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Crime Prevention Methods in Creating Crime
Department of Social Science: Criminology, University of Ottawa
CRM2315B
Prof. Kate Fletcher
October 3rd, 2023
The existence and fear of crime have become accepted. This acceptance leads to no
longer wanting to eradicate crime but instead managing it. David Garland (1996) states that
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framing crime as a social fact has prompted a transformation in how we both talk and think
about crime. In recent years, society has found a way to measure a person's “riskiness” after
they have committed a crime. Calculating an individual's riskiness after a crime has been
committed then translated to calculating a person's risk factors prior to criminal activity occurring
(Mythen, Walklate & Khan, 2009). There has been a decline in rehabilitation within prisons and
instead think about the best way to contain a person based on their riskiness (Garland, 1996).
Everything done in the name of prevention is seen as an unmitigated good. However, harmful
things come out of activities that are there to prevent an idealized form of harm supposedly.
Prevention measures are created and beneficial for individuals who already possess economic,
social, or political power, for others, these measures can reintegrate marginalization. An
examination of harmful prevention measures such as punitive state interventions, the
commodification of security, and exclusionary proactive repressions of crime shows that instead
of preventing crime from happening, they perpetuate societal conditions in which crime occurs.
The failure of our sovereign state has led to punitive state intervention and adverse
reactions from its citizens. Garland (1996) describes a “foundational myth”; a story on which
society is based. This myth has caused strain on government powers in recent centuries as “the
myth that the sovereign state is capable of providing security, law and order, and crime control
within its territorial boundaries” (Garland, 1996, pg. 448) has become doubted. As crime rates
continue to rise so does the understanding that a sovereign control of crime is failing. This has
created two competing discourses. One discourse is that the state should be involved and take
care of its people. The other is the idea that crime is a normal way of life so individuals must
exert practices to prevent being victimized.
Governments have recognized that they either need to withdraw or reclaim themselves
as a powerful countermeasure to crime (Garland, 1996). However, they also recognize that
doing either of those two things has severe consequences. Refusal from the government to
withdraw fully is accompanied by confusion and denial that the state has lost any sovereign
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power. The outcome of this is the creation of volatile policies and societal adaptations to the
policies.
With this recognition that the state alone cannot eradicate crime completely, crime
becomes thought of as a fact. If it is taken as fact then society needs to adapt how it views
controlling crime and what crime prevention looks like. This enters the new criminological
discourses of “criminologies of the self” and “criminologies of the other” (Garland, 1996, pg.
461). Criminologies of the other describe crime as an act perpetrated by individuals viewed as
dangerous and fundamentally different from the rest of law-abiding society. To view crime as an
act perpetrated by individuals inherently different allows people in power to assume who will
perpetrate these crimes (Garland, 1996). The state can see who these individuals are and can
punish and incapacitate them with targeted laws, for example, Canada targeting homeless
people through the Safe Streets Act. There is little to no desire to assist these individuals with
social programming and community services instead governments are concerned with keeping
individuals safe from those people through penal measures of incarceration.
Criminologies of the self is the most current discourse and contend that crime is not
something that happens when someone is so fundamentally different from people but instead
when the opportunity exists with low consequence (Garland, 1996). This is a discourse that
presents a new way of thinking about criminals being the same as everyday law-abiding citizens
who simply rationalize the risk of their actions. With criminals now having the potential to be
average citizens it is asserted that the way to prevent crime is to prevent the possibility of being
victimized. Out of this criminological discourse comes the 5 adaptation strategies that Garland
presents as the way society has redesigned dealing with crime.
Adaptations were created as the challenges to the penal model took hold and as the
political climate changed in a way that allowed for thinking and talking about crime in new ways.
What the state assured it would do did not materialize so now society must adapt. So, the
discourse that is employed most of the time comes to be criminologies of the self. Volatile
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reactions are caused by having these adaptations while also having the state create its laws
and exert punishment at the same time. The 5 adaptations that Garland presents all contend the
same premise; thrust responsibility out of the hands of the government and into the hands of
citizens and private institutions. These adaptations assert crime as a routine part of life that
citizens must avoid. It is perpetuated that the state cannot do it alone which erodes the notion of
the state as the primary protector. This lowers the expectation people have for the criminal
justice system and responsibilizes individuals for their own security; making people take
precautions within any security device that companies can make and they can access.
The danger of these new modes of crime control and the adaptations put in place is that
security becomes a commodity that people can buy. Security is something that only people of
class can feel. The risk of commodifying security comes from the “eclipse in social solidarity”
(Garland, 1996, pg. 463). Garland claims that social solidarity and community no longer exists.
Society is separated onto an individual level where security and worth are based on an
individual level. Communities are responsibilized for managing and preventing crime around
them, however, that is not possible due to social and economic policies that undermine their
prevention efforts. Without the security that is found in having a strong sense of community,
individuals are left to purchase security items as a means to feel safe. Yet, there are disparities
in the provision and distribution of security due to an inequitable distribution of wealth (Garland,
1996).
Living in a capitalist society comes with its own set of cultural values that have
permeated a condition for crime to exist. Capitalist values consist of achievement-oriented,
individualistic, and meritocratic (Brotherton & Naegler, 2014). Citizens of society are meant to
idealize the self-made high achievers and reach that same status on their own because other
people are competition. Personal worth is intrinsically linked to achievements and achievements
are measured through physical means such as money or credentials (Brotherton & Naegler,
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2014). How can an individual have security in their personal worth if achievements that were
once easily attainable are increasingly diminishing?
Wealth starts to get distributed differently in this kind of society and citizens begin to
experience the pushes and pulls of the political economy. If education becomes something
commodified then the incentive for institutions is to market a degree as a necessity to having a
successful life (Brotherton & Naegler, 2014). It heightens what is necessary to be middle class.
Heightening the bar to become middle class also heightens what is needed to create an identity
or a skill that stands out. Individuals are increasingly forced into “precarious labor” (Brotherton &
Naegler, 2014, pg. 447) due to it being the most profitable for employers. Workers do not
receive livable wages or benefits when working in these jobs, however, they are the kinds of
jobs that employers have been relying on and offering more of with the promise of recognition
and usefulness. To feel that a job is useful to society assists in an individual's sense of self but
employers are steadily recognizing their workers less, whilst also exploiting the workers in the
amount of work assigned.
Society and institutions have created an unreachable goal for all ordinary citizens that
they proclaim is a realistic goal. As a result, individuals are becoming disembedded from social
networks, careers, communities, and relationships. To be disembedded from those things
individuals lose what they would have been able to anchor onto and identify with. According to
Young (Brotherton & Naegler, 2014), having such a marketed goal be so unreachable makes it
so that “...people experience increasing and extraordinary levels of ontological insecurity amid
unstable, unpredictable, and precarious conditions.” (pg. 442). An ontologically insecure
individual may lack a consistent feeling of biographical continuity, may be obsessive about risks
to their existence, have an inability to face risk, a feeling of lifelessness, and fail to develop trust
in their self-integrity. As a result of living in these socially bulimic societies, individuals are faced
with high standards in becoming middle-class which encourages them to find new and unique
ways to set themselves apart from the rest of society. This turns into essentialism.
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Essentialism is the insistence that specific fundamental traits distinguish an individual as
a worthy person and start to degenerate people who are believed to not possess that essential
attribute (Young in Brotherton & Naegler, 2014). With this mindset, people begin engaging in
mobilizing negative essences toward other people and creating prejudice, stereotypes,
discrimination, etc. Although it may not immediately lead to hating other people different from
you, it does create underlying ideas of hate that can then become exacerbated.
When essentialism does become exacerbated and the underlying ideas of hate become
outward expressions of hate this is what leads to crime and violence against these “others”
(Mythen, Walklate & Khan, 2009). In order to commit violence against proclaimed “others” the
essentialists dehumanize and alienate them. Once people begin to be seen as less human it is
easy to commit crimes against them with little guilt. This is also reflected in the criminal justice
system where these “others” are “...disproportionately subjected to police surveillance, criminal
justice interventions, penal sanctions and suffer differential forms of sentencing,” (Mythen,
Walklate & Khan, 2009, pg. 739).
These practices are directly contradictory to the “late modern” society that the Western
world claims to be (Pleysier, 2015). Late modern society claims to “celebrate” diversity and
culture while at the same time controlling and managing that diversity. It seeks to “absorb and
sanitize” diverse individuals and reject other individuals who are seen as difficult and
“dangerous” (Young in Brotherton & Naegler, 2014). Social bulimia speaks about how in a late
modern society there are things absorbing different people. However, when individuals begin to
show difficulty and resistance, society starts trying to control them. Despite people trying to fit in
and do everything in the right way they still face social exclusion. The promise of cultural
inclusion but yet increasingly vast members of the population face obstacles. Its members of the
population who up to this point have not faced these obstacles.
Normally, society deals with crime in a reactive way. Recently, crime prevention has
turned into the act of “proactive repression” instead (Pleysier, 2015). Governments start
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intervening in situations at the beginning of a risky causal chain; certain people are identified as
risky and there is intervention in their lives before they can commit a crime. This is an especially
prominent practice for homeless individuals, youth, and drug users. With this is less of an
emphasis on helping or fixing people and instead just containing their risk before anything
happens (Pleysier, 2015).
When individuals are faced with having no legitimate way to reach what society is telling
them is a successful life, what are they meant to do? Those individuals will find illegitimate ways
in an attempt to attain that life, those achievements, and self-worth. The standards currently in
place cause frustrated workers and marginalized individuals to lash out and commit crimes to
obtain any semblance of what they are told they should work towards. The pressures of the late
modern, capitalist society with a failing sovereign state lead to not only adaptations in handling
crime but also adaptations in gaining status, worth, and security. By perpetuating a condition
where only the wealthy can feel secure both physically and mentally it forces those in less
fortunate situations to find new and potentially criminal ways to succeed.
Works Cited
Brotherton, D. C. & Naegler, L. (2014). Jock Young and Social Bulimia: Crime and the
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Contradictions of Capitalism. Theoretical Criminology, 18(4), 441-449.
Garland, D. (1996). The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in
Contemporary Society. The British Journal of Criminology, 36(4), 445-471.
Mythen, G., Walklate, S. & Khan, F. (2009). “I’m a Muslim, But I’m Not a Terrorist”: Victimization,
Risky Identities and the Performance of Safety. British Journal of Criminology, 49(6),
736-754.
Pleysier, S. (2015). Local Governance of Safety and the Normalization of Behavior. Crime, Law
and Social Change, 64(4-5), 305–317