 4, 225-256.
- Clarke, R. V. (1995). Situational Crime Prevention. Crime and Justice, 19, 91-150.
- Rengert, George F. (2001) Campus security: situational crime prevention in high-density environments NY: Criminal Justice Press
- Bell J. & Burke B. (1992) Situational crime prevention: successful case studies Ronald V. Clarke, editor.
- Cruising Cooper Street pp 108-112 New York : Harrow and Heston Publishers
- Griswold D. B. (1992) Situational crime prevention: successful case studies Ronald V. Clarke, editor.
- Crime prevention and commercial burglary: a time series analysis pp 205-215 New York : Harrow and Heston Publishers
C. Ray Jeffery (1971) Crime Prevention through Environmental Design.
Clarke, R. V. & Homel R. (1997) A Revised Classification of Situation Crime Prevention Techniques Crime Prevention at a Crossroads, 4