Alternate Routes to Crime Prevention

Tonry and Farrington’s Typology

Tonry and Farrington (1995) distinguish between developmental, community, and situational

prevention.

Developmental Crime Prevention

Developmental crime prevention focuses on early intervention through the reduction of

risk factors associated with later criminality and the strengthening of protective factors (France

& Homel, 2007; Farrington & Welsh, 2007). There is growing evidence of the success of

developmental crime prevention and early intervention: Findings of neuroscience, behavioral

research, and economics show a "striking convergence on a set of common principles that

account for the powerful effects of early environment on the capacity of human skill

development", which affirms the need for greater investments in disadvantaged children in the

early years of the life course (Knudsen et al., 2006, Welsh et al., 2010, p. 115).

An Australian expert on developmental criminology, Professor Ross Homel, note:

Developmental prevention involves the use of scientific research to guide the provision of

resources for individuals, families, schools or communities to address the conditions that give

rise to anti-social behavior and crime before these problems arise, or before they become

entrenched. Doing something about crime early, preferably before the damage is too hard to

repair, strikes most people as a logical approach to crime prevention. The twin challenges, of

course, are to identify exactly what it is in individuals, families, schools and communities that

increases the odds of involvement in crime and then to do something useful about the identified

conditions as early as possible (Homel and Thomsen, 2017, p. 57).

 Nonetheless, evaluating who is at risk of future offending, segregating the purposes

behind this expanded risk and afterward adequately intervening to prevent future beginning of

criminality are troublesome assignments. Farrington and Welsh (2007) help control our

comprehension of a portion of the basic risk factors related with later offending and the kinds of

intervention which seem, by all accounts, to be best, through the following:

Risk Factors Evidence Based Intervention

Individual

 Low intelligence and  Pre-school intellectual improvement

attainment  Child skills training

 Personality and

temperament

 Empathy

 Impulsiveness
Family

 Criminal or anti  Parent education and day care services

-social parents  Parent management training programs

 Large family size  Home visiting programs

 Poor parental

supervision

 Parental conflict

 Disrupted families
Environmental

 Growing up in a low  After school engaging children in social competency

socio-economic skill development and community based mentoring

 status household  School based intervention- school and discipline

 Associating with intervention, classroom management, reorganization of

delinquent peers classes, increasing self -control or social competency

 Attending high through cognitive behavioral therapy or behavior

delinquency rate instructions methods

schools

 Living in deprived

areas

Community Crime Prevention

Hope (1995, p. 21) suggests that "community crime prevention refers to actions intended

to change the social conditions that are believed to sustain crime in residential communities. It

concentrates usually on the ability of local social institutions to reduce crime in residential

neighborhoods".

In this specific circumstance, "the structure and organization of a community affects the

crime it experiences over and above the individual characteristics of its residents" (Hope &

Shaw, 1988). This implies that the community is more important than simply the amount of its

residents - there are impacts emerging from the manner in which residents connect, the

opportunities that they have accessible to them, the administrations accommodated them, and the

relationships between them - both altogether and with relevant service providers and agencies.

Henceforth, this methodology centers around residential communities and neighborhoods, and

looks to change the social conditions related with crime. Notwithstanding, recognizing what
social conditions ought to be changed and discovering approaches to do this are not clear

assignments.

The focal point of community crime prevention is on reinforcing communities through

the arrangement of administrations that form associations between community individuals and

interface them to outer assets and administrations that can help them battle crime (counting the

police, wellbeing offices, common society and non-government associations). This multi-sectoral

setting expects organizations to cooperate, which isn't in every case straight forward. Effective

inter-agency crime prevention requires: the sharing of information to help comprehend the idea

of the crime issues; the advancement of composed designs for administration transmission; the

support of normal communication; and joint evaluation of the effect of interventions.

Situational Crime Prevention

 Professor Ron Clarke, gave the following description of situational crime prevention:

1. Situational crime prevention comprises opportunity-reducing measures that are directed

at highly specific forms of crime,

2. that involve the management, design or manipulation of the immediate environment in as

specific and permanent way as possible,

3. so as to increase the effort and risk of crime and reduce the rewards as perceived by a

wide range of offenders.

This model of crime prevention expects that numerous offenders are calm and react to

accessible opportunities for offending. If offending is difficult, then there will be a reduced

tendency to offend; where offending is left unchecked, at that point offending will increase. It is

expected that an offender considers up the advantages got from offending, the possible dangers
of being captured and the related expenses of misgiving. The consequences of this estimation

will decide whether an offense is committed.

This model also builds on the routine activities theory. Felson and Cohen suggest that:

any successfully completed violation requires at a minimum an offender with both criminal

desire and the ability to carry out those desires, a person or object providing a suitable target for

the offender, and the absence of capable guardians capable of preventing the violation.

In late 1970’s and in early 1980’s Brantinghams were analyzing spatial and temporal

crime trends, from their research they concluded that;

Crimes do not occur randomly or uniformly in time or space or society. Crimes do not

occur randomly or uniformly across neighborhoods, or social groups, or during an individual's

daily activities or during an individual's lifetime. There are hot spots and cold spots; there are

high repeat offenders and high repeat victims. In fact, the two groups are frequently linked.

While the numbers will continue to be debated depending on the definition and population being

tested, a very small proportion of people commit most of the known crimes and also account for

a large proportion of victimizations.

The Birmingham’s also drew their attention to the concept of routine activities given by

Felson and Cohen in 1980, they suggested that: people embrace a scope of standard activities in

various hubs (home, work, school, shopping, amusement). These activity hubs are associated by

paths and people will in general regularly travel along similar paths in approaching their day by

day schedules. Therefore, people unexpectedly notice and find out about likely opportunities for

crime. At the point when a potential offender crosses with a likely objective or victim, the latter

will turn into a real objective when the expected offender's ability to perpetrate a crime has been
set off. These patterns of everyday activities and schedules help to clarify why specific locations

experience raised paces of crime - a phenomenon known as 'crime pattern theory'.

Together the rational choice offender approach, the routine activities theory and the crime

pattern theory reveal how opportunities for crime arise in particular locations at particular times.

They promote an understanding of the dynamics of offending, including important spatial and

temporal trends. They operate on the basis that offending is a rational, purposive act that occurs

when a sufficiently motivated person encounters a suitable target or victim in the absence of

capable guardianship. These approaches also encourage deeper analysis of the specific decisions

associated with offending and how they are impacted by the availability of opportunities for

crime.

While there is very strong evidence that various forms of situational crime prevention are

very effective at reducing crime, critics often argue that crime prevention efforts merely displace

crime. Despite these claims, it has been generally established that displacement of crime does not

accompany all crime prevention interventions and even where there is evidence of displacement,

not all crime moves. For example, one study by Hesseling (1994) found "no evidence of

displacement in 22 of the studies he examined; in the remaining 33 studies, he found some

evidence of displacement, but in no case was there as much crime displaced as prevented". In

contrast, there is increasing evidence that rather than displacing crime, preventive measures

might actually result in a 'diffusion of benefits', which is the reduction in crime beyond the

immediate focus of measures introduced. In this context, the net crime benefits are greater than

might have been anticipated by a particular intervention because not only is crime prevented in

the target area, but is also prevented in adjacent areas.

 In response to these explanations for crime, the following can be instituted to prevent offending:

 Increase the effort

 Increase the risks

 Reduce the rewards

 Reduce provocations

 Remove the excuses

 Model Examples
Developmental The most celebrated examples of developmental crime prevention include

parenting programs, school development initiatives like skill training,

preschool systems, and improvement in transition to school arrangements.

Community Community building activities, provision of welfare services and increasing

community support groups, all will help to enhance the sense of community

and can contribute to the prevention of crime.

Situational Situational crime prevention can be as simple as installing locks and alarms,

increasing surveillance through lighting and making buildings harder to

enter, damage or hide near.