Minimising corruption: Applying lessons from the crime prevention literature

This article explores how the criminology literature, particularly the literature on crime prevention, might supplement current efforts to minimise corruption. It seeks to identify and apply approaches to offenders and offending to the problem of minimising corruption. In summary, this article demonstrates that the crime prevention literature does have a number of applications for those interested in minimising corruption. In general terms, this literature advocates, amongst other things, taking an informed approach to corruption minimisation by developing an understanding of the process of engaging in corrupt conduct. Exploring the offender's perspective and considering different types of corruption separately are two strategies suggested to facilitate understanding the factors which underlie corrupt conduct. In this way those seeking to minimise corruption would be better placed to identify how and where to intervene to optimise the likelihood of prevention and hence be able to tailor prevention techniques to individual types of corruption. Six specific lessons from the crime prevention literature and their applications are illustrated in this article. This current article is intended to promote discussion of potential strategies for combating corruption by the growing numbers of people interested in this challenge. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Community crime prevention: A review and synthesis of the literature

In the absence of effective formal means for controlling crime in the Western world, community crime prevention has emerged as a major alternative and supplement to the criminal justice system. This article attempts to review what is known currently about the nature, extent, and effectiveness of community-based efforts to prevent residential crime. Included in this assessment are citizen actions to protect themselves, their property, and their neighborhood, as well as efforts to prevent crime through changes in the physical environmental and through innovations in community policing. The historical, theoretical, and empirical rationale for community crime prevention strategies are discussed, but primary attention is given to the results of evaluation research in the field. Although community-based efforts are supported widely by theory, studies of natural covariation, and by numerous poorly designed evaluations, there is a paucity of strong demonstrations and evaluations showing that such interventions can alter the behavior and local environments of persons who are not already predisposed to crime prevention. Substantially more research is needed to determine the collective benefits of community crime prevention strategies, but a number of promising approaches currently are being developed.     

A System��s Approach to Crime Prevention: The Case of Macao

Macao has the world’s largest casino industry and represents a unique political, social, and cultural system that differs significantly from Western societies. The overall crime rate in Macao is relatively low. Scholarly knowledge about crime and crime prevention in Macao, however, is very limited. This paper first reviews crime prevention theories, typologies, and various strategies in Western societies, followed by an introduction and discussion of crime prevention practices in Macao. Crime prevention strategies in Macao may be characterized as a tripod structure with three major supporting legs: traditional criminal justice practices, social prevention beyond the criminal justice system, and situational crime prevention measures. The paper then discusses the factors that may contribute to the low level of crime in Macao and points out the direction for future research in Macao.     

Biosocial criminology and modern crime prevention

Objective

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, criminological efforts to prevent or reduce crime were centered on addressing presumed biological causes of crime. Most of these strategies involved calls for eugenics—proposals that today are considered unethical and morally reprehensible. Biologically-oriented criminology and crime control policies have re-emerged with new sophistication and attention to the importance of social context. Additionally, developmental crime prevention, with a special focus on biological/physiological risk factors in the early life course, has become influential in criminology. This paper examines the relevance of biology to modern day crime prevention.

Materials and methods

Narrative review of the theoretical and empirical literature of biology and developmental crime prevention.

Results

There are a growing number of developmental crime prevention programs that address biological risk factors for delinquency and later criminal offending. These programs are found in the family, school, and community domains. Evidence suggests that these programs can reduce crime.

Conclusions

While “biological crime prevention” as a separate field has not yet emerged, findings show that crime prevention programs can and do address biology in a sociologically sensitive manner—and these programs have shown significant impacts on crime.     

The Centrality of Theory in Modern Day Crime Prevention: Developments,Challenges, and Opportunities

Theory matters in crime prevention. Indeed, but this is hardly the full story. Crime prevention is oftentimes viewed as atheoretical—not grounded in the etiology of crime and offending. Reasons abound for this view, and the recent interest in an evidence-based approach to policy-making has been at the forefront. This article reviews the role that theory plays in modern day crime prevention, with a special focus on the three main crime prevention strategies: developmental, community, and situational. The review identifies a number of key challenges and opportunities for making theory more central to crime prevention. It suggests that the classification system employed in situational crime prevention has allowed for a more explicit connection between sound theory and prevention techniques, and may provide important lessons for developmental and community crime prevention.     

Crime prevention in a communitarian society: Bang-jiao and tiao-jie in the people's Republic of China

This paper examines two important strategies of community crime prevention in contemporary Chinese society: bang-jiao and tiao-jie. Bang-jiao refers to community efforts to reintegrate offenders into the community. Tiao-jie refers to community groups designed to resolve disputes among neighbors and family members, and in doing so, to reduce crime. We describe these strategies, discuss their philosophical underpinnings, and identify the features of Chinese society that support their implementation. We also explore their effectiveness with survey data from a sample of offenders in Tianjin, China. Our empirical analyses suggest that bang-jiao and tiao-jie may indeed be important structural mechanisms for crime control in a communitarian society.     

DOES CRIME JUST MOVE AROUND THE CORNER? A CONTROLLED STUDY OF SPATIAL DISPLACEMENT AND DIFFUSION OF CRIME CONTROL BENEFITS*

Recent studies point to the potential theoretical and practical benefits of focusing police resources on crime hot spots. However, many scholars have noted that such approaches risk displacing crime or disorder to other places where programs are not in place. Although much attention has been paid to the idea of displacement, methodological problems associated with measuring it have often been overlooked. We try to fill these gaps in measurement and understanding of displacement and the related phenomenon of diffusion of crime control benefits. Our main focus is on immediate spatial displacement or diffusion of crime to areas near the targeted sites of an intervention. Do focused crime prevention efforts at places simply result in a movement of offenders to areas nearby targeted sites—“do they simply move crime around the corner”? Or, conversely, will a crime prevention effort focusing on specific places lead to improvement in areas nearby—what has come to be termed a diffusion of crime control benefits? Our data are drawn from a controlled study of displacement and diffusion in Jersey City, New Jersey. Two sites with substantial street‐level crime and disorder were targeted and carefully monitored during an experimental period. Two neighboring areas were selected as “catchment areas” from which to assess immediate spatial displacement or diffusion. Intensive police interventions were applied to each target site but not to the catchment areas. More than 6,000 20‐minute social observations were conducted in the target and catchment areas. They were supplemented by interviews and ethnographic field observations. Our findings indicate that, at least for crime markets involving drugs and prostitution, crime does not simply move around the corner. Indeed, this study supports the position that the most likely outcome of such focused crime prevention efforts is a diffusion of crime control benefits to nearby areas.     

Understanding Victim Support as Crime Prevention Work: The Construction of Young Victims and Villains in the Dominant Crime Victim Discourse in Sweden

Starting from the observation that a new victim category has emerged in the form of the ‘young crime victim’, this article explores the notion of support to young crime victims as crime prevention work, considering it as an important constituent of the dominant crime victim discourse among support professionals. In the context of the support work, the (young) ‘victim’ and the (young) ‘villain’ provide mutually necessary counterparts constructed in relation to each other. Corresponding to this division, two approaches in criminal and crime prevention policy and practice are then analysed using Garland's notions of ‘the criminology of the self’ and ‘the criminology of the other’. The first of these strategies is generally associated with rehabilitative measures (with the resulting normalization of the crime, its victims, and villains), while in the second punitive measures remain the norm (with the crime, its victims, and villains becoming ‘Otherized’). Yet, as shown within the context of rehabilitation organized as support to young crime victims, both of these (at first glance mutually contradictory) discourses are drawn upon and operationalized by the professional support staff constructing images of young victims and villains in their daily work. Help-seeking youths resistant to identifying as victims remain represented as (possible future) villains.     

Community Safety Maps for Children in Japan: An Analysis from a Situational Crime Prevention Perspective

Recent years have witnessed several major crimes against children both inside, and in the vicinity of, schools in Japan. These criminal incidents have heightened parental and community concerns regarding the safety of children in school. From the perspective of situational crime prevention, this study attempts to examine the nature and characteristics of community safety maps designed for children. It assesses the potential benefits of these maps and analyzes the structural and cultural obstacles for their implementation. This paper calls for more research into further innovative crime prevention strategies that can be used in Japanese schools so as to prevent children from becoming victims of crimes.     

Anticipating organized and transnational crime

This paper seeks to identify ways in which governments and lawenforcement agencies might enhance the effectiveness of their efforts toanticipate organized crime. It starts by defining what is meant byanticipation, and differentiating it from the much more difficult task ofprediction. The analysis then identifies some of the methods and modelsthat are generally accepted as part of the existing knowledge base onorganized crime and highlights how these can be used to anticipate futuredevelopments and to develop warnings about how criminal organizationsmight evolve and behave in the future. The knowledge base includespolitical, economic, sociological, strategic, and composite models and showshow they provide a foundation for anticipating future developments inorganized crime. The models are either models about the kind ofenvironment in which organized crime flourishes or models about the waysin which organized crime behaves. What we do, in effect, is to identifyand elucidate `models' in ways that provide propositions about the kindsof developments, innovations or changes we might see in organized crime(both domestic and transnational) in the future. Underlying indicators provide warning about future manifestations of organized crime. Anticipating these manifestations provides a basis for appropriatepreventive, defensive or mitigating strategies. Finally, the article providessome examples of specific techniques of information collection andintelligence analysis that might assist in this task of anticipation.     

Re-imagining crime prevention: controlling corporate crime?

While the discourses and practices of crime prevention are of increasing salience, few criminologists have sought the inclusion of corporate illegalities on such agendas. Relatedly, within criminology, there has been a diminished tendency to think in idealistic, utopian and emancipatory terms. This paper is one small attempt to think in precisely such terms.¹ But it is not an exercise in pure imagination. In particular, the paper makes extended reference to Finland, where recent experience suggests that corporate crime prevention may be feasible, under certain conditions, albeit subject to certain limitations. Thus we consider both the desirability and the feasibility of corporate crime prevention intruding upon the generally narrowly constructed terrain of ‘crime prevention’. We begin with a critique of some of the key aspects of crime prevention discourses – at both theoretical and practical levels – with a particular emphasis upon the extent to which these are both more appropriately and usefully applied to corporate crime prevention, before going on to discuss corporate crime prevention ‘in action’, through a focus upon recent developments in Finland. In a concluding section, we consider various aspects of both the desirability and feasibility of corporate crime prevention.     

Delinquency theory and prevention: A radical alternative

Twentieth century America has seen several delinquency prevention programs come into vogue and then collapse under the pressure of ever increasing rates of delinquency; pressuring policy makers to continue their search for new and better programs. Yet, new prevention programs are not pulled out of a hat. Because these programs are based on certain assumptions about human behavior they are, for the most part, derived from theories of crime and delinquency causation. Pursuing this relationship between theory and practice, this paper grounds the emergence of delinquency prevention with the development of positivist criminology, identifies the conceptual and practical deficiencies of positivist theories of crime and subsequent prevention strategies and presents the prevention directive of contemporary Marxist “Critical Criminology.”     

少一些法律，多一些秩序——中西方犯罪预防策略的考察与批评

考察西方犯罪预防策略的变迁，可以发现法律和刑罚在预防策略中具有十分重要的位置。但是20世纪80年代以来，另一种预防思维已经产生，这就是针对犯罪诱因的多机构协作模式，其特点是强调社会政策而非刑罚，强调非法律方法而非法律方法，强调社会秩序而非犯罪控制。考察西方犯罪预防策略的优缺点，可为我国犯罪预防策略提供借鉴。     

Punitive Restoration and Restorative Justice

Criminal justice policy faces the twin challenges of improving our crime reduction efforts while increasing public confidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that at least some measures popular with the public are counterproductive to greater crime reduction. How to achieve greater crime reduction without sacrificing public confidence? While restorative justice approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional sentencing with the potential to achieve these goals, they suffer from several serious obstacles, not least their relatively limited applicability, flexibility, and public support. Punitive restoration is a new and distinctive idea about restorative justice modeled on an important principle of stakeholding, which states that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say about them. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed or threatened by criminal offences. Punitive restoration is punitive insofar as the available options for this agreement are more punitive than found in most restorative justice approaches, such as the option of some form of hard treatment. Punitive restoration sheds new light on how we may meet the twin challenges of improving our efforts to reduce reoffending without sacrificing public confidence, demonstrating how restorative practices can be embedded deeper within the criminal justice system.     

Modelling Criminal Justice System Costs by Offence

This paper illustrates how to estimate criminal justice system costs by offence type. Criminal justice system costs are all the costs the authorities incur to prevent and investigate crime, prosecute criminals, impose sentences, and take care of victims and offenders. There are two approaches: the break-down and the bottom-up approaches. The break-down approach decomposes the aggregate budget into smaller pieces. The bottom-up approach multiplies known costs per activity by volumes for each activity and offence type. Both approaches can be combined with two types of estimates: incidence-based and prevalence-based estimates. An incidence-based estimate identifies all costs attributable to crimes committed or processed in a specified period regardless of whether these costs exceed this time period. A prevalence-based estimate identifies all costs incurred in a specified period regardless of when the crime was committed or processed. This paper looks at the differences between the two approaches and the two estimates and indicates which combination works best depending on the type of analysis and the availability of data. The methodologies are illustrated using examples from The Netherlands. These examples show that the availability of reliable data is crucial. The more assumptions have to be made, the less reliable the end results. Investing in better data in this area should be a first priority for governments interested in criminal policy evaluation.     

Third‐Party Policing and Insurance: The Case of Market‐Based Crime Prevention

This paper examines a relatively new trend: market‐based crime prevention. The insurance firm is an exemplary agent of this new type of crime prevention. Although the traditional focus of insurance has been on losses sustained after a crime or other catastrophe, we explore the shift from reactive to proactive crime management by the insurance industry. This trend is part of a more general decentralization of policing, from state‐controlled agents to community‐ and market‐based third parties. New ideologies support these shifts, including an actuarial logic about crime and a view of the prudent person.     

Nordic Cooperation in Criminal Policy and Crime Prevention

The Nordic crime prevention councils have tried to articulate their common ideology as the ‘Nordic model’. However, Nordic crime prevention is neither theoretically nor methodologically particularly original. Its common characteristics are best understood against the background of a long‐standing Nordic cooperation in criminal policy and criminology and on the basis of cross‐national influences between historically interrelated and culturally relatively similar countries. The present study describes how crime prevention has developed and is organized in the Nordic countries. It describes cooperation between the national crime prevention councils and their common knowledge and value base. The Nordic countries can offer examples of successful crime prevention, but the fact that these societies with low repression are safe and perceived as safe can hardly be attributed solely to the activities of Nordic crime prevention.     

From research to policy: Preventing residential burglary through a systems approach

This paper isolates crime prevention policy implications which stem from a series of interrelated environmental studies of residential burglaries. A number of crime prevention strategies are developed using a systems approach. It is argued that changes made to the environments of individuals, groups, communities, organizations, and society can achieve lower risks of residential burglary victimization.     

Online victimization risk and self-protective strategies: developing police-led cyber fraud prevention programs

ABSTRACT

The prevalence and impact of cyber fraud continues to increase exponentially with new and more innovative methods developed by offenders to target and exploit victims for their own financial reward. Traditional crime reaction methods used by police have proved largely ineffective in this context, with offenders typically located outside of the police jurisdiction of their victims. Given this, some police agencies have begun to adopt a victim focused, crime prevention approach to cyber fraud. The current research explores with a sample of two hundred and eighteen potential cyber fraud victims, the relationship between online victimization risk, knowledge and use of crime prevention strategies. The study found those most at risk of cyber fraud victimization despite accurate perceptions of risk and knowledge of self-protective behaviors in the online environment underutilise online prevention strategies. This research has important implications for police agencies who are designing and delivering cyber fraud education. It provides guidance for the development of effective prevention programs based on practical skills development.