Refocusing Crime Prevention

Despite widespread concern over urban crime, public participation in local crime prevention programs is generally low and limited to a small, homogeneous group of middle-class home-owing residents. Conspicuously absent from these programs are the very people who are the most vulnerable to crime: the poor, immigrants, and visible minorities. In Refocusing Crime Prevention Stephen Schneider explores the capacity of disadvantaged neighbourhoods to organize around issues related to local crime and disorder. It identifies obstacles to community mobilization, many of which are strongly related to demographic and socio-psychological factors, including low socio-economic status.

This second edition of the Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety provides a completely revised and updated collection of essays focusing on the theory and practice of crime prevention and the creation of safer communities. This book is divided into five comprehensive parts: Part I, brand new to this edition, is concerned with theoretical perspectives on crime prevention and community safety. Part II considers general approaches to preventing crime, including a new chapter on the theory and practice of deterrence. Part III focuses on specific crime prevention strategies, including a new chapter on regulation for crime prevention. Part IV focuses on the prevention of specific categories of crime and the fear they generate, including new chapters on organised crime and cybercrime. Part V considers the preventative process: the methods through which presenting problems can be analysed, responses formulated and implemented, and their effectiveness evaluated. Bringing together leading academics and practitioners from the UK, US, Australia and the Netherlands, this volume will be an invaluable reference for researchers and practitioners whose work relates to crime prevention and community safety, as well as for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in crime prevention.

Focusing on the prevention of crime, this collection of papers reflects the move from crime prevention's status as a marginal intellectual interest to a concern that preoccupies governments at local, regional and national levels.

In Crime Prevention: Theory and Practice, Second Edition, Dr. Schneider has updated every chapter in this reliable text using the latest research, the most recently published articles and books, and feedback from professors and students using the first edition. Providing an introduction to dominant approaches, key concepts, theories, and research,

This report of the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals presents national criminal justice standards and goals for crime reduction and prevention at the State and local levels. The Commission proposes as a goal for America a 50 percent reduction in high-fear crimes by 1983. It further proposes that crime-reduction efforts focus on five crimes: homicide, reduced by at least 25 percent by 1983; forcible rape, reduced by at least 25 percent by 1983; aggravated assault, reduced by at least 25 percent by 1983; robbery, reduced by at least 50 percent by 1983; and burglary, reduced by at least 50 percent by 1983. The Commission proposes four areas for priority action in reducing the five target crimes: juvenile delinquency, delivery of social services, prompt determination of guilt or innocence, and citizen action. There are seven areas where the Commission proposes recommendations. In the area of criminal justice, it proposes broad reforms and improvements at the State and local levels. In focusing on community crime prevention, the Commission emphasizes communitywide crime prevention efforts at the State and local levels. The Commission also proposes that the delivery of police services be greatly improved at the municipal level and that the courts undergo a major restructuring and streamlining of procedures and practices in the processing of criminal cases at the State and local levels. Other proposals are in the broad areas of corrections and criminal code reform and revision. Regarding handguns in American society, the Commission proposes nationwide action at the State level to eliminate the dangers posed by widespread possession of handguns.

In recent years, crime scholars and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of focusing crime prevention efforts on crime places. A number of studies suggest that crime is not spread evenly across city landscapes. Rather, there is significant clustering of crime in small places, or "hot spots," that generate a vastly disproportionate number of criminal events. Even within the most crime-ridden neighborhoods, crime clusters at a few discrete locations and other areas are relatively crime free. A number of researchers have argued that many crime problems can be addressed more efficiently if police officers focus their attention on these deviant places. The appeal of focusing limited resources on a small number of high-activity crime places is straightforward. If crime can be prevented at these problem places, then police will be well positioned to lower citywide crime rates. In Policing Problem Places, Anthony A. Braga and David L. Weisburd make the case that hotspots policing is an effective approach to crime prevention that should be engaged by police departments in the United States and other countries. There is a strong and growing body of rigorous scientific evidence that the police can control crime hot spots without simply displacing crime problems to other places. Indeed, putting police officers in high crime locations is an old and well-established idea. However, the age and popularity of this idea does not necessarily mean that it is being done properly. Police officers should strive to use problem-oriented policing and situational crime prevention techniques to address the place dynamics, situations, and characteristics that cause a "spot" to be "hot." Braga and Weisburd further suggest that the strategies used to police problem places can have more or less desirable effects on police-community relations. Particularly in minority neighborhoods where residents have long suffered from elevated crime problems and historically poorpolice service, police officers should make an effort to develop positive and collaborative relationships with residents and not engage strategies that will undermine the legitimacy of police agencies, such as indiscriminant enforcement tactics. This book argues that it is time for police departments to shift away from a focus on catching criminal offenders and move towards dealing with crime at problem places as a central crime prevention strategy.

A comparative study of defensible space and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) as applied in the USA and the UK, focusing particularly on urban experience.