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Situational Crime Prevention

Posted on:2014-02-27Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:T LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2266330401469582Subject:Criminal Law
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Crime prevention is not only one of the key issues in criminal justices system, but also an important public agenda which attract both the government’s and the public’s attentions. The specific crime prevention strategies are almost everywhere. When people are talking about crime prevention, they also focus on specific strategies and at the meantime neglected the analysis of different conceptions of crime prevention and crime prevention theories. This not only hindered the Establishment of crime prevention theories, but also makes it hard to predict what strategies worksSituational Crime Prevention originates from the1960s in the U.S. It focuses on the formation of criminal activities and controlling criminal opportunities by hardening the crimes, decrease the criminal rewards and criminal chances. It modifies the specific situations likely to happen in crimes; it switches the focus of crime prevention theories from criminal offenders to criminal offenses, from social control(official and unofficial) to criminal actions, thus, it makes the crime prevention strategies easier to implement and more realistic. Compared to long term social plans, SCP decreases the cost of crime prevention. It prevents the crimes through control of situational factors.As a new mode of crime prevention, SCP has established profound empirical studies in the last several decades and a theoretical structure. This article tires to show the value and beauty of SCP by introducing the main ideas and experience in SCP and by answering the doubts about the theoretical defects of SCP. Also, this article endeavors to uncover the disadvantage of SCP and proves that it does not work for every situation.The article has three parts:Part1introduces some basic ideas in SCP. The different meanings of "situations" in different contexts, the relations between "situations" in criminology and "situations" in general sense. The early development of SCP, the basic structure of SCP, specific strategies and implementations and also the recent trends in SCP.Part2is about the four theoretical grounds of SCP. They include classical criminology, utilitarianism, rational choice theory, routine activity theory and environmental criminology.Part3focuses on the main advantages and disadvantages of SCP. After summarizing the advantages of SCP, it focuses on the disadvantages of SCP:the lack of long term prevention plans, the crime displacement and diffusion of benefits, the limitation on the categories of crimes the SCP adopted.SCP plays an important role in contemporary crime preventions theories, it is based on classical criminology and contemporary crime prevention trends. It can deal with hard issues left by other criminal justices systems. However, it has defects and it cannot answer many questions posed by new crimes. Thus, it is crucial for researchers to admit that SCP sometimes works in different contexts and some it does not.
Keywords/Search Tags:Situational Crime Prevention, Rational Choice, Routine Activity, Environmental Criminology, Evidence-Based Crime Prevention
PDF Full Text Request
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