Crime Prevention and Punishment

Crime prevention strategies and theories of punishment represent the practical application of criminological theory. Different theoretical perspectives lead to different assumptions about why people commit crime and, therefore, different proposals for how crime should be prevented and offenders should be dealt with. This lesson examines the major approaches to crime prevention and the sociological perspectives on punishment.

Key Definition: Crime prevention refers to strategies and policies designed to reduce the incidence of crime. Approaches range from making crime more difficult to commit (situational prevention) to addressing the underlying social causes of crime (social prevention).

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Situational Crime Prevention

Ron Clarke: Target Hardening

Ron Clarke (1992) developed the concept of situational crime prevention (SCP), which focuses on reducing opportunities for crime rather than changing the motivation of offenders. SCP is based on rational choice theory — the assumption that criminals are rational actors who weigh up the costs and benefits of committing a crime.

The goal of SCP is to increase the costs and reduce the rewards of crime, making it less attractive to the rational offender. Clarke identified several techniques:

Technique	Explanation	Example
Target hardening	Making targets more difficult to attack.	Stronger locks, anti-climb paint, reinforced doors and windows, steering wheel locks on cars.
Formal surveillance	Increasing the likelihood that an offender will be detected.	CCTV cameras, security guards, burglar alarms.
Natural surveillance	Designing spaces so that they are naturally overlooked by legitimate users.	Street lighting, open-plan office designs, windows overlooking car parks.
Access control	Restricting access to potential targets.	Entry phones, gated communities, security barriers.
Deflecting offenders	Channelling behaviour to reduce opportunities for crime.	Separate pub closing times, bus routes designed to avoid trouble spots.
Removing the means	Removing the tools of crime.	Toughened glass in bus shelters (preventing vandalism), pay-by-card in shops (reducing cash to steal).

CCTV

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is one of the most widely used forms of situational crime prevention. The UK has one of the highest concentrations of CCTV cameras in the world, with an estimated 5.9 million cameras. Research on CCTV effectiveness is mixed:

• Welsh and Farrington (2009) conducted a meta-analysis and found that CCTV is most effective in car parks, where it reduced crime by approximately 51%. It was less effective in city centres and had little impact on violent crime.
• CCTV may simply displace crime to areas without cameras rather than reducing it overall.
• There are significant civil liberties concerns about the expansion of surveillance — the right to privacy, the potential for misuse of footage, and the disproportionate surveillance of certain communities.

Displacement

A major criticism of situational crime prevention is that it does not reduce crime but merely displaces it. Displacement can take several forms:

Type of Displacement	Explanation
Spatial displacement	Crime moves to a different location (e.g., from an area with CCTV to one without).
Temporal displacement	Crime moves to a different time (e.g., from night to day, or vice versa).
Target displacement	Offenders choose different targets (e.g., from cars with steering locks to those without).
Tactical displacement	Offenders change their methods (e.g., from burglary to robbery).
Crime type displacement	Offenders switch to a different type of crime altogether.

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Environmental Crime Prevention

Wilson and Kelling: Broken Windows (Revisited)

Wilson and Kelling's (1982) broken windows theory (discussed in Lesson 5 on realist theories) has significant implications for crime prevention. If signs of disorder — broken windows, graffiti, litter, abandoned cars — encourage more serious crime by signalling that an area is not cared for, then the solution is to maintain the physical environment and deal swiftly with minor disorders.

Environmental crime prevention strategies include:

• Rapid repair of damage and removal of graffiti.
• Maintaining clean, well-lit public spaces.
• Zero-tolerance policing of minor offences to prevent the spiral into serious crime.
• Designing out crime — Oscar Newman's (1972) concept of defensible space proposes that the design of buildings and neighbourhoods can reduce crime by creating a sense of ownership and community. For example, low-rise housing with clearly defined semi-private space encourages residents to take ownership of their environment and monitor it informally.

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Social and Community Crime Prevention

Unlike situational approaches, social crime prevention aims to address the root causes of crime — poverty, inequality, social exclusion, poor education, and family breakdown.

Examples of Social Crime Prevention

Strategy	Explanation	Example
Early intervention	Targeting risk factors in childhood (e.g., poor parenting, educational failure, poverty) before criminal behaviour develops.	The Perry Preschool Project in the USA provided intensive early education to disadvantaged children. Follow-up studies found that participants had lower rates of offending, higher earnings, and greater educational attainment in adulthood.
Youth programmes	Providing activities, mentoring, and support for young people at risk of offending.	Youth clubs, sports programmes, mentoring schemes.
Community regeneration	Investing in disadvantaged communities to reduce poverty, improve housing, and create employment.	The UK's Sure Start programme aimed to support families in deprived areas.
Multi-agency approaches	Coordinating the efforts of police, schools, social services, health services, and community organisations.	Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) in the UK bring together professionals from different agencies to work with young offenders.

Social crime prevention is associated with left realist approaches to crime. Lea and Young argued that effective crime prevention requires tackling the structural conditions — relative deprivation, marginalisation, and social exclusion — that produce crime.

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Michel Foucault: Surveillance and Discipline

Michel Foucault (1975) provided one of the most influential sociological analyses of punishment in his book Discipline and Punish. Foucault traced the historical shift from sovereign power (public, physical punishment) to disciplinary power (surveillance, normalisation, and self-regulation).

The Shift from Sovereign to Disciplinary Power