TOWARDS A DISCIPLINE OF CRIME PREVENTION: A
SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO ITS NATURE, RANGE AND
CONCEPTS
Paper for 22nd Cropwood Conference 'Preventing Crime and
Disorder' September 1994
Ekblom, P. (1996). ‘Towards a Discipline of Crime Prevention: a Systematic Approach to its Nature, Range
and Concepts’, in T Bennett, ed., Preventing Crime and Disorder: Targeting Strategies and Responsibilities,
Cambridge Cropwood Series, 43-98. Cambridge: Institute of Criminology.
Paul Ekblom
Home Office Research and Planning Unit
Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the following for ideas, comments and editorial
assistance: Gloria Laycock, Pat Mayhew, Mike Sutton, Nick Tilley and participants at the 3rd
International Seminar on Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis held at Rutgers
University, June 1994 - especially Ron Clarke (for allowing me to hold a long session on the
proximal circumstances approach), Freda Adler, Pat and Paul Brantingham, John Eck, Marcus
Felson, Tom Gabor, Gerhard Mueller and Barry Poyner. I also thank Sue Arthur (for refining
and doing the coding of the Safer Cities schemes) and Ho Law (for developing the data entry
menu system). Lastly, thanks to Trevor Bennett, for the opportunity to present this paper at the
Cropwood Conference and for detailed comments on an earlier draft.
UK Crown Copyright
3187 crop.doc
version of 6 July
1
1. Introduction: the tangle of prevention
Anyone coming new to the field of crime prevention today, as practitioner, policy-maker or
academic, could be forgiven for expressing some bewilderment. Consider the sheer exuberant
variety of contemporary preventive action, in terms of both methods of prevention and
arrangements for implementation:
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'wheels' schemes to tackle joyriding
a crime prevention bus driven round a city
morality-play puppet shows
street lighting programmes
parenting support classes
community development to halt the 'spiral of decline'
posters intended to warn victims and deter pickpockets
neighbourhood watch (farm watch, shop watch, fish watch)
design of 'safe' shopping centre
inclusion of user's photograph on credit card
electronic point-of-sale stock control
social education of young people in a rough estate
designed-in high-technology car locks and immobilisers
security patrols/CCTV
alleviation of bad housing conditions
all-female taxi service
Attempts to bring order to this luxuriant growth are of limited success, as the following jumble
of 'practice' terms and categorisations shows:
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Community crime prevention
Community safety
Crime control/reduction
Crime prevention through environmental design
Criminality prevention
Defensible space
Design against crime
Developmental prevention
Opportunity reduction
Physical crime prevention
Primary / secondary / tertiary prevention
Risk management
Situational crime prevention
Social crime prevention
Tackling the roots of crime
Victim-oriented prevention
Many are vague. Collectively they are confusing: they often overlap, and dichotomies are false
or superficial. The term 'community', in particular, is notoriously loose and it is rarely clear
whether this refers to community = neighbourhood as target of prevention; community =
method of social control; or community = participative planning and delivery of action. It is
fair to say that in terms of implementing specific interventions and achieving specific results,
2
community crime prevention is imprisoned by the poverty of its concepts.
Take also the commonly-used distinction between physical versus social prevention: physical
improvements to the environment may facilitate social surveillance; social community
development approaches may be used to facilitate implementation of physical target-hardening.
What is worse, 'physical or situational', and 'social' refer to what are virtually two separate
worlds of prevention - each with its own history, its own preventive methods, its own theoretical
background, its own favourite approaches to implementation.1
The widely-used primary/secondary/tertiary classification of Brantingham and Faust (1976)
focuses on the target of prevention to the exclusion of the nature of the action itself.2 But a call
to focus on the nature of the preventive action has been made by Tilley (eg 1993) who argues
with considerable justification that the causal mechanisms underlying the preventive activity how precisely the 'wheels project' or the CCTV cameras are supposed to have their effect on
crime - have often been ignored to their peril by policy makers, practitioners and evaluators
alike.3
What of the defining boundaries of prevention - do they help the newcomer understand what is
meant? A commonly-used definition of crime prevention refers to 'actions outside the
conventional Criminal Justice System'. This residual definition is hardly conducive to
conceptual clarity. Besides, all of the following criminal (and civil) justice system activities and
aims have obvious and often explicit preventive functions:
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Arrest
Conflict resolution
Correction / reform
Denunciation
Deterrence
Diversion
Incapacitation
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Trial
Policing
Prison
Probation
Reparation
Restitution
Sentencing
The division between prevention and CJS is arbitrary in other ways too. Preventive action can
1
Even in the Home Office the two approaches have a tendency to split across this axis, with Criminal Department
responsible for 'criminality prevention / roots of criminality' and Police Department for 'situational prevention'
(although Police Department, with its involvement in the Safer Cities Programme, does have an interest in the whole
range of preventive activity under the rubric 'community safety').
2
Primary prevention addresses the reduction of crime opportunities throughout society without reference to
offenders or potential offenders. Secondary prevention addresses the change of people, typically those at high risk
of embarking on a criminal career, so that they remain law-abiding. Tertiary prevention is focused on the truncation
of the criminal career in length, seriousness or frequency of offending, ie it deals with the 'treatment' of known
offenders.
3
Pawson and Tilley (1992, 1994) have developed an approach to the implementation and evaluation of
prevention and correction, based on the philosophical perspective of Scientific Realism and its particular view of
causality. Prevention is seen as involving the triggering of one or more specific causal mechanisms, in a particular
context, leading to a particular outcome pattern. The approach has great potential to articulate how prevention
works.
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be targetted on known offenders and their criminogenic life circumstances, such as debt and
drug dependency (eg Forrester et al. 1988, 1990). Many preventive schemes also rely on fear of
arrest, trial and punishment to influence offenders. Conversely, preventive action often makes
the CJS more effective - identification of marked property may aid conviction, or CCTV
recordings may secure arrests.
The arbitrary boundaries between the preventive functions of the CJS, and prevention as
currently understood, may have offered important protection for the latter whilst it struggled to
create a niche for itself during the seventies and eighties. However, they now militate against
the full application of the problem-oriented approach4 to prevention. Why restrict the choice of
solution to a particular local crime problem either to conventional policing and legal strategies,
or to preventive action?5 There may be much synergy if, say, property-marking and targethardening in a particular housing estate were accompanied by a police crackdown on fences and
the resale of stolen goods.
In sum, crime prevention is in a dreadful conceptual tangle both on its own home territory and
in its boundaries with the conventional CJS. This may have been acceptable during a decade of
rapid growth on many fronts, although the suspicion is that it has allowed a great deal of effort
to be spent on very loosely-conceived activity. Whatever the case, for consolidation and further
progress, a change of tack is needed: crime prevention needs to become a discipline.
The complex nature of prevention (Graham, 1990) makes this a challenging goal. To move
towards it, prevention needs several ingredients, including much greater precision of terms and
concepts, linked by a consistent and comprehensive conceptual framework; and a focus on the
causal mechanisms by which preventive action is supposed to have its effect - that is, a very
practical connection with theory.
The aim of this paper is to present my own attempt to meet these requirements (a fuller account
is in Ekblom, 1994). This work originates from both a long-term interest in the field and a more
particular need to find useful ways of classifying some 3,000 extremely diverse preventive
schemes from the Safer Cities Programme, whose impact on crime I am currently evaluating
(Ekblom, 1992; Ekblom, Sutton and Wiggins, 1993). In presenting it here, I offer participants
in the conference a definition and a systematic map of crime prevention based on a model of the
causes of the criminal event. The details may be far from perfect but only by approaching the
problem in this way can we hope to unscramble the conceptual tangle described above. Of
more immediate concern, the paper is also meant to encourage us all, over the next couple of
days, to use the same conceptual base rather than loosely employing slogans and terms that go
sailing past one another without properly connecting. The price of this precision, however, is a
necessary evil: the introduction of some new terms, more exact versions of existing ones, and a
4
'Problem orientation' (Goldstein, 1979, 1990) lay behind the whole thrust of the development of the 'preventive
process' (Ekblom, 1988) as fostered by the Home Office during the 1980s. In other words, rather than reaching for
the most familiar or the most ready-made solution to a crime problem, the nature of the crime problem itself highly specific and often local - should determine the action.
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This would have to be subject to any legal barriers and codes of practice forbidding for example the improper
sharing between agencies of information about individual offenders and drug addicts (cf Ekblom, 1986).
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fairly demanding focus on detailed definitions and distinctions.6 To ease the burden on the
reader, wherever possible details and qualifications have been relegated to footnotes. These
could be skipped on a first read to get a quick feel for the approach as a whole, and returned to
subsequently.
Section 2 of the paper proposes a definition of crime prevention in terms of intervention in the
causes of criminal events. Section 3 accordingly sets out a model of the criminal event and
its immediate causes. Using this as a basic framework Section 4 builds onto it a model of
crime prevention, attempting to capture the complexity of prevention on the ground, in its reallife untidiness, in an organised way. Section 5 returns to the question of the development of
crime prevention as a discipline, sketching out how the approach described in this paper can
contribute to this. At various points the paper draws illustrations from the classification of the
Safer Cities schemes, and elsewhere.
2. A definition of crime prevention
Crime prevention can be defined as intervention in mechanisms that cause criminal events,
in a way which seeks to reduce the probability of their occurrence. This definition is simple,
positive and non-restricting (it could apply equally to target-hardening flats, setting up a youth
club, police patrolling or incapacitating offenders). It also focuses directly on how the
preventive action actually works when delivered to the target people, institutions or locations.
Being based on causes, it links prevention with criminological theory; however, it does this in a
minimalist way so that no theories of crime are excluded. In focusing on criminal events, it
connects to the nearest thing to a 'universal bottom line' of prevention (Ekblom and Pease in
preparation) - reduction in the frequency of criminal events.7
There is obviously an infinity of possible causes of criminal events. Some causes are remote or
'distal' - such as abuse in childhood producing violent assaults in adolescence, or structural and
technological change introducing completely new opportunities for crime. Others are near or
'proximal' - the presence of a motivated offender in a suitable crime situation immediately
before the occurrence of the criminal event itself. It is these proximal circumstances - the
offender in the situation - which form the final point on which all the diverse structural, social,
ecological and psychological causes of the criminal event must inevitably converge8. As such,
they offer the best basis for organising descriptions of how the many methods of prevention
work. The paradigm9 of proximal circumstances is illustrated in Figure 1 and described in the
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The terms and definitions used, which attempt to bridge the divide between crime prevention theory and
research, crime prevention management and crime prevention implementation, are available from the author as a
glossary.
7
Many preventive schemes seeking to reform offenders are evaluated solely in terms of effects on those
offenders, rather than effects on local crime rates. The former are important, but only as an intermediate objective;
tha latter effects comprise the ultimate objective.
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Of course, events prevented never exist. Such 'non-events' are really best considered as 'events that might have
been', say, had the front door not been locked and bolted, or had the (potential) offender not had the remedial
schooling... These events could be called 'virtual' (like the 'virtual image' in optics, from which light rays only appear
to originate) - but even so they are worth retaining because they help to provide a focus.
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The term 'paradigm' is used here in preference to 'model' because what is being attempted is the development of
a new, complete and durable way of conceiving of the field.
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next section.
3. A model of the immediate causes of the criminal event - the paradigm of proximal
circumstances
To state an important truism, the criminal event requires at its bare minimum the interaction of a
potential offender and a situation to produce behaviour. The potential offender can be
anyone10 (we all have the potential to offend, given the right situation). The behaviour in
question has, of course, to be defined as criminal; and it usually involves conflict between
individuals (eg over ownership of property, or noise levels) and also, perhaps, with the state.
This section looks more closely in turn at the offender and the situation, identifying key aspects
which can make the criminal event more, or less, likely and which provide a basis for
distinguishing between different methods of prevention. It then uses these aspects to set out an
initial classification. After describing some further important features of the proximal
circumstances paradigm, it sets it in a wider theoretical context and finally illustrates its breadth
in covering the whole field of preventive action including that normally considered the preserve
of the CJS.
The potential offender
The potential offender brings to the situation his or her presence, with or without facilitators
(Clarke, 1992) such as weapons or forged security passes. Offenders also have offenceassisting resources such as skills, strength, and knowledge. Even physical distinctiveness can
be included (anyone who is six feet six with bright red hair is not cut out to be a pickpocket).
Corresponding offence-hindering resources include the capacity to hold down a decent job,
and social skills to defuse arguments before they get out of control.
Offenders also bring a set of dispositions. These can be defined as relatively permanent
capacities to behave in certain ways, to perceive and think in certain ways or to seek certain
goals. They include motives, emotions, values, moral reasoning, ways of perceiving, habits and
strategic decisions (eg the decision to remain a criminal). Despite this diversity, most
dispositions have two fundamental aspects:11
i) the potential to behave in particular ways in particular situations, such as the inherited
capacity for violence or an attitude, acquired in childhood, of disregard of others' rightful
ownership of property; or alternatively, internalised controls against aggression or theft.
ii) the current state, which results from the influence of current or recent circumstances
in activating and directing the potential - for example entering the crime situation: when
already in a state of anger; having made a decision to go looking for likely houses to
10
The corporate offender would need a somewhat different framework, although the blameworthy individual in
the corporate context would not.
11
Psychology has unfortunately so far failed to provide us with a clear and unified model of its own from which
we might borrow more detailed and better-defined aspects of the offender than these rough-and-ready ones - but
criminologists unfortunately cannot wait for psychology to be 'finished' before having to draw on psychological
concepts! Further, more specific psychological processes can obviously be drawn into understanding criminal
perception, decision-making and behaviour, but they are currently not incorporated within this paradigm because
they are subject to dispute and contention.
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burgle; or influenced by recent acquisition of a delinquent friend or loss of an important
controlling relationship.
Both the potential and the current state predispose the offender to react to particular stimuli.12
These include triggering stimuli ranging (proximally) from an open window or an insult to
(more distally) a weakness spotted in an auditing procedure; and inhibiting stimuli ranging
(proximally) from an 'alarm active' light winking inside an attractive car, to (more distally)
knowledge that security procedures in Post Offices have been tightened up.
The crime situation
The situation in turn can be divided into three main subcomponents - target, modulators and
environment:
the target13 of the criminal behaviour can be an object, such as a car; or a person, such
as a wages clerk. The target has dimensions of its own:
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presence in the situation (it can be removed),
attractiveness to offenders (and/or to modulators), and provocativeness
vulnerability14
modulators - a term describing several distinct roles people can play in acting upon the
situation or against the offender. People can be situation shapers, when they influence
the event before it happens by for example leaving their door unlocked, or their leather
jacket on the back seat of their car when parking; controlling access to a factory store;
keeping themselves out of risky environments; or simply being there, and acting as
natural surveillance. They can be interveners, who exercise surveillance; step in
during a criminal event to defend property or person; or summon help. They can be
reacters (acting after the current event but influencing possible future events), who give
chase; report or identify offenders or stolen property; or reinforce preventive measures.
These roles can be played by ordinary citizens, by employees going about their
business, by police or by private security guards.15 Modulators have:
12
These stimuli are part of the situation. More generally speaking, there is a fuzzy boundary between situation
and offender. Offenders' perception of the situation may itself be shaped by their dispositional ways of perceiving
- eg paranoia leading to subjective perception of threat, or insouciance leading to insensitivity to risk.
13
The victim's place in this paradigm is discussed later. In 'victimless' crimes such as drug abuse, there may well
be no target as such - just the criminal behaviour in the remainder of the situation.
14
Warning signals give offenders advance warning of the invulnerability or unattractiveness of a target, or of
the presence of capable interveners: for example, winking lights advertising that a car is 'alarmed' may avoid the
costly damage of a failed attempt.
15
It is worth pointing out that with progress in information technology, many physical targets or crime
environments are increasingly taking on modulator 'roles' (such as the 'situation-shaping' car that reminds the driver
to lock up, or the 'intervening' alarm that, having decided that the pattern of sounds and infra-red radiation resembles
a burglar rather than the family cat, dials the police). Such functions can be simulated - biscuit-tin burglar alarms,
cardboard cutout police constables (the latter-day equivalent of the scarecrow), the mock-up speed camera, or even
the life-size companion doll in the car's front passenger seat (an inflatable guardian). As well as acting as warning
signals to heighten perceived risk to the offender, these modulator functions can operate through the mechanism of
rule-reminders - telling people that what they may be doing is forbidden. Explicit rule reminders can be seen
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presence (or remote sensing/remote influence), with or without personal
modulator tools16 such as a screech alarm or a mobile phone
motivation to act,
perception (ability to see that a crime could happen/is happening/has happened
resources (knowledge of what to do, strength to act etc)
credibility (in the eyes of the offender)
the environment in which the criminal event occurs - the rest of the situation; the
physical and social context in which the offender and modulators operate with respect to
the target. The environment17 has:
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logistical aspects (those physical or social features which make it easier and less
risky for the offender to prepare for the criminal event, execute and escape, and
which conversely make it harder for the modulators to carry out their roles)
including basic sight lines, places of concealment or observation, multiple exits;
and environmental modulator tools to tip the balance in favour of the
modulator, such as CCTV, lighting or mirrors (of course these may work either
way).
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motivating aspects (harder to define but ranging from thin walls which conduct
noise between houses, to the presence of peers urging a vandal on)
Taken together, the components of the proximal circumstances just described are basically all
that is needed to characterise the immediate causes of the criminal event.18 A criminal event
occurs when the right conjunction occurs. To paraphrase and extend Cohen and Felson
(1979),19 the term opportunity reflects this conjunction of:
posted on public transport systems the world over ("don't spit, play loud music, eat food, dodge fares.."). Rulereminders are either stand-ins for human modulators, or supply them with support (it is easier to intervene, for
example, when one is able to point to a 'no smoking' sign). Ownership clues, whether centred on targets or territory
(as in Defensible Space), also serve to aid modulators and/or deter offenders.
16
Adapted from 'prevention tools' (Clarke, 1992).
17
In ecological psychology, Barker's (1963) concept of the behaviour setting is a useful way of developing the
concept of environment (pointed out by Felson (in preparation)). A behaviour setting is a class of places, or
environments, where a particular set of behaviours is routinely likely to occur at particular times - eg filling stations
always set the scene for certain types of money transactions, often late at night with relatively few interveners
present, and thus also routinely set the scene for robbery and bilking. Felson goes on to distinguish between place
(purely a location), setting (location and time with routine behaviour) and facility (assemblage of places/settings).
18
Many of these aspects of the components can be further divided (see Figure 5) when greater specificity is
required. For example, target vulnerability can be divided into visibility, distinctiveness, passive resistance, passive
protest and traceability. Each component has been defined to interlock with the others, rather than overlap, which
can make for confusion. For example, 'visibility of target' (such as a concealed safe) interlocks with 'capacity of
offender to spot the target (such as the ability of an experienced eye to spot the oddly-placed painting). Altogether,
the offender's resources and dispositions are to a large extent outlined in reverse in terms of the aspects of the
situation with which they engage (and vice-versa).
19
Cohen and Felson's (1979) ecological 'routine activity' approach to crime described the fundamental
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a ready, willing and able offender, accompanied perhaps by facilitators of crime such as
tools
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a vulnerable and attractive or provocative target
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a favourable environment
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the absence of willing, able and credible modulators
Opportunity is not simply a quality of the situation - it is an interaction between properties of
situation and offender (an open window 50 feet up is only an opportunity to an athletic cat
burglar). Prevention ultimately works by disrupting these conjunctions at some point upstream
of the criminal event.
A simple classification of preventive methods
Figure 2 shows a classification of methods of prevention in terms of the proximal circumstances
that they aim to divert, remove or alter. The one maps quite neatly onto the other, and enables
each type of preventive action to receive a systematic and exclusive definition. The key divide
is between reducing crime by changing the immediate situation in which offences may occur,
and changing potential offenders. On the situational side preventive methods can reflect a
focus on i) the target of crime (eg strengthening doors); ii) on modulators (eg 'lock it or lose it'
campaigns or installation of security guards); and iii) on the environment (eg clearing shrubs
to reduce hiding places, introducing speed bumps or soundproofing walls between flats).
On the offender-oriented side, it is possible to distinguish between two types of activity: i)
what could be called 'criminality prevention' or tackling the 'roots of criminality' - influencing
people's potential to offend by intervening in their early lives in order to bring about changes in
the trajectories of development and 'programming in' of motivations, values, emotions and
skills; and ii) remedying the current life circumstances of individuals (such as debt, poor
entertainment facilities, bad housing or membership of offending peer groups) which may be
influencing their current state of motivation, emotion or decisions to offend.
Bridging the divide between situational and offender-oriented methods is the exclusion of
particular potential offenders from particular situations. Exclusion can involve access control
such as keys and passes or simple unaided surveillance, such as keeping youngsters out of pubs.
Exclusion of crime facilitators such as disarming potential hijackers at airports, or divesting
would-be shoplifters of capacious bags on entering supermarkets, can also come here.
Additional aspects of the proximal circumstances paradigm
Several further considerations are necessary to complete the proximal circumstances paradigm.
(Readers in a hurry can skip to section 4.) These are: additional roles; the terms 'social',
conjunction of conditions necessary for a criminal event to occur: the presence of a 'likely' offender and a 'suitable'
target, and the absence of capable guardians. The 'proximal circumstances' approach described here builds on
Cohen and Felson's conjunction, but in a way which enables it to apply to a wider range of offences and
circumstances, and is more specific, differentiated and explicit (eg trying to pin down what 'likely', 'suitable' and
'capable' mean).
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'community' and 'intimate'; the active nature of the components; and the link between one
criminal event and others.
i) Additional roles
The victim of the criminal event has not yet been mentioned. The victim has several distinct
aspects, being personal target, owner of a physical target and potential modulator.20 These
aspects are often confused, rendering so-called 'victim-based' crime prevention an equallyconfused category. Helping the victim resist is one class of preventive methods; getting victims
to install locks is a way of identifying likely future targets of crime and a method of
implementation relying on the extra motivation of the victim.
Felson (in preparation) provides another useful way of distinguishing between modulator roles
in terms of the object of their supervisory preventive action. 'Guardians' protect the target;
'handlers' are associates of potential offenders who may dissuade or restrain them from
offending; and 'managers' (a term borrowed from Eck, 1993) are responsible for controlling the
general environment and any targets and offenders it may contain.21
ii) Social, community and intimate mechanisms
However loosely they are defined, it is obviously vital to acknowledge the influence of social
and community mechanisms which cause or inhibit crime. At this point, we are only concerned
with those social and community micro-mechanisms which operate within the proximal
circumstances of criminal events. Those which operate distally are covered in Section 4 when
prevention itself is discussed. Social mechanisms that operate within the proximal
circumstances are taken specifically to involve interactions between the roles of offender, target
(as human victim rather than property) and modulator. Such interactive processes make for
uncertain outcomes - a criminal event may or may not happen depending on precisely what A
says to B, how precisely B reacts, and so forth.22 The proximal roles may not always involve
lone individuals - people may of course operate collectively such as a delinquent gang or a
crowd of onlookers - here, group processes play a part.
The concept of community is notoriously elusive both in general (Willmott, 1986), and with
regard to policing (Ekblom, 1986) and crime prevention (Rosenbaum, 1988). For present
20
The first two aspects also have a legal dimension. The other roles in the proximal circumstances have a legal
dimension too: with the offender this is obvious; the reacter can be a witness; the intervener can be a witness or
legally liable for overzealous defence (indeed with some assaults it is not clear which protagonist occupies the role
of victim/target, which the offender); and the situation shaper can be liable for allowing the criminal event to
happen.
21
Felson adds yet another useful dimension (modified from Clarke, 1992), namely the level of responsibility
for controlling crime exercised by each of these roles. For example, the guardian role may be carried out by anyone
from a paid security guard to a casual passer-by. Modulators also may have a remit to act in a given situation
(following a suggestion from Gloria Laycock) - for example, do they have the authority to intervene in a domestic
dispute next door? Combining the dimensions of time (situation-shaper to reacter); object of preventive action
(target, offender, environment (place/ behaviour setting/ facility - see footnote 17); and level of responsibility for
preventive action gives a powerful way of distinguishing between different modulator roles.
22
Game theory processes may occur - for example, A may only feel safe looting if he sees everyone else doing
likewise.
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purposes those community mechanisms that operate within the proximal circumstances are
taken to involve pre-existing social relationships. Community manifests itself through the
overlapping of these central roles with others (cf Currie, 1988) (eg the offender is also the
neighbour of the intervener, or the target person is also the employer of the situation shaper).
The occupants of the central roles may have common interest in the targets of crime or in the
welfare of the community in general; or joint membership in wider networks.23
Such prior relationships can facilitate or restrain offending. The 'handler' role in particular was
mentioned in the previous section. Community (rather than always representing harmony) can
bring in conflicts which may lead to violence or damage. Certain community processes such as
reputation, stigmatisation and labelling act in ways akin to dispositions: through ecological
association they are equivalent to stable properties of the individual. For example, the peers
who know an offender's reputation as a fighter and provide a ready influence egging him on,
may be present every Saturday night in the local bar.
Distinct from community is another kind of overlapping role relationship which mediates
important causes of criminal events - the intimate relationship (eg husband = offender, wife =
target or modulator). Social bonds, in control theory terms (Hirschi, 1969), inhibit offending
because to do so would spoil valued relationships.24
iii) The active nature of the proximal roles
Figure 1 shows, schematically, long chains of cause and effect leading to the criminal event but this should not be taken to imply passive offenders, driven inevitably to the fatal conjunction
by influences beyond their control. At the very least, the causes on the offender's side are often
mediated by decision-making processes (Cornish and Clarke, 1986) both strategic (whether or
not to offend) and tactical (whether to attack this car or that one). Offenders may, of course,
actively seek or even create opportunities (cf Bennett, 1986).25
If an offence is not inevitable in this sense, then nor should a single preventive intervention be
seen as an equally final derailment. If thwarted, offenders may try to circumvent the obstacle by
looking for alternative situations - selecting more vulnerable targets, changing time or place to
avoid interveners or to find a more favourable environment. They may alternatively change
themselves - switching between methods in their repertoire, learning new methods, bringing in
extra facilitators such as weapons or false documents, or coming in greater numbers. This is, of
course, displacement.
23
Community is often equatable with 'locality' - ie geographical relationships - but not always: an ethnic
community for example may be scattered spatially.
24
Felson (in preparation) draws together social control theory, routine activity theory and the wider community
context in which networks enable the emotional 'handles' originating with 'intimate handlers,' such as an offender's
parents, to be grasped by a wider and less-intimately-acquainted set of individuals.
25
The depiction of the potential offender in the proximal circumstances paradigm allows an unpicking of the
differences between the 'amateur' and the 'professional' offender - a distinction widely-used in setting the sights of
prevention, but loosely-defined. 'Professionalism' might include the following features: good resourcing in terms of
skills, knowledge of risks, targets etc; familiarity with, and possession of, facilitators; strategic decision to offend;
strong motivation to offend; active creation of opportunities; emotional coolness in the face of perceived risks.
11
To complement this, potential victims may obviously also try to avoid their property or their
persons falling into these same conjunctions26, by steering clear of particular situations or
people, locking doors, removing valuables from view or (if the worst comes to the worst)
applying interpersonal skills to cool an escalating confrontation. At one remove, there may be a
more distal kind of 'arms race' process in which designers of car security systems, for example,
evolve infra-red remote central locking controls, the car thieves develop a scanner to pick up
and mimic the unique signal for the individual vehicle, and the designers then invent a scanproof system reminiscent of spies' one-time pads.
The social interactions between the various active components of the proximal circumstances
can be highly dynamic and may have to be treated as a holistic system not reducible to its parts.
Eck (1993), using a combination of the rational offender and routine activity perspectives,
presents an analysis of the choice of sites of drug dealing, in terms of how buyer and seller
jointly select suitable environments that enable each to control the risks of arrest and of
becoming a target of crime by being cheated or assaulted by the other.27
iv) Between-event processes
Criminal events themselves do not of course happen in isolation.28 Figure 1 shows a subsequent
conversion event (consumption or resale of stolen goods) which may provide further
opportunities for prevention (Sutton 1993); and reaction, involving the exercise of the official
CJS or unofficial social control.
There may be 'feedforward' from the outcome of one criminal event to those that follow. With
the offender, experience of success, failure or punishment leads, through learning, to changes in
all kinds of dispositions. Other potential offenders may also be influenced towards or away
from committing a crime - respectively, vicarious knowledge of an easy opportunity and general
deterrence and discouragement.29 There will also be feedforward to the affected situation (eg
situation shapers blocking vulnerabilities revealed by the previous event - shutting the stable
door before the next horse bolts), and perhaps to wider sets of situations (eg redesigning a car
lock that has been discovered to be easily defeated).
26
From the victim's perspective, they might be called 'conjunctions of threat' rather than conjunctions of
opportunity; the perceived risk of victimisation will influence their decision to incur cost or inconvenience in
avoiding these conjunctions (eg leaving the car unlocked whilst popping into a shop). Not all who become victims
will have sought avoidance - some may themselves have been 'looking for a fight'... or doing their duty as police
officers.
27
The drug-dealing transaction also illustrates that the role of offender can be split into collaborative partners in
crime, with or without the involvement of a target.
28
From a somewhat different angle Cornish (in preparation) has introduced a further refinement, potentially very
useful for aiding the development of preventive methods. His concept of 'crimes as scripts' sees offenders having to
negotiate their way successfully through a number of linked 'scenes' en route to the final criminal payoff. For
example, stealing a car may involve i) prospecting, ii) obtaining duplicate keys, iii) the act of theft itself, iv)
arranging a false identity for the vehicle and v) disposal. Each scene may involve a separate criminal event, but all
are linked by a common goal. Interventions can be designed to disrupt the conjunction necessary for successful
completion of any scene in the sequence.
29
Deterrence refers to preventive mechanisms of avoidance of aversive consequences (arrest, punishment,
disgrace), discouragement to those involving loss of reward or increase in effort to get it.
12
The paradigm of proximal circumstances has become considerably more complicated than the
bald 'situation-offender' model that was taken as the starting point, and more complicated even
than more sophisticated equivalents like that of Felson (Cohen and Felson, 1979; Felson, 1992).
However, the basic framework (as in Figure 1) is still relatively simple. The extra complexity
of this framework, and of the additional aspects just discussed, has been entirely necessary. It
allows a much more comprehensive coverage of types of criminal events, their causal
mechanisms and the potential means of their prevention. It provides a vehicle for describing
the behaviour of the various proximal roles, and also their viewpoints. We now have a far
better basis on which to describe and classify preventive action. Before doing so (in Section 4),
there are two other points to make, setting the proximal circumstances paradigm in a wider
theoretical context, and illustrating the breadth of its coverage of preventive action.
The proximal circumstances paradigm in a wider theoretical context
The proximal circumstances paradigm has borrowed concepts and causal mechanisms from
psychology, law, ecology and sociology - but only at the micro-level. The vast bulk of the
subject matter of these disciplines has deliberately been left out of the paradigm. All such
omissions concern distal causes; they are, of course important, but only influence crime via the
proximal causes already sketched out.30 It is to the meso- and macro-levels of these disciplines
that we might look to try to understand why a particular potential offender frequents a particular
situation, and how the components of the situation itself have come together, to produce a
criminal event.31 From a single-event perspective, we may want to broaden out to consider the
geographic pattern of events in an area, or the pattern of events in an individual's criminal
career. We might also want to understand how particular social and economic processes have
led to commonly-occurring proximal situations such as the vulnerability of the motor vehicle to
theft, or city centres which are surrendered to the young at night. Likewise we may want to
know how (or indeed, if) changes in employment patterns and welfare benefits, privatisation of
public housing, raising of the school leaving age, increases in the divorce rate and the operation
of the economic cycle all affect individuals' acquisition of particular dispositions and the current
life circumstances which activate them.
This focus on proximal causes will hopefully act as a source of discipline, requiring the more
complex theories of crime and crime prevention to come down to earth at some point to define
their essential processes in terms of immediate behavioural and ecological realities - or at least
make them connect up. Likewise it should require, and help, crime prevention practitioners to
be clearer in specifying what mechanisms their planned 'youth work' or 'community
development' scheme will engage in the course of implementation, what output measures they
will use in monitoring performance and what outcome measures they will ultimately employ in
evaluation.
The breadth of the proximal circumstances paradigm
30
Some may think this approach reductionist, but the processes of interest in these wider perspectives can be seen
as emergent properties that reside in the patterns of proximal causes and their more distal precursors.
31
For an example of a wider model which nevertheless connects with the proximal circumstances, see
Wikstrom's (1990) synthesis of how urbanisation has led to the coming together of more strongly-motivated, and
more weakly-controlled, offenders with more vulnerable and attractive targets.
13
In concluding Section 3 we should note the comprehensiveness of the definition of crime
prevention adopted, and the range of causes of criminal events identified. In addition to crime
prevention as commonly understood, the approach encompasses informal mechanisms of
prevention such as are envisaged in Hirschi's Control Theory (Hirschi, 1969), and conflict
resolution approaches such as mediation and reparation (and even town planning). It also
encompasses all preventive aspects of the formal Criminal Justice System, both sentencing
options and policing.32
Through incapacitation, imprisonment is doing no more than keeping known offenders out of
particular situations; through correctional treatment, imprisonment seeks to alter the stable
dispositions to offend that people bring to situations; through specific and general deterrence, it
aims to influence potential offenders' decision-making via their perception of risk and cost of
offending. Other sentences available to the courts (such as fines) also seek to prevent through
deterrence, whether financial or through the wish to avoid shame. Probation aims to prevent
(re-)offending for example by seeking to influence strategic decisions to offend; to help
offenders control anger (both aspects of their disposition); and to tackle criminogenic current
life circumstances.
Conventional police action operates through a wide range of mechanisms, often in parallel.
Patrolling shapes the situation, for example in checking that doors are locked; and supplies
willing, able and highly credible interveners and reacters who pose the threat of arrest.
Detection and arrest themselves are also of course the lead into the preventive mechanisms of
the 'higher' CJS just described. Police-run youth curfews (in some countries) keep particular
categories of potential offenders off the streets late at night; they may also serve the situational
preventive mechanism of 'target removal' - keeping young people (this time as targets rather
than offenders) safe from violent predators or other exploiters. The CJS as a whole aims to
underwrite the moral order as a basis for the socialisation of the young and the maintenance of
collective moral values across communities and throughout individuals' lives. This ultimately
finds its way into individual potential offenders' (dispositional) value systems and beliefs about
others' responses to criminal acts.
It may now seem that we have so dissolved the boundaries of crime prevention that the term
includes virtually anything and everything. This is not so: the ultimate test is whether a given
activity involves intervention in mechanisms which cause criminal events. Having now secured
this definition, we no longer have to rely on someone else's boundary fence: it is up to the crime
prevention community to set its own limits - to decide, for example, whether or not to include
preventive actions which are purely CJS.
4. A paradigm of crime prevention
We now have a basic model of criminal events, and a basic classification of how all crime
prevention methods ultimately act to reduce their frequency. But there are more aspects of
prevention to unscramble. Considering the examples of preventive action in the introduction,
they protect diverse objects at a range of levels in society, using a variety of methods which
32
The proximal circumstances paradigm can also serve to describe the dysfunctioning of preventive action
(both CJS and non-CJS) in terms of making criminal events more likely: labelling, stigmatising ('dispositional'
reputation in the community), disruption of stabilising influences such as jobs and family life (changing current
states), and teaching criminal skills and attitudes (developing the resources and dispositions of criminality).
14
intervene at different distances from criminal events. Some of the examples are straightforward
and direct in implementation; others involve several stages of implementation and hierarchical
or multi-agency arrangements.
This section aims to identify the key features common to the whole range of preventive action33
in a way that enables practitioners, academics and policy-makers to envisage and communicate
that action in consistent and specific terms. To help them, we have to identify the key features
common to the whole range of preventive action. All too often, people at the academic end of
prevention view it as a detached and abstract set of methods, leaving all the 'messy bits' out. We
have to capture the nature of prevention as a 'living thing' in its real-world implementation
habitat. It is a challenging task, in which a general framework covering the entire range of
conceivable preventive action34 has to be combined with a capacity to represent real-life
complexity. The aim is to be as parsimonious as possible in defining a paradigm of prevention,
whilst avoiding the procrustean practice of forcing everything into a few oversimple categories.
The focus now has to shift from the mechanisms that cause criminal events, to intervention
in these mechanisms, in the service of prevention. The proximal circumstances paradigm is
taken as the basic framework; we work backwards from it up the causal chain, adding
elements that are specifically preventive. The paradigm of prevention is shown, in Figure 3,
superimposed on the paradigm of the criminal event (Figure 1). The terms used are deliberately
linked to practice and management concepts, principally the sequence of ultimate and
intermediate objectives, although this is not always conducive to elegance.
An overview of the paradigm of prevention
According to Figure 3, we start by describing the ultimate objectives of the preventive action which types of criminal event, committed by which offenders, are to be prevented in which
proximal circumstances.
Example: reduction of disorder from young people in city-centre.
The ultimate objectives are achieved by the removal, diversion or alteration of the components
of the proximal circumstances, to disrupt the conjunction necessary for the relevant criminal
events to occur. The achievement of these changes may be the last in a whole sequence of
intermediate objectives. As such, they can be called the 'final intermediate objectives'.
Example: finding legitimate means to alleviate young people's state of boredom.
The intervention itself, a particular method of prevention applied at some earlier point in the
causal chain, acts to achieve these intermediate and ultimate objectives, that is, to disrupt the
conjunction of opportunity and reduce the frequency of criminal events.
33
34
Excluding purely CJS-based prevention for the sake of brevity.
It might be argued that to attempt to accommodate all possible types of prevention, including the 'obviously'
implausible and silly, leads us into unnecessary complexity. However, at the present state of knowledge, at least, we
cannot presume to know exactly what does or does not work. We should not be excluding the loose thinkers but
helping them tighten up their ideas so they can be properly implemented and fairly tested. Also, in practice, little if
any of the paradigm of prevention about to be described could be omitted, because 'implausible' methods have a
great deal in common with 'plausible' ones.
15
Example: provision of (legitimate) neighbourhood entertainment facilities.
Before the intervention itself may come another sequence of actions designed to gain access to
relevant organisations and individuals and then to implement the intervention. These actions
are termed here 'insertion'. The sequence of intermediate objectives linking insertion and
implementation is called the 'chain of implementation'.
Example: setting up a multi-agency 'neighbourhood entertainments' working group in the
local authority.
These, then, are the bare bones of prevention and they will now be revisited in more detail where possible, accompanied by illustrative classifications taken from Management Information
System records of some 3,000 Safer Cities schemes35.
Ultimate objectives of the scheme
The ultimate objectives of the preventive action can be specified in terms of the particular sets
of criminal events it seeks to prevent, in particular proximal circumstances.
The criminal events can obviously be specified by legal category, such as theft. But problemoriented approaches (eg Clarke, 1992; Ekblom, 1988) argue that this is insufficiently precise.
The additional focus required has several aspects: the offender involved; the method of
offending employed; the target of the criminal behaviour; and the environment in which the
target is located. A formal statement of the ultimate objective of a scheme might then read 'the
prevention of burglary by young male offenders who break rear windows of dwellings in public
housing estates'. The ultimate specification would, of course, go on to name the houses and
name the estates. However, what is needed at this point is some way of referring to crimes,
relevant offenders, targets and environments, in more general terms. Two ways of doing this
can be identified - the scope of the objectives (broad or narrow), and the 'social level' (the
entities in society which receive the protection from crime).
Scope of the ultimate objectives
Scope is a concept which supports strategic thinking in prevention. It refers here to whether the
ultimate objectives, in specifying crime type, offender etc are broad, narrow or in some cases
focused on an individual point. Focus can be on:
*
a broad set of crime types (as for example with many offender-oriented schemes that
aim to prevent criminality in general, or situational schemes that aim to improve overall
'community safety'); or a narrow one (as with treatment to reduce sexual offending, or a
situational approach to pickpocketing).
*
a broad set of offenders (eg all juvenile delinquents); or a narrow one (eg professional
shop thieves).
35
The extensive entries for each scheme on the Management Information System - both free-text descriptions
and precoded multiple-choice items - were coded using a decision-tree-type menu arrangement to guide the choices
made by the coder, which were fed straight into a relational database suitable for handling the hierarchical nature of
the material. Considerable efforts were made to train the coder to make consistent decisions; in fact the coder and
the author worked jointly to develop the coding system in parallel with the development of the present 'proximal
circumstances' paradigm.
16
*
generalised methods of offending (eg any kind of walk-in theft); or specialised ones
(eg walk-in thefts using con-tricks to gain access).
*
a broad set of environments of criminal events (eg a nationwide campaign to improve
car park security); a narrow set (eg a particular type of bus shelter whose redesign might
reduce jostling and hence pickpocketing); or a single case (eg a specific crime hot-spot).
*
a broad set of targets of crime (eg property-marking all valuables); a narrow set (eg a
particularly vulnerable make of car); or an individual target (eg a particular house
subject to repeat burglary).
Taking all this together it is possible to envisage two extremes. We could have a scheme
focusing on a single criminal event in a single environment involving a single target using a
specific method of offending (eg preventing the theft of the crown jewels at the coronation by a
cunning horseback snatch). By contrast, other schemes are so broadly-targeted in terms of both
crime type and situation that they could be said to cover 'everything and everywhere'. These
need not necessarily be dismissed as sloppy practice: there are certain aspects of 'capacity
building' which are perfectly acceptable as crime prevention. For example, under this heading
could come activities such as i) awareness-raising among local professionals about crime and its
prevention; ii) developing a local database for collection and analysis of crime incident
information in support of the 'preventive process' (Ekblom, 1988); and iii) setting up a
residents' association to assist people to identify and tackle crime problems themselves (eg
Forrester et al., 1990).
So far the coverage of preventive action has focused solely on crime reduction; but there are
sometimes other 'bottom lines' (Ekblom and Pease, in preparation). There may be particular
policy reasons beyond the efficient achievement of overall crime reduction for preventing repeat
victimisation (Farrell and Pease, 1994). Crime prevention schemes (as in the Safer Cities
Programme) may be aimed at reducing fear or improving 'amenity' (eg frequency of going out
for leisure) or 'economic life'.
Social level of the ultimate objectives
Scope is not enough by itself to capture the rich variety of prevention. It is necessary to have
some way of representing the range of 'entities' in society that preventive action seeks to protect
as targets or environments for crime, or to control as sources of offending. The concept of
'social level' aims to do just this; these levels include:
*
the structural level, involving processes operating within society as a whole, such as
employment, manufacturing and distribution or transport;
*
community, involving some kind of common interest, with multiple role relationships
and networks;
*
the area of residence, leisure or work;
*
the media;
17
*
institutions, eg schools, work organisations;
*
the peer group;
*
family and intimates;
*
the individual - individual target, individual environment.36
This schema37 offers a way of pinning down social and community aspects of prevention
beyond the very limited elements specified in the proximal circumstances paradigm. Within
each level, types of unit can be listed - eg units within the 'institution' level can include school,
youth club etc. Even further, we can specify the selection criteria for identifying which of the
units are to receive preventive action (eg high-crime schools, youth clubs with vulnerable
members, residential areas with a significant criminal subculture). How broad or narrow these
selection criteria are determines the scope of the targets, environments and offenders.
The social levels, units and selection criteria identified within the Safer Cities Programme's
schemes are shown in Figure 4 (in this and subsequent figures, terms are explained in Appendix
2). The scope and social level concepts can also be applied respectively to the methods of
intervention and insertion.
Final intermediate objectives of the method
The ultimate objectives of the scheme are achieved by disruption of the conjunction of
opportunity through changes in the components of the proximal circumstances. These changes
may lie at the end of a long chain of cause and effect which the preventive action began. In
management terms, they can be called the 'final intermediate objectives'. These desired changes
can be classified in terms of the proximal components they seek to affect - as shown in Figure 2,
and the more detailed 'tree of components' in Figure 5.
The intervention
The intervention is the means to achieving the final intermediate objectives of the method.
There are several distinct aspects:
*
the methods and mechanisms of intervention themselves;
*
the causes of the criminal event that the intervention interrupts; and
*
the entities that receive the intervention - their social level.
These are discussed in turn.
Methods and mechanisms of intervention38
36
Environment can be taken as place, behaviour setting or facility - see footnote 17.
37
The international level could also be added, covering drug trafficking, smuggling endangered species,
international terrorism etc.
38
A method (eg target-hardening house windows) may work through various mechanisms (eg physical blocking;
18
It is not enough to describe methods of intervention simply in terms of the proximal
components they seek to change - for example 'reducing vulnerability of target due to its lack of
resistance', 'increasing perceptual capacity and motivation of intervener', or 'legitimately
satisfying the offender's need for excitement'.39 Nor is it always enough to use loose or very
general phrases such as 'youth work' or 'target hardening'. Too many descriptions of preventive
schemes leave them at this. The missing ingredient, the method, is captured in a 'by' phrase:
'reducing vulnerability of target due to its lack of resistance, by physical strengthening of lock';
'increasing perceptual capacity and motivation of intervener by training in detection of
suspicious behaviour and rewarding for successful interventions'; 'legitimately satisfying the
need for excitement by providing the challenging activity of white-water canoeing'. Common
to all these descriptions are the proximal components to be changed; the nature of the changes;
and the method of intervention. Specifying preventive action in this way requires the
practitioner to be clear as to the mechanisms by which the intervention is supposed to work,
suggests outcome measures by which it might be evaluated and the basis on which it could be
replicated or adjusted (Tilley, 1993, 1994).
Methods of intervention used in the Safer Cities schemes are shown in Figure 6.40
The causes of the criminal event which are interrupted by the intervention
It may be important to consider the causal mechanisms which the intervention seeks to interrupt,
and whether the point of intervention is proximal or distal. Situational schemes generally
intervene directly on the proximal circumstances - for example, identifying individual
vulnerable situations (such as a crime hot-spot (Sherman et al., 1989)) and altering them in situ.
As a distal influence on situations, an intervention in the labour market might allow for more
home-working, say, resulting in more interveners being at home to protect their property against
burglary. On the offender-oriented side, the mechanisms subject to intervention are extremely
diverse. Towards the proximal end, the current life circumstances of potential offenders - debt,
bad housing, peer pressure etc - influence their current state (eg moods, tactical decisions to
offend) prior to the criminal event. Lifestyle and routine activity direct particular offenders into
particular situations. More distally, development, learning and socialisation processes obviously
contribute to the programming of dispositions and acquisition of resources for crime. Structural
processes still further back - relating to patterns of mobility, employment and cultural norms influence socialisation in their turn.
Generally speaking, the more distal the point of intervention, the wider the scope of the ultimate
objectives and hence the greater the number of future individual criminal events that may be
knocked off course. Unfortunately, this gain may sometimes be at the expense of the
probability of successful impact, there being "many a slip 'twixt cup and lip". However, this is
not always the case: early intervention in a child's family or schooling may actually lead that
increasing skill required; increasing effort; lengthening time exposed to risk of discovery; increasing noise of
entry). Perhaps the most surprising thing to emerge from lookingat prevention from a mechanisms perspective is
just how many possible mechanisms can be hypothesised to underlie a particular preventive method. Formal
definitions of scheme, method and mechanism used in the classification of Safer Cities schemes are in Appendix 1.
39
40
It is really just a restatement of the final intermediate objective of the action.
To specify the mechanisms they applied would have been too conjectural given the open-ended range of
possible mechanisms and the limited scheme descriptions in the Management Information System.
19
child away from criminogenic influences. Further work in this area might help implementors of
crime prevention to think strategically about the best links in the causal chain in which to
intervene, trading off cost, scope, risk of failure, and side-effects such as stigmatisation of areas,
institutions or individuals.
The entities that receive the preventive action: the social level of intervention
The concept of the 'social level' can be used to identify the entities which receive the
intervention. The entities receiving the intervention need not be the same as the ones, receiving
protection, that are specified in the ultimate objectives. For example, a neighbourhood could
receive the intervention, in a scheme whose ultimate objective concerned reducing disorder in
the city centre (see Figure 8). On what basis is one unit selected for intervention rather than
another - one school, one offender, one area, one community, one situation shaper, one make of
car, one hot-spot...? It is here that the Brantingham and Faust (1976) distinction between
primary, secondary and tertiary prevention fits in, whether applied to offenders or situations.
Implementing the intervention: methods of 'insertion'
To bring the intervention about, access to the relevant institutions and individuals has to be
gained, cooperation has to be secured and a sequence of intermediate objectives have to be set
up before the intervention itself is implemented. Consider two school-based schemes. Both
operate at the 'institutions' level, but in other respects they differ. The first attempts to influence
the school ethos to improve the dispositions of pupils. The second involves persuading the
school to identify individual pupils at risk of offending and to give them remedial education. In
the first, the prevention intervenes in the causal chain at the point of the functioning of the
school as a whole; it begins and ends there. In the second, the action also begins with the
whole school but ends elsewhere: perhaps in a special classroom with selected pupils.41
To take another example, the crime preventer might take direct action in a car park which is the
scene of frequent autocrime; or might alternatively work with a national car park-owning
company to get them to introduce the same range of security measures. Once again, the longer
the chain of implementation, the less reliable may be the prospects of securing the right
intervention in the right place, but the larger the numbers of potential offenders and/or situations
that it may be possible to influence.
These chains of implementation describe multiple stages of cause and effect - or in management
terms a hierarchy of intermediate objectives. There may be a matching structure in the
organisational arrangements behind the commissioning of the schemes. The crime preventer
role may involve more than just a single individual or a single multi-agency team - it may
involve a hierarchy in which (as with the Safer Cities Programme) there are national team
leaders, local coordinators, and implementors of individual schemes (eg a local victim support
group receiving money from the coordinator to implement security measures in the houses of
existing victims of burglary).42
41
This is a separate and distinct causal chain from the one which originally would have led to the criminal event the chain of implementation. The point where this chain begins can be referred to as the point of insertion; it
ends at the point of intervention, already described.
42
The roles operating the chain of implementation may end in the proximal circumstances with the modulators
themselves as the final link - eg the situation shaper who decides to use the lock installed by the council.
20
The units of insertion can also be characterised using the social levels framework. Recalling the
previous examples, the levels and units of insertion and intervention may be the same (inserted
in school; intervening in school ethos) or different (inserted in school; intervening on
individual pupils). Methods of insertion can also be identified - mass publicity; individual
persuasion, teaching/training; negotiation; legislation; incentives; defining standards; and rulesetting. Methods of insertion used in the Safer Cities schemes are shown in Figure 7.
This, then, is the paradigm of preventive action. As can now be seen, to systematically describe
the multiple facets of a preventive scheme takes a great deal of detail and the making of careful
distinctions - but what experienced practitioner would ever argue that prevention was simple?
5. Towards a discipline of crime prevention - the two paradigms in action
After demonstrating the conceptual tangle of current crime prevention, this paper put forward a
definition of crime prevention, a paradigm of the causation of criminal events and, based on
this, a second paradigm of the implementation and structure of crime prevention itself. The end
product is not a single, rigid 'take it or leave it' classification, like butterflies in a Victorian
collector's cabinet, but a conceptual toolkit. This toolkit can be applied in a number of ways in
form and content according to need. Nonetheless all applications will be based on a consistent
and interlocking set of concepts. At times, the language and the concepts developed have been
abstract and difficult - but this has been necessary for two reasons: first, to get to grips with the
slippery concepts of situation and disposition, and the discussion of different aspects of
causation; and second, to pull together the immense diversity of actions intended to control
behaviour.
Casual users need not be bothered with the complexity of the full schema. All they require is
some simplified version adapted to their circumstances. However, practitioners, researchers and
evaluators at the 'serious' end of crime prevention may find it worthwhile investing in the effort
required to become familiar with the terms, the concepts and the whole perspective. In fact, to
return to a theme aired at the beginning of this paper, what is on offer here are some of the
foundations of a discipline of crime prevention. Professionals in fields like medicine or
architecture make such a collective and individual investment - why not those in crime
prevention?
The establishment of crime prevention as a discipline rather than a pretty haphazard and
loosely-conceived collection of theory, skills and know-how would have many benefits.43 Apart
from the obvious advantage of more professional crime prevention, the greater authority and
stronger basis for arguing the professional case in multi-agency groups and on project steering
committees will give it a better chance to prevail against simplistic ideas (experience shows
that everyone is an amateur criminologist, often with strongly-held views) and the inevitable
rush to spend funds before the end of the financial year. This final section carries this argument
forward and in particular seeks to demonstrate the potential of the proximal circumstances
approach in contributing to a discipline of crime prevention.
43
At the very least, if we do not progress as far as a discipline, the proximal circumstances approach will enable
us to codify and define the tasks of crime prevention.
21
Ingredients of a discipline of crime prevention
Key ingredients which might form the basis of a discipline of crime prevention include the
following, the first two of which are familiar:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
a much greater precision of terms and concepts, linked by a consistent and
comprehensive conceptual framework
a focus on the causal mechanisms by which preventive action is supposed to have its
effect
a knowledge-base of the nature and causes of crime, criminals and methods of offending
a knowledge-base (derived from adequate evaluations) of what methods of intervention
work, in what contexts
a similar knowledge-base of what methods of insertion, both single and multi-agency,
work, in what contexts
a set of problem-identifying, problem-solving and evaluation methods
general skills in project management, obtaining resources and building multi-agency or
'partnership' support
adequate training
a professional network and proper organisational support, including links to centres of
expertise
This list includes elements of both 'academic' and 'practice' disciplines - but, as with physics and
engineering, and medical science and medicine, these are complementary and feed off one
another.44 Up for discussion is the extent to which we should be aiming to develop crime
prevention i) as an independent expert profession acting as consultants or in permanent posts
such as crime prevention coordinators, versus ii) preparing packages of expertise to extend the
horizons of other specialists such as planners, or general managers such as those in charge of
metro railways.
The contribution of the proximal circumstances approach
The proximal circumstances approach (PCA - comprising both the paradigm of proximal
circumstances of criminal events and the paradigm of prevention) can play a significant role in
enhancing most of these ingredients. The scope of its likely contributions is briefly reviewed
below.
1) and 2)
Conceptual framework and focus on causes
Obviously, PCA was designed to meet the first two requirements. In particular, it provides both
a classification framework45 and a language. These are deliberately focused on causal
mechanisms, to make practical connections with theory and research, and designed to support
rigorous computerised knowledge bases for storage, entry and retrieval.
1/2.1) A classification framework for preventive action
44
Modern disciplines of science and technology have developed through the coming-together of the academic
and craft traditions - in many cases with the latter in the lead. Such a fusion should be equally fruitful for crime
prevention.
45
The benefits of a good classification framework, the requirements such a system must meet and existing crime
prevention classification systems are discussed in detail in Ekblom, 1994.
22
The paradigm of proximal circumstances and the paradigm of prevention can
together be used to assemble a framework for classifying crime prevention. The
'components of proximal circumstances' dimension already illustrated in Figure
1 (and extended in Figure 5) is the core. However, every component identified
within the two paradigms can be used as a peg on which to hang a separate
dimension of classification.
The dimensions can be divided into three principal realms: i) the ultimate
objectives of the scheme; iii) the final intermediate objectives of each
preventive method it employs (in other words, the changes sought in the
proximal circumstances); and iii) the methods themselves - insertion and
intervention. A detailed list of these realms and dimensions is in Appendix 1
and illustrated in Figure A1.
Depending on their purpose, users of this toolkit can select any of the
dimensions, and cast them into any suitable format. In all cases, though,
underlying this diversity is the unity of PCA.
Users might wish to classify prevention on a single dimension, or employ a
combination.46 A broad classification could, for example, serve merely to
distinguish between offender-oriented and situational schemes. A specific
classification could make rather more subtle distinctions relating, for example, to
which sub-components of the situation were affected by the preventive action interveners, situation shapers, logistical environment, target attractiveness, target
vulnerability etc. Only in the compilation of computerised knowledge bases
would every last detail be needed.
1/2.2) A language for describing prevention
The proximal circumstances approach could serve as a language formally
describing preventive action, in a grant application, a management information
system or a knowledge base. Such a language is also vital for facilitating
collaborative working. In the multi-agency context, where confusion over terms
and concepts between, say, police and probation can be a major difficulty
(Sampson et al., 1988), the availability of a common language in which to
discuss proposals for prevention is crucial. A fairly exhaustive description of a
scheme might take the form shown in Figure 8. While this is ponderous, it is
very precise, and a considerable improvement on the kind of ambiguous
description one often has to make do with: "Youth work, tackling disorder, town
centre."
The language could also be used to give systematic definitions of what are
currently vague but important topics such as 'social' crime prevention. One such
attempt at definition could be as follows:
46
As with van Dijk and de Waard's (1991) 2-dimensional framework (primary / secondary / tertiary x offender /
target / victim-oriented action).
23
Social crime prevention involves methods which are (1) offenderoriented (in their final intermediate objectives); (2) whose point of
intervention ranges between very distal ('roots' of criminality, for
changing offenders' programmed potential) and moderately distal
('current life circumstances' for changing their current state); and (3)
whose method of intervention involves interrupting or diverting those
causal mechanisms of criminal events, that operate at the social levels of
structure, community or institutions.
Note that this definition excludes a lot of methods which do nevertheless involve
social processes, such as surveillance of situations or psychotherapy of offenders
- these are methods which proponents of social crime prevention often
acknowledge but say 'yes, but that's not what I really mean by social'. Perhaps
here is an opportunity to force out positive, explicit and consistent definitions.
The whole area of social, ecological, community and lifestyle-oriented
approaches to prevention could greatly benefit from being pinned down, defined
and differentiated in this way.
3)
A knowledge-base of the nature and causes of crime, criminals and methods of
offending
PCA, focusing on causes, can help to organise relevant criminological facts and theories and
direct them towards practical prevention. It can help to direct the questioning in offender
interviews to elicit guidance for preventive methods (Ekblom, 1991), which can cover
motivation, logistical considerations, perceived risks and opportunities. Likewise, methods of
offending can be described in PCA terms (for example 'this MO exploits target vulnerability and
poor perception on the part of interveners, by using a quick, quiet and easily-concealed centrepunch to break cars' side windows').
Provided the relevant knowledge-bases exist, PCA offers the prospect of more rigorous crime
risk assessment (such as in the design of shopping centres or chemical process works) and
provides a firmer basis for making 'crime impact statements' (a predictive approach which might
involve saying, for example 'if you locate that pub here then you will get a lot of disorder'; or 'if
you enact that legislation on homelessness, then you will reduce offending by this group of
people, but may exacerbate offending in this other group').
4/5) Knowledge-bases of what methods of intervention and insertion work, in what contexts
PCA, as already said, supplies a multi-dimensional classification of intervention and insertion
methods around which these knowledge-bases can be structured, and provides for standard
descriptions of schemes. Descriptions of the contexts in which the methods were shown to
work are vital for replication - see Tilley (1994). Such contexts may also be specified partly
using PCA terms (social level/unit/selection criteria of intervention; aspects of target,
environment and modulators).
6)
A set of problem-identifying, problem-solving and evaluation methods
The paradigm of prevention can contribute to the application of the preventive process
(Ekblom, 1988) that is at the heart of professional crime prevention activity. PCA can provide a
language for articulating the various stages of the preventive process in greater detail:
24
6.1/
6.2
Collecting crime data and crime pattern analysis
These first stages involve identification of the crime problem and the setting of
ultimate objectives. PCA gives a template for formal statements of the ultimate
objectives in terms of scope and social level of crime problem, offenders and
methods of offending, targets and environments of the criminal events to be
prevented - all of which can be sought during exploration of the crime patterns.
PCA also gives clues as to the kind of information to seek (in site visits,
observations, discussions with people familiar with local conditions) in
exploring, interpreting and extending the statistical information with which
analysis begins.47 Such fleshing-out is important for the next stage.
6.3)
Devising preventive measures
This stage involves deciding on methods of intervention and insertion. This
necessitates several tasks conducted not in any fixed sequence but in a number
of 'orbits' until satisfactory solutions to the problem appear to have been created.
Cast in PCA terms, they include:
6.3.1) detailed consideration of the particular conjunction of opportunity which
enables the criminal events in question to occur - and the possibilities for
disrupting it
6.3.2) selection of which component/s of the proximal circumstances to
influence, and the changes to make to them, in order to achieve this
disruption (that is, setting of final intermediate objectives)
6.3.3) specification of intervention in terms of point, scope, social level,
method and the causal mechanisms by which it is supposed to work; and
likewise for insertion
6.3.4) checking candidate proposals against the possibility of displacement
(taking the offender's perspective and thinking one or two moves ahead);
ensuring proposals are set cost-effectively to deal with offenders at an
appropriate level of resources and motivation (that is, design against
'professional' criminals only when these pose a known threat; otherwise
design merely against 'amateurs')
6.3.5) checking candidate proposals against a series of practical constraints
imposed for example by public acceptability, cost, safety and aesthetics
6.3.6) devising suitable implementation structures in terms of: methods /
schemes / packages; sequence of intermediate objectives and hierarchy
of management; multi-agency or single-agency implementation
6.4)
47
Implementation
Obviously, statistical skills and the ability to interpret tabular data are also required in analysis, interpretation
and evaluation.
25
To a large extent the planning of implementation has been covered in the
previous stage. In the actual implementation of the scheme on the ground,
monitoring and adjustment can be guided with reference to the specified
intermediate objectives in the chain of implementation, and placed clearly on the
shoulders of the relevant agencies or individuals.
6.5)
Evaluation, adjustment and replication
Evaluation is best achieved if there is a clear picture of the causal mechanisms of
intervention and its context. This informs the collection of the appropriate data
in advance, and guides the interpretation of the subsequent pattern of
outcomes.48 A preventive scheme which has been devised and formallyspecified along PCA lines should be both easier to evaluate49 and more likely to
merit the effort of evaluation. This applies equally to evaluation of
implementation (were the right environments, offenders etc selected? Were the
right insertion and intervention actions delivered to them? What were the
problems at each stage of implementation?) and evaluation of impact (was
there a real fall in crime? to what extent can this be attributed to other causes?).
The clearer setting of intermediate objectives in PCA terms (and their
measurement by reliable and valid means) should facilitate learning from
success or failure, and intelligent adjustment, replication and generalisation to
other contexts.
7)
General skills in project management, obtaining resources and building multi-agency or
'partnership' support
Management works best with a framework for distinguishing the strategic from the
tactical and a clear idea of what the various intermediate and ultimate objectives should
look like. This also provides for tighter quality control of management information
systems in large-scale preventive programmes and better retrievability and usefulness of
the information stored. A clearer specification of proposed preventive action of the
kind PCA offers is more likely to secure funds and other resources (and conversely, the
grant-giver is in a better position to decide whether or not to award them, and what
details to negotiate). In the multi-agency context, such greater precision in planning
preventive action can make it easier for members of the multi-agency group to obtain
support from colleagues in their own organisations.
8)
Adequate training
The development of organised and retrievable knowledge-bases, the teaching of the
concepts of PCA, the pursuit of the preventive process, and the general ways of thinking
it encourages together amount to a curriculum for professional crime prevention
training. This should enable the creation of a wider corps of crime preventers than at
present - currently, it often seems that we go to the same small group of 'star' police
officers or others time and again (or that we have to rely on involving academics). The
training could either create fully-rounded crime prevention experts (in a kind of 'major');
48
49
This follows the Scientific Realist approach of Pawson and Tilley (1992, 1994).
Evaluation is, however, rarely simple and free from uncertainty, even with the best-conceived, bestimplemented and best-evaluated schemes (Ekblom, 1990; Ekblom and Pease, in preparation).
26
or comprise modules which could be imparted to professionals in other relevant fields,
such as planning or industrial design.
This has only been an illustration of future possibilities, but hopefully one that has demonstrated
the potential of PCA to further the discipline of prevention. In its present state PCA is a long
way from the humble crime prevention practitioner toiling away on some housing estate. Ways
and means can be found of simplifying and communicating its ideas to practitioners - but that
comes after getting the central ideas right.
6. Conclusion: where next?
Beyond the immediate purpose of feeding ideas into the Cropwood conference, this paper is
intended to stimulate debate and constructive criticism - not just on the fine detail, say, of the
components of the proximal circumstances, but on the definition of prevention, the paradigms
and so forth. In so doing the intention is to foster the development of the discipline of crime
prevention as a collective and cumulative effort. In this connection, it is perhaps worth restating that most of the concepts incorporated within the paradigm of proximal circumstances
have a clear pedigree from the ideas of Felson, Clarke and others. Despite its origins being
more on the situational side it is hoped that the approach will serve as a bridge between
situational and offender-oriented perspectives - to get them on the same conceptual map.
There are several ways forward. First, the proximal circumstances approach should develop
through further, more quantitative analysis of the Safer Cities schemes (in the course of getting
to grips with the quite awesome diversity of the 3,000-odd schemes, it has already undergone
several revisions). Multivariate techniques such as cluster analysis can be applied to the
collection of features by which the schemes are classified, to identify commonly-occurring
types. Second, PCA can be put to immediate practical use to inform the information,
management and training needs of Safer Cities Phase 2 (the next 40 cities). In this connection it
is hoped that the information taken from the Safer Cities Phase 1 schemes (imperfect though
that information often is) will constitute the beginnings of a cumulative body of organised and
easily-retrieved knowledge of preventive activity. Third, a useful avenue of exploration can be
opened up through the study of methods of offending - enabling further detailed features of the
components of proximal circumstances to be dissected. (For example on the situational side,
this could illuminate additional features of the target - con-artists might rely on aspects such as
the difficulty of discriminating between US banknotes of low and high value. On the offender
side, it could focus on necessary aspects of offenders' resources - skill and knowledge.) Fourth,
there is a need to look more closely at the offender side in general, to try to bring it up to the
same level of detail as the situational (although we are quite soon likely to hit the limits of
reliable psychological knowledge and concepts).
We now have at least fifteen years' experience in practical crime prevention on which to
consolidate and build - and some ideas as to the way forward. To a large degree, the vision of
crime prevention as a fully-fledged professional discipline is a Grail for the future - but this is
surely an irresistible challenge to practitioners, researchers, evaluators, and policy-makers. The
alternative vision ahead is one in which we do not take up the challenge - and risk wasting the
next fifteen years on loosely-conceived, poorly-implemented and weakly-evaluated schemes,
with little accumulation of knowledge. Do we really want to condemn ourselves to continually
re-inventing the flat tyre?
27
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30
APPENDIX 1 A classification framework for preventive action
This framework is also illustrated in Figure A1.
Defining preventive action
Before presenting the classification, the 'units' of preventive action have to be defined. This is a surprisingly
slippery task: terms like 'scheme', 'method', 'project' etc are used with abandon by practitioners and academics alike.
More precise and consistent definitions are needed. The following seem to work in characterising Safer Cities
action and earlier initiatives.
*
A scheme is a unitary piece of preventive action with a common ultimate objective - ie targeted on a
particular crime problem in a particular situation or set of situations. It may involve the implementation of
more than one method, but these are closely integrated; and operationally, it usually involves one group of
implementors, one budget and one start date.
*
A method of intervention is an element of preventive action which operates through a particular and
indivisible set of causal routes, ending up as influences on one or more components of the proximal
circumstances of criminal events.
*
Causal mechanisms of intervention describe the ways in which the methods actually have their effect,
whether directly upon one or more of the components of the proximal circumstances, or more distally via a
longer chain of causation.
*
A package is a collection of several schemes aimed at the same situation or set of situations, the same
crime problem, or both - ie unified by the same ultimate objectives. However, implementors, budgets, start
dates and methods may all differ considerably.
To illustrate the distinctions between the units, the Kirkholt Project in the North of England (Forrester et al., 1988,
1990) introduced, over several years, a package of schemes aimed at reducing burglary on a particular high-crime
public housing estate. One scheme involved setting up mini-neighbourhood watches comprising burglary victims
and their immediate neighbours, and implemented through the local victim support group. The method of
intervention of the scheme was surveillance and the mechanisms of intervention involved, for example, improving
the motivation of interveners and reacters by heightening their commitment to help one another. Another scheme
concerned the method of target removal - replacing coin-operated domestic gas meters with token-operated ones;
obviously the gas company was involved. These schemes together employed situational methods; yet another set
of schemes involved the local probation service in implementing several offender-oriented methods of reducing
local burglars' motivation to offend: a job club, a credit union and action in support of those with a drugs/alcohol
dependency. These methods focused partly on changing offenders' current states (influencing their current life
circumstances by intervention mechanisms involving alleviation of needs by legitimate means), and partly on
changing their programmed potential (by mechanisms of dependency treatment).
It is worth pointing out the 'one-to-many' relationships between these units, which reflect the real complexity of
preventive action that practitioners and researchers have to address. A package will by definition contain several
schemes; a scheme may employ more than one method; a method may operate by several mechanisms
simultaneously. As an example of the last, a locked security door may operate by physically blocking offending, by
heightening the perceived risk of arrest (through time taken, noise of effort, symbolisation that owners care and may
otherwise intervene). Covering successively wider sets of situations, it can also contribute to an offender's general
perception that this is a secure neighbourhood and not worth prospecting (Rhodes and Conly 1981); that burglary is
getting harder to accomplish; or even (to stretch a point) that offending in general is getting too difficult and risky.
Tilley (1993) gives a real-life example of 9 possible mechanisms underlying the impact of CCTV cameras in car
parks.
31
The Ultimate Objectives of the Preventive Scheme: What Crime Problems Does it Seek to Reduce and Where?
(1)
(2)
targeting of criminal events by the scheme can be specified by
(1.1)
crime type/s
(1.2)
method of offending
(1.3)
type of potential offender
(1.4)
being broad or narrow in scope
targeting of the proximal situation, in which reductions in the frequency of criminal events are sought, can
be specified
(2.1)
by situation type/s (type of target of criminal behaviour and type of environment) in terms of
social level /unit /selection criteria
(2.2)
as broad, narrow or individual in scope
The Final Intermediate Objectives of the Method/s Employed by the Scheme: Which Components of the Proximal
Circumstances does it Seek to Change, and in What Ways?
The entire hierarchical tree of components identified in Figure 5 can be used in classification. The method can seek
to influence the situation or the offender's disposition: within the former, via the target, the environment or
modulators; and within the latter, via programming (criminality-reduction approaches) or via current state-setting
(roughly equivalent to changing current life circumstances). (Conjunctional combinations (eg situation x offender)
can also be incorporated within a classification, but are not listed here as the possible combinations of components
are many.)
The Method of Prevention Itself: What are the Methods and Mechanisms of Intervention and Insertion and How are
They Implemented?
(1)
Where is the point of intervention in the causal chain?
(1.1)
proximal or distal?
(1.2)
at which social level are the units of intervention?
(1.3)
what are the units of intervention?
(1.4)
how are the units of intervention selected?
(2)
What method is used in intervention; which hypothesised preventive mechanisms are engaged; which
hypothetical causal mechanisms of criminal events do they interrupt or divert?
(3)
Where is the initial point of insertion?
(3.1)
proximal or distal?
(3.2)
at which social level are the units of insertion?
(3.3)
what are the units of insertion?
(3.4)
how are the units of insertion selected?
32
(4)
What method is used, and which hypothesised mechanisms are engaged, in insertion?
(5)
What is the chain of implementation connecting insertion and intervention? In particular, is the
implementation direct (straight to the point of intervention) or indirect (via a chain of implementation)?
And if indirect, what are the intermediate objectives at each link of the chain?
This is, of course, a 'skeleton' classification only, with little tangible content. The important thing to note at this
point is that, despite the blandness that comes from its presentation in an abstract form, each element refers to a
different aspect of prevention that is significant in its own right. For the classification to be fleshed out it would
need lists of methods, social levels and their units, and so forth. One realisation of the possibilities for classification,
currently being developed for use in the Safer Cities evaluation, is illustrated in Figure A1 (due to space constraints
the illustration only goes down a limited number of levels). The actual exemplars of methods, social levels etc
found in the Safer Cities schemes are shown in Figures 4-7.
33
APPENDIX 2 Description of terms used in classification of Safer Cities schemes
Note: those terms which are obvious are omitted.
1. SOCIAL LEVEL Figure 4
(most terms apply equally to social levels of ultimate objectives, intervention and insertion; some, however, apply
only to one or two)
RESIDENT AT RISK - individuals who are identified as at risk offenders because of where they live, not their prior
behaviour
AUTHORISATION - an individual who is denied entry due to lack of authorisation
AT RISK ALCOHOL/DRUGS - individuals who are at risk of offending due to addictions
MULTIPLE VICTIM - used for ongoing (eg harassment) cases, also when target is selected for action (eg security
hardware) due to victim status, although number of times as victim may be unspecified
PEER GROUP - used largely when outreach worker makes contact with 'deviant' groups
COMMUNITY BUILDINGS - buildings for the use of the general public - cultural, religious, day centres
UNIVERSITIES - includes colleges, polytechnics
HOSTELS - special accomodation - refuges, hospices, homeless, mentally ill
VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS - recognised services/bodies
COMMUNITY GROUPS - less structured, more organic than above
COMMUNAL AREA - parks, public land
FORUMS - multi-agency groups, panels, strategy groups
2. PROXIMAL COMPONENTS Figure 5
OFFENDER
CRIME-AVOIDING - used when offender is given contacts/way of life which takes him/her out of potentially
criminal situation
PHYSICAL - used when offender's excessive energy is defused in safe physical activity
OFFENDER PRESENCE - offender diversionary activities where no 'correctional' objective is detailed or implied
MODULATOR
RESOURCES FOR RESPONDING - used to refer to material resources as well as personal resources (ability,
knowledge), when these are localised, eg personal telephone, help lists of local services
ENVIRONMENT
VANDALISM - when the appearance of an area encourages illegal behaviour
ACCESS BLOCK - when entrance is blocked, rather than controlled or made more difficult (roller shutters cf locks)
WEAPONS - AD HOC - removing the potential for everyday items to be used as weapons
34
3. METHODS OF INTERVENTION Figure 6
OFFENDER
RUNNING GROUPS - differs from running activities in being more permanent and established
COUNSELLING - includes advice, day centre work
TEACHING - in a broad sense, including workshops, guided discussions
REMOVAL OF AUTHORISATION - includes non-granting of authorisation ie where specified individuals are
given id to gain entry, thereby excluding others
COMMUNITY REINTEGRATION - enabling ex-offenders to be accepted; includes the training of others in
dealing with ex-offenders
INFLUENCING SCHOOL, FAMILY - operates on the environment in which potential offender develops
SITUATION - ENVIRONMENT/TARGET (some difficulty in distinguishing the two - is the front door part of
the environment of the target (eg the family silver), or part of the target itself?
GATES - includes barriers
CLEARING UNDERGROWTH - removing bushes etc to clear view
CLEARING AREA (as above)
HARDENING ENTRANCE - includes roller shutters, entrance halls, heavy doors
SITUATION - MODULATOR
FACILITATING COLLECTIVE ACTION - enabling networking (eg watch schemes), preventing crime through
passing of information etc without relying on one individual modulator
ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING - engendering a particular attitude, way of being, as opposed to specific skills
4. METHODS OF INSERTION Figure 7
CONFERENCES - includes seminars, workshops etc
EXHIBITIONS - includes mobile information centres
GAINING ACCESS - when working within schools, organisations etc
CO-OPT ORGANISATIONS - when a separate organisation runs a project on behalf of Safer Cities
INTEGRATE SECTORS - bringing different sectors of society together, eg old and young
CONSULTATION - employing consultants or holding policy discussions
EXTERNAL TRAINING COSTS - enabling individuals to attend outside conferences etc
Figure 8 Example of a formal description of a preventive scheme
ultimate objectives:
offence
target
offenders
environment
social level:
unit:
selection criteria:
public disorder and criminal damage against
street furniture by
young people, in
entertainment district
area
city centre
high disorder
final intermediate objectives
and
possible mechanisms of intervention
i) removal of potential offenders from crime
situations by attraction elsewhere and occupation of
time
ii) meeting potential offenders' needs for
entertainment legitimately by providing attractive
activities
iii) altering potential offenders' attitudes by providing
role models, exploiting group processes etc
method of intervention
running summer activities
social level:
unit:
selection criteria:
peer group
street gangs
living in deprived, criminal-subculture estates
chain of implementation
securing commitment to proceed
working party
production of plan
obtaining funds, premises, volunteers
method of insertion
setting up and pump-priming city-level working group
by holding a small conference
social level:
unit:
selection criteria:
institutions
police, voluntary groups, local government
all who are thought to be willing and able to contribute