Crime Control and Prevention

Crime Prevention Methods:

Right realist crime prevention techniques:

• They focus on individuals and the specific location of crime rather than wider social issues.
• They reject broad social and structural theories of crime as unproven and impractical.
• They emphasise that individuals choose crime (rational choice theory) and must be persuaded not to do so, by reducing opportunities for crime and increasing the chances of being caught and punished.
• This is directly linked to the routine activity theory.

• Situational Crime Prevention (SCP)
• Clarke describes situational crime prevention as a 'pre-emptive' approach that relies not on improving society or its institutions, but simply on reducing opportunities for crime.
• He identifies three features of measures aimed at situational crime prevention:

1. Directed at specific crimes

2)Managing or altering the immediate environment of crime.

3. Aimed at increasing the risk of committing a crime and reducing the rewards.

📝E.g. target hardening, locking doors, CCTV and security guards to reduce burglary

• Underlying situational crime prevention approaches is an 'opportunity' or rational choice of crime.

• This is the view that criminals act rationally, weighing up the costs and benefits of a crime opportunity before deciding whether to commit it. So if the rewards are reduced, people won't commit crimes.

• This contrasts with theories of crime that stress 'root causes' such as the criminal's early socialisation.

• Clarke argues that most theories offer no realistic solutions to crime. The most obvious thing to do is focus on the immediate crime situation since this is where the scope for prevention is greatest.

• Most crime is opportunistic, so we need to reduce the opportunities. A02 Example - The Port Authority Bus Terminal: -

• Felson (1998) – The Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York was poorly designed and provided opportunities for deviancy.

• The toilets were a setting for luggage thefts, rough sleeping and drug dealing.

• Reshaping the physical environment helped to design out crime, for example by replacing large sinks in which vagrants were bathing by small hand basins. A03 - Evaluation:

• One criticism of situational crime prevention measures is that they do not reduce crime; they displace it. After all, if criminals are acting rationally, presumably they will respond to target hardening simply by moving to where targets are softer. E.g. Chaiken (1974) found that a crackdown on subway robberies in New York just displaced them to the streets above

• Displacement can take several forms:

• Spatial- moving elsewhere to commit the crime.

• Temporal- committing it at a different time.

• Target- choosing a different victim.

• Tactical- using a different method.

• Functional- committing a different type of crime.
  Strength:

• Situational crime prevention works to some extent in reducing certain kinds of crime. Bowers et al: a review of 44 international studies of targeted policing in high-crime areas found SCP led to neighbouring districts also seeing reductions in crime.
  Weaknesses:

• It ignores white-collar, corporate and state crime, which are costlier and more harmful

• It assumes criminals make rational calculations. This seems unlikely in many crimes of violence and crimes committed under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

• It ignores the root causes of crime such as poverty. This makes it difficult to develop long-term strategies for crime reduction.

• Poorer neighbourhoods will still have crime, whilst the wealthier ones will be more protected = creating more inequality.

Environmental Crime Prevention (ECP)

• Wilson and Kelling use the phrase 'broken windows' to stand for all the various signs of disorder and lack of concern for others that are found in some neighbourhoods e.g. graffiti.

• They argue that leaving broken windows un-repaired, tolerating graffiti etc., sends out a signal that no one cares.

• In such neighbourhoods, there is an absence of both formal social control (the police) and informal control (the community).

• The police are only concerned with serious crime and turn a blind eye to petty nuisance behaviour, while respected members feel intimidated and powerless.

• Without action, the situation deteriorates, tipping the neighbourhood into a spiral of decline. Respectable members move out and the area becomes a magnet for deviants.

• Wilson and Kelling's key idea is that disorder and the absence of controls lead to crime

• Wilson and Kelling's solution to crack down on any disorder is a twofold strategy.

  1. Environmental improvement strategy: any broken window must be repaired immediately, abandoning cars towed without delay etc. 2. The police must adopt a zero-tolerance policing strategy. Instead of merely reacting to crime, they must proactively tackle even the slightest sign of disorder, even if it's not criminal. This will halt neighbourhood decline and prevent serious crime from taking root. A02 - Examples:

• A 'Clean Car Program' in New York was a success for zero-tolerance policing. Subway trains were out of service immediately if they had any graffiti on them, only returning once clean.

• As a result, graffiti was largely removed from the subway. Other success programs include drug dealing and fare dodging

• In the 1990s "zero tolerance" was hailed as the answer to urban crime following a police strategy in New York City introduced by Bill Bratton, the then Commissioner of the NYPD and now being employed as an advisor to David Cameron.

• He introduced a policy of responding with criminal charges to even the most minor offences in segments of the Big Apple for certain periods.

• This model coincided with a 73% fall in homicides and a 35% reduction in overall crime, prompting some to claim that "zero tolerance" was the magic bullet for urban criminality. However, it is not clear how far zero tolerance was the cause of the improvements:

• The NYPD benefited from 7,000 extra officers.

• There was a general decline in the crime rate in major US cities at the time- including ones where police did not adopt a zero-tolerance policy.

• There was a decline in the availability of crack cocaine.

• Nonetheless, zero tolerance has been very influential globally. Evaluation of ECP:

• It ignores white-collar, corporate and state crime, which are costlier and more harmful = wasting resources/greater police emphasis on minor offences

• Labelling theorists = zero tolerance can have bad, long-term consequences for people who have committed minor offences. Also, the police will target/label potential offenders (which leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy). E.g. London Riots 2011.

• Doesn't' address the wider, social causes of crime like Left Realists do

• Do offenders make a rational choice? Lyng and Katz (Postmodernists) = It's the buzz and thrill that makes people commit crime Increased social control:

• Links to Hirschi's control theory – individuals are encouraged to choose conformity over crime and deviance when there are strong social bonds integrating them into communities -Right Realists say we should promote conformity and isolate deviant individuals through community pressure. We can identify those 'at risk' Policies include:

• Making parents take more responsibility for their children and socialising them more effectively. Synoptic link – 2003 parenting orders

• Schemes like neighbourhood watch – informal surveillance

• Cracking down on anti-social behaviour

• Adopting zero-tolerance policy

• Heavier policing + more arrests to deter offending

• Fast-track punishment of offenders, with more imprisonment and harsher sentences

Left realist crime prevention methods:

Social and Community Crime Prevention:

• Left realist approaches to crime prevention recognise that the offenders and victims are more often from disadvantaged communities = marginalised and socially excluded! -They think we should tackle material and cultural deprivation e.g. poverty, poor housing, unemployment, poor education etc, as these generate anger and frustration which leads to crime -Left realists argue that we must both improve policing and control, and deal with the deeper structural causes of crime.

• These are longer-term strategies since they attempt to tackle the root causes of offending, rather than simply removing opportunities for crime

• Left realists argue we should be improving the relationship between the police and communities:

• Kinsey, Lea and Young argue that police clear-up rates are too low to act as a deterrent to crime and that police spend too little time actually investigating crime.

• The police depend on the public to provide them with information about crime. However, with the police losing support, especially from inner cities, the flow of information dries up and the police have to rely on military policing such as using random stop and searches. This alienates communities who see the police as victimising local youth.

• Left realists argue that policing must therefore be made more accountable to local communities and must deal with local concerns. The police need to improve their relationship with local communities by spending time investigating crime and involving the public in policing policies.

• Lewis et al (2011): resentment of a perceived lack of respect from the police and the stopping and searching of innocent people was a major factor behind the 2011 London Riots.

• Left realists also argue that crime control cannot be left to the police alone - it must be a multi-agency approach.

• The police, the local council, and health and safety probation services must work together with local communities to tackle crime. Left realists argue we should tackle the deeper, structural causes of crime:

• Left realists argue that the causes of crime lie in the unequal structure of society and major structural changes are needed if they want to reduce levels of offending. We must become more tolerant of diversity and cease stereotyping whole groups of people as criminals.

• We must tackle social deprivation – divert potential offenders away from choosing crime A02 Examples:

• Intensive parenting support like the Sure Start Centres to help children in poorer communities a head start as the risk factors for crime are greatest

• There was a community programme aimed at reducing criminality - The Perry PreSchool – experimental group of 3-4-year-olds were offered a two-year intellectual enrichment programme. Found that by age 40, they had much fewer arrests than those who didn't undergo the program AO3: although an unrepresentative

A03 - Evaluation:

Strength: seems to tackle the deep-seated root causes of crime, unlike situational and environmental crime prevention strategies.

Weaknesses: deterministic - not everyone living in these deprived areas will turn to crime.

• RR argue that LR deflects attention away from more practical measures, like tighter social control measures and situational crime prevention (SCP).
• Overemphasis on those who will potentially commit stereotypical visible 'street' crimes. Does nothing to tackle white-collar, corporate crime, green crime and state crime which are arguably far more costly and harmful to human beings.
• They are being soft on crimes - downplaying the role of the offender.

Evaluation of both Right realism and Left realism:

• They all take for granted the nature and definition of crime – they focus on a narrow range of harms (typically violent crime, burglary, car crime, anti-social behaviour....)
• This ignores the crimes of the powerful and green crimes
• The definition of the crime problem reflected in the 3 strategies reflects the priorities and agencies asked to prevent crime.

Feminist solutions to the problem of crime:

• Newburn (2007): Make visible forms of victimisation CLEAR. The extent of domestic violence, sexual harassment and sexual violence must never be ignored Exposing the threat against women and showing that it is not 'stranger danger', but often occurs in the home Expose the male domination in the CJS and how it fails to respond appropriately to crimes against women Protecting women at all stages of the process – stopping women's reputation being scrutinised Liberal feminists: Issues such as police not taking crimes against women seriously must be tackled Underreporting of offences is due to the unsympathetic approach of the police and CJS

Radical feminists: Men need to undergo re-socialisation so they no longer commit crimes where they exert their power

Marxist feminists: Women should be better supported so they are not forced to turn to crime to survive. Tackling social inequality is key – a synoptic link to Carlen and her class and gender deals.

What is the purpose of punishment:

Reduction - this justification is an instrumental one (punishment is a means to an end, namely crime reduction

Deterrence – Punishing the individual discourages them from future offending, making them an example to others, not to offend – Margret Thatcher's policies included this ('short, sharp shock')

• Rehabilitation – the idea punishment can be used to reform or change offenders so they can no longer offend – training offenders, to earn an honest living.
• Incapacitation – removing offenders' capacity to offend again. E.g. imprisonment, execution, cutting hands off – USA's 'Three Strikes and You're Out'
• Retribution - the justification is an expressive one (it expresses society's outrage. Retribution means 'paying back' – it is a justification for punishing crimes that have already been committed, rather than preventing future crimes
• Based on the idea that offenders deserve to be punished
• Based on the idea that society is entitled to take its moral revenge on the offender for breaching its moral code.

Garland - changing the roles of prisons:

In the past, prisons were places where people were held before punishment – now prison is a punishment

Imprisonment today:

• In liberal societies, that do not have the death penalty, a prison sentence is seen as the harshest punishment – it does not provide good rehabilitation because 2/3 of criminals come out to commit more crimes.
• There has been a movement towards 'populist punitiveness' = politicians calling for harsher punishments – The New Labour government argued prison should be used for serious offences and minor repetitive ones = as a result prison population has risen & has led to overpopulation -Prison population is largely male – young and uneducated & blacks and ethnic minorities are overrepresented.
• The era of mass incarceration:
  • Garland – moving into an era of mass incarceration – more people in prisons.
  • Rapidly rose after the 1970s. 3% of the population have some sort of surveillance – parole etc
  • For every 100,000 black males, 3500 were in prison compared to 400 white men -The number in prison in the UK nearly doubled from 1990-2015
  • England + Wales = highest incarceration rate in Western Europe
  • Garland says the reason for mass incarceration is that there has been a move towards a new consensus that we should be tough on crime.
• Transcarceration:
  • The trend towards transcarceration = the idea that individuals become locked into a cycle of control – by always coming in and out of prison. For example, they might be brought up in care, then sent to young offenders' institutions, then adult prisons and then mental hospitals in between.

The culture of control - from Left Realism to Right Realism:

-Garland argues that the changes in criminal justice also reflected in sociological theory

We have moved away from left realist style theories to right realist = from focusing on the deep-rooted causes of crime to focusing on harsher punishment and reducing the opportunities for crime

Garland argues there is now a 'culture of control' – controlling and preventing the risks of people becoming victims rather than rehabilitating criminals

Restorative justice:

• Deterrence works more for fear of shame than for fear of punishment.
• Shame also functions as an instrument of negative general prevention, since other members of society who experience the shame of a perpetrator would be deterred by this experience from committing crimes themselves.
• Reintegrative shaming has a greater positive effect than stigmatising shaming. The repentance of the perpetrator and the forgiveness of the community would strengthen criminal law through the symbolic power of community-wide consciousness building.

Functionalism and punishment - Durkheim:

A key function of punishment is to uphold social solidarity and reinforce shared values

A02 synoptic link - boundary maintenance

• Punishment is primarily expressive - it expresses society's emotions of moral outrage at the offence. Two types of justice:

• Retributive - in traditional societies, cruel and vengeful punishments were used - but this destroyed social solidarity.

• Retributive - modern societies were characterised by reparation.

• Through rituals of order, such as public trial and punishment, society's shared values are reaffirmed and its members come to feel a sense of moral unity.

A03 - Evaluation of the functionalist view on punishment:

• Assumes society has shared values to start with and that punishment reflects wider societal values – Postmodernists would say there is no value consensus
• Marxists would argue that punishment reflects the values of the R/C and instead acts as a form of social control of the W/C, rather than benefiting everyone
• Punishments like imprisonment may actually threaten the social order and make things worse – do prisons manufacture/lead to more crime?

Marxist - capitalism and punishment:

• The function of punishment is to maintain the existing social order.

• It is part of the repressive state apparatus - it means defending R/C property against the W/C. 📝E.g. Thompson describes how in the 18th century punishments such as hanging and transportation to the colonies for theft and poaching were part of a 'rule of terror' by the landed aristocracy over the poor

• RSA = parts of the state which are concerned with mainly repressive, physical means of keeping a population in line

• Althusser claims that these structures are necessary (in conjunction with ISA e.g. media, family, religion) to maintain the reproduction of the relations of production, or in other words, to keep the labourers labouring for the state and the bourgeoisie society

• The RSAs include the government, police, courts, prisons, and the military.

• They argue that harsh punishments are part of the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA) which keep the working class in their place.

• Rusche and Kirchheimer argued that the types of punishments used by society were determined by what was in the economic interests of the dominant class. 📝 E.g.

  • In the Middle Ages – landowners needed the peasants to work – so prisons were not used. Instead, religious penances and fines were
  • In the late Middle Ages, there were no labour shortages. So barbaric forms of punishment were used to deter social unrest.

• Melossi and Pavarini (1981) see imprisonment as reflecting capitalist relations of production. For example: Capitalism puts a price on the worker's time – prisoners 'do time' to 'pay' for their crime, the prison and capitalist factory both have a similar strict disciplinary style, involving subordination and loss of liberty.

A02 Example - 1994 crime bill:

• California's three-strikes law is a controversial sentencing scheme that imposes a state prison sentence of 25 years to life on a defendant (1) who is convicted of a violent or serious felony offence, and (2) who already has at least two prior convictions for violent or serious felony offences.
• President Joe Biden was crucial to the passing of the bill, he was at the time the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A03 Evaluation of the Marxist view on punishment:

• Some would argue that the W/C fill the prisons as they commit some of the most harmful offences. Left realists argue that their victims are most commonly other disadvantaged people like themselves
• Functionalists would argue that the function of punishment is to reaffirm society's values

Does imprisonment actually prevent crime?

• Prison / Young Offender Institutions are the most serious sanction available to the CJS.
• Right Realists = It deters people from offending by increasing the costs of crime
• In the past 100 years, the number of offenders in Prison in England and Wales and quadrupled.
• Becker = leads to deviance amplification spiral and eventual master status and deviant career
• Goffman (interactionist): prisons have their own subcultures that provide training grounds for criminals
• Prisons may be making pre-existing problems worse. Destabilising family ties + disrupting employment opportunities by stigmatising offenders
• Downing Street Strategy Unit (2003): 22% increase in prison population since 1997 reduced crime by only 5%, at a time when overall crime had fallen by 30%
• In 2012, England and Wales had the highest imprisonment rate in the EU -Ministry of Justice: 47.5% of prisoners released in 2010 reoffended within a year. For juveniles, it was around 70%.

What are alternatives to prison?

• In the past, 'diversion' – diverting away from CJS to avoid the risk of the police turning them into serious criminals. The focus was on welfare & treatment using non-custodial community based controls
• Recently, a range of community-based controls e.g. curfews, community service orders, tagging
• Cohen argues that this has simply cast the net of control over more people....increased range of sanctions enables control to penetrate ever deeper into society
• Rather than diverting young people away from the CJS community controls divert them into it e.g. ASBO's fast track way into custodial sentences

Are we living in a surveillance society?

Foucault (postmodernist) - from sovereign power to disciplinary power:

• As the power in society changed, so did the punishments
  E.g. brutal public punishments demonstrated the supreme power of the sovereign – the monarch – over criminals

• This form of state power and control was sovereign power

• But once the supreme power of sovereigns declined, a new form of state power emerged

• Foucault refers to this as disciplinary power

• Criminals were to be controlled and disciplined by surveillance – constantly having their behaviour monitored, managed, controlled and regulated

• Now punishments started to change too – from inflicting pain to the development of the prison that is intended to 'correct' the criminal

What is surveillance? "The monitoring of public behaviour for the purposes of population or crime control. It, therefore, involves observing people's behaviour to gather data about it, and typically, using the data to regulate, manage or 'correct' their behaviour"

• Disciplinary power is about controlling the body, but also the mind or 'soul'. This is sold as being more civilised, but Foucault disagrees.
• The panopticon is a design of prison which means that the prisoner is always visible from the guardsman in the watchtower.
• However, the prisoners could not see the guards – so they never knew if they were being watched or not.
• This eventually leads to self-surveillance and self-discipline
• The dispersal of discipline: Foucault argues that disciplinary power has now dispersed throughout society, penetrating every social institution, to reach every individual – the form of surveillance in the Panopticon is now a model of how power operates in society as a whole. Synoptic link - 2003 parenting order. -Donzelot: Donzelot uses Foucault's (1976) concept of surveillance (observing and monitoring). Foucault sees power not just as something held by the government or the state, but as diffused (spread) throughout society and found within all relationships. In particular, Foucault sees professionals such as doctors and social workers as exercising power over their clients by using their expert knowledge to turn them into 'cases' to be dealt with. Donzelot applies this to the family. He argues that social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families. Donzelot calls this 'the policing of families'.
• Foucault saw surveillance as a form of disciplinary power as fear and uncertainty of whether or not they were being watched would encourage people to internalise it.
• He sees surveillance as extending across many institutions in contemporary society and penetrating every sphere of life - calls this the 'age of panopticism'.
• Surveillance technology has become a means for the state and other institutions to exercise disciplinary power and control by casting the net of surveillance over the population.
• Round-the-clock surveillance now monitors the movements of all people as a means of controlling crime and disorder.
• According to the British Industry Association (2013), there is an estimation of 5 million cameras across Britain - about 1 camera for every 13 citizens.
• Takes the form of consumer tracking, huge amounts of data are collected on individuals e.g. Tesco Clubcards.
• In a surveillance society, everything people do is visible to the state or large corporations like Amazon.
• Foucault argues we are living in a carceral (prison-like) culture in which a panoptic model of surveillance has been spread throughout society.
• Society has now become a gigantic panopticon with judges of normality - the people in power.

Evaluation of Foucault and Surveillance Society:

Strengths:

• Shows how the power of surveillance can increase the power of the state.
• Shows how the w/c especially are fundamentally socially controlled, inducing conformity

Weaknesses:

• He exaggerates the extent of control (e.g. even psychiatric patients can resist control)
• Goffman (1982) shows that inmates can resist mental control. -
• Surveillance can be useful to reduce crime – especially in deprived neighbourhoods.

Surveillance theories since Foucault:

• Thomas Mathiesen (1997) argues Foucault's approach is limited. He argues although the Panopticon allows the few to monitor the many – today the media has enabled us to see the many.
• Synoptic = when everybody watches everybody. For example, Thompson (2000) argues that powerful groups such as politicians fear the media's surveillance of them. -
• Another example is public surveillance, cyclists wearing cameras on their protective gear, in case of accidents.
• Widespread camera ownership 'controls the controller' for example, filming the police doing wrong – Mann et al (2003) call this 'sousveillance'

Actuarial justice and risk management - Feely & Smith (1994) argue new technology of power is now developing throughout the justice system = it differs from Foucault's disciplinary power;

(1) it focuses on groups rather than individuals.

(2) Not interested in rehabilitating inmates – simply aims to prevent crime.

(3) It calculates possible risks.

Feely and Smith combine surveillance and crime control – for example, in airports, security use screening checks, based on known offenders – using information they have gathered from individuals travelling (this form of surveillance, aims to prevent crime). Jock Young argues this method is based on statistical information.

Social sorting and categorical suspicion = David Lyon (2012) argues that the purpose of 'social sorting' is to be able to categorise people so they can be treated according to the level of risk they pose. Similarly, G.T. Marx (1988) calls 'categorical suspicion' – where people are placed under surveillance based on the group they belong to.