PUTTING THEORY TO WORK:
GUIDING CRIME CONTROL
POLICY
Crime Control Policy
• Many criminologists developed theories in the hope that they
would allow us to better control crime
• Beccaria work’s fundamentally altered Western legal systems and
inspired our current efforts to “get tough” on crime
• Braithwaite’s restorative justice movement also has had an impact
• Chesney-Lind and the other feminist criminologists alerted the
criminal justice system to take into account women’s issues
• Cornish and Clarke’s work on situational crime prevention has
changed how we try to prevent crime
• Wilson and Kelling’s work on broken windows theory changed
nature of policing
the
Crime Control Policy
• Crime control policy is not always drawn from theory
• A host of factors influence our response to crime:
• Popular perceptions of what works
• Views of what is just/appropriate
• Political considerations
• Lobbying efforts of various groups
• Cost considerations
• These considerations sometimes lead policy makers to
employ crime control initiatives that are ineffective or
counterproductive
• Examples: Scared Straight, boot camps
Crime Control Policy
• Since the 1970s, efforts to control crime in the U.S. have
been focused on increasing the certainty and severity of
punishment
• The most notable consequence of this get-tough movement was
the massive increase in the rate of imprisonment
• The U.S. now has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world
• This movement has drawn upon classical and deterrence theories
Getting Tough on Crime
• Rehabilitation was the guiding philosophy of the
criminal justice system from the 1800s to the 1970s
• Differs from prevention
• Prevention tries to stop crime from happening in the first
place; however, many of the same programs are used for
both prevention and rehabilitation (e.g., job training)
• The War on Poverty was initiated to reduce crime by
increasing opportunities for people to achieve
monetary success through legal channels
• Provide educational assistance and job training
• Rooted in strain theory
Getting Tough on Crime
•
In the 1970s, the crime control strategies of rehabilitation and
prevention came under heavy attack
•
This was due to:
1.
Rising crime rates in the 1960s leading many to question the
effectiveness of rehabilitation and prevention
2.
Many studies claimed rehabilitation was ineffective (Martinson’s
research)
3.
The political climate of the country became more conservative

Politicians argued crime was not rooted in poverty and racism

Rather, criminals were responsible for their behavior and punishment was
the best way to reduce crime
Getting Tough on Crime
• Those that argued crime was a matter of choice also
argued the best way to control it was through punishment
• Others argued offenders choose crime because of their
moral poverty
• The poverty of being without loving, capable, responsible parents
and adults who teach you right from wrong, to feel joy at others’ joy,
pain at others’ pain, satisfaction when you do right, and remorse
when you do wrong
Getting Tough on Crime
• Moral poverty is said to produce super-predators
• Vicious, remorseless, uncaring, and radically impulsive
individuals who readily succumb to the temptation of crime
• Moral poverty is rooted in the decline in moral standards in
the U.S. and the associated increase in such things as
single-parent families
• Need a re-imposition of moral standards including a full-
scale, concentrated, intense effort at combating drugs and
crime
Getting Tough on Crime
• This conservative shift was partly a reaction to the civil
rights, antiwar, and other political movements of the
1950s and 1960s
• Many felt threatened by the changes occurring in American society
and were attracted to those who promised to crack down on crime
and other lawlessness
• Politicians were eager to exploit the fears of these people
• This argument is compatible with critical criminology
Getting Tough on Crime
• Conservative criminologists and policy makers argued that increased
punishment would reduce crime for several reasons
• First, they drew from the classical school of criminology
• View crime as a deliberate choice based on the belief that crime really does
pay
• Increasing the severity and certainty of punishment would deter offenders
from engaging in more crime and deter potential offenders from engaging in
crime
• Makes the costs outweigh the benefits of the crime
• Also expected increasing the number of people imprisoned and the length of
their confinement would reduce crime through what is known as the
incapacitation effect
• Refers to the fact that imprisoned offenders cannot
commit crimes in the larger community
• Claimed not possible to rehabilitate, so must
lock these people up
Getting Tough on Crime
• As a result of the argument that rehabilitation does
not work, there was a dramatic shift in crime control
policy
• Beginning in the 1970s and through today, rehabilitation and
prevention have been deemphasized
• Instead, the focus is on increasing the severity and certainty
of punishment
• Laws passed to impose mandatory prison terms, abolish parole,
lengthen prison sentences, and make it easier to try serious juvenile
offenders as adults
• Intermediate sanctions were developed to reduce the cost of
imprisonment but still allow severe sanctions
• In between regular probation and prison
• Include: intensive supervision probation, home confinement,
electronic monitoring, boot camps
Challenging Get-Tough Approaches
• There is little evidence that punishing offenders or
punishing them more severely reduces their level of
subsequent offending
• Intermediate sanctions (e.g., boot camps) are not more effective
than less severe sanctions (e.g., probation)
• Trying juveniles as adults is not more effective than trying juveniles
as juveniles
• Harsher prison conditions are not more effective than less harsh
conditions
Challenging Get-Tough Approaches
• Studies sometimes find that the administration of
punishment increases the likelihood of subsequent
offending
• Reasons that increasing the severity of punishment
does not lead to a decrease in crime:
• Specific deterrence assumes people are rational; however,
there is good reason to question the rationality of many
offenders
• Offenders often possess the traits of low constraint and high
negative emotionality and act impulsively with little thought
• Often commit crime in response to strain or pressure from
others
Challenging Get-Tough Approaches
• Reasons that increasing the severity of punishment
does not lead to a decrease in crime:
• Punishment does little to address most causes of crime,
including individual traits and environmental factors
• Punishment does not reduce strain, minimize social learning,
or increase control
• Punishment may make many of these causes worse
• Labeling theory argument
• Makes it more difficult to find jobs, weakens ties to conventional
others, and promotes the social learning of crime
Challenging Get-Tough Approaches
• Reasons that increasing the severity of punishment
does not lead to a decrease in crime:
• The criminal justice system does not punish in an effective
way
• Punishments are most effective when individuals are closely
monitored and their rule violations are consistently sanctioned
in a meaningful, but not overly harsh, manner
• The probability that crimes will result in official sanctions is low, and
offenders may feel that they can get away with crime in the future
• If caught, often dealt with harshly, which can lead to defiance
Challenging Get-Tough Approaches
• Reasons that increasing the severity of punishment
does not lead to a decrease in crime:
• Increasing the certainty of punishment reduces offending in
the general population; however, the reduction is modest in
size, and certainty has a smaller effect on crime than the
other causes of crime
• It is often difficult to increase the certainty of punishment
• Most efforts have focused on increasing severity, but this has
little effect in deterring offenders
Challenging Get Tough Approaches
• Incapacitation was expected to stop a great deal of crime
• However, this has not been the case because:
• Many offenders commit crimes in groups
• When one offender is locked up, another offender may emerge to take
that person’s place
• Offending declines sharply after adolescence and young adulthood
• As more and more offenders are locked up, it is increasingly likely to
lock up low-rate offenders
• Studies have estimated that a 10 percent increase in the
incarceration rate may be associated with a 2 to 4 percent
reduction in crime
• As the incarceration rate increases, reductions in crime
become smaller since lower-rate offenders are being
imprisoned
Challenging Get Tough Approaches
• Some have argued incarceration has negative
consequences
• Creates a harsh stigmatic label
• Reduces employment prospects
• Very expensive
• Costs approximately $30,000 per year to confine an offender
• It has been concentrated among poor, minority males who live in
impoverished neighborhoods
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Todd Clear argues neighborhoods suffer from a host of problems
when there are high incarceration rates
• In highly impoverished communities, as many as one-fifth of all
men are incarcerated
• Leads to more single-parent families, reduces parental supervision,
and removes parental role models
• Creates economic problems because there are fewer employed
residents, people with prison records have a hard time finding work,
and the money spent on prisons means there is less spent on
schools and jobs
• Reduces respect for the legal system and political participation
because many are unable to vote with their criminal records
• All the above effects reduce the level of control in an area
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• The concentration of imprisonment of young men,
especially black men, is now a bedrock experience
• Almost a right-of-passage experience
• People caught up in the criminal justice system stay there longer,
are subjected to more controls, and suffer a greater chance of
failure than ever before in history
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
•
Four central points
1.
The growth in the U.S. prison system, sustained for over 30
years, has had a small effect on crime
2.
The growth in imprisonment has been concentrated among
poor, minority males who live in impoverished communities
3.
Concentrated incarceration in those impoverished communities
has broken families, weakened the social control capacity of
parents, eroded economic strength, soured attitudes toward
society, and distorted politics as well as increasing rather than
decreasing crime
4.
Any attempt to overcome the problems of crime will have to
encompass a combination of sentencing reforms and
philosophical realignment
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Incarceration and crime
• As a general rule, Americans believe sending people to
prison prevents crime
• However, the scientific evidence on this relationship is mixed
• Incarceration may not decrease crime because:
• The person incarcerated is replaced on the street
• Almost all who are imprisoned are eventually released
• Labeling effects of those who go to prison
• There has been a discontinuity between imprisonment rates
and crime rates
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Black men have been imprisoned at higher rates than any other
group, especially black high school dropouts
• The main reason for this different incarceration rate for black
males is drug laws
• Although white high school seniors report more drug use than black
high school seniors, blacks are more likely than whites to be
arrested for drug crimes
• Mandatory prison sentences for drug crimes contributed to the
discrepancy of whites and blacks in prison
• When poor, urban black men living in neighborhoods plagued with
poverty go to prison, they join many of their neighbors
• Going to prison becomes standard in that neighborhood and it is
seen as a rite of passage
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• The cycling of young men through prison in these
neighborhoods becomes the dynamic of the
neighborhood such that a family is rarely without a
man (e.g., son, father, uncle, cousin) currently in
prison or having done prison time in the past
• Effects of going to prison on the individual include:
• Earning less money during their lifetimes
• Making it harder to stay employed
• Making the person less likely to marry
• Having more psychological or medical problems
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Since almost every family has a person who is or has
done time in prison, everyone is impacted by the prison
experience
• Having a family member in prison increases the chance of another
member doing the same
• Neighborhoods with many men in prison have low social capital,
keeping both the families and neighborhoods impoverished
• Leads to diminished levels of informal social control in the
neighborhood
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
•
The consequences of imprisonment to the community
are embedded in three important legitimate systems of
neighborhood order:
1.
Family
2.
Economic
3.
Political
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Family
• Communities with high rates of incarceration experience
higher rates of family disruption, single-parent families, and
births to young, single adults
• Parenting is interrupted, roles models are removed, families
have to move and change school districts, mothers go on
welfare, children receive less supervision, and incarceration
experiences are models for children
• This contributes to a gradual reduction in social capital in the
community
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Economic systems
• High rates of incarceration lead to a surplus of men who have
depleted their labor-market prospects in places where labor
markets are weak to begin with
• Leaves a gap in employable residents
• Governmental funding in these areas is focused on penal
institutions rather than improving the area
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Political systems
• The overwhelming presence of the criminal justice system in
these communities defines the meaning of the state in these
areas
• The state is seen as a coercive agent of social control rather
than a fair agent of justice, which leads people to be less
likely to conform to the law
• Many claim racism and can validate these accusations
• Are less likely to participate in the political process because
they are jaded or cannot vote due to their criminal record
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Presents the coercive mobility hypothesis
• Contends that high rates of incarceration concentrated in
poor communities will destabilize social networks in those
communities, thereby undermining informal social control
and leading to more crime
• Incarceration suppresses crime through incapacitation and
deterrence, though the effects are small
• As levels of incarceration increase in impoverished communities,
there is a negative effect on the communities’ economic structure,
family stability, parental capacity, and prosocial beliefs
• These effects outweigh the deterrence and incapacitation effects
• Thus, after a certain point, high incarceration rates in an
impoverished community increase crime
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
•
Policy implications
•
Any solution begins with a recognition of two threshold points:
1.
Programmatic tinkering has not reduced the prison population to
date
2.
To overcome mass incarceration requires that we incarcerate fewer
people
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
•
Two variables fully determine the number of
prisoners in any prison system:
5
The number of people who go in
1.
•
How long they stay
2.
•
Eliminate mandatory sentencing, especially for drug crimes
•
Decrease the amount of time offenders are sentenced
•
The length of stay does not lead to an increased chance of failure
The best way to influence the prison population on a
major scale is to change either or both of these
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
•
To reduce crime, implement community justice
•
The justice system should contribute to the quality of life
in communities—to help make places where people work,
live, and raise their families good places
•
Three core elements:
1.
Emphasis on restoration
2.
Emphasis on maintaining those who are convicted of
crime within their communities
3.
Purely punitive sanctions are deemphasized in favor of
ameliorative sanctions such as community service
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
•
Community justice strategies could thrive under reduced
imprisonment
•
These strategies have three elements:
1.
Focus on high-incarceration places
2.
Place attention on the norms and values of those places
•
Restore informal social control mechanisms (e.g., strengthening
families and neighborhood groups, improving the effectiveness of
schools, and increasing the vibrancy of the private sector’s
presence)
Attempt to improve schools, jobs, and housing
3.
•
Strengthen social support provided by informal social controls
•
Try to get more people to obtain a high school diploma, become and
remain employed, and increase the quality of housing in the area
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
•
The money needed to do these community justice
programs is available
•
It is just tied up in the inefficiencies of prison and therefore
is unavailable for other programs
•
If these funds were shifted, two goals would be
accomplished:
1.
The community development programs receive the
resources they need to strengthen poor communities
2.
Money spent in the community prevents the collateral
damage that otherwise comes from locking up so many
residents
Clear: Imprisoning Communities
• Research examining Clear’s
arguments have been mixed
• Incarceration has been shown to
have both positive and negative
effects
• Thus, the consequences of
incarceration are varied
• Argues that there should be a
reduction in incarceration, an
increase in community justice
programs, and an increase in
social supports
More Effective Sanctioning
• Some have responded to the criticisms of get-tough
approaches by exploring how to make sanctions
more effective
• Much attention focused on increasing certainty
• Suggested strategies should target high-crime areas (e.g.,
hot-spot policing)
• Hot spots are areas with much crime
• Research has suggested that crime is likely to occur on
certain days and times of the day at certain addresses
• Increasing patrols at these hot spots results in a moderate reduction
in crime both in and around the hot spots with little evidence of
displacement
More Effective Sanctioning
• Some have cracked down on individuals at high risk for
engaging in certain crimes
• Done in Boston with youth gangs
• Identified the youth gang members and delivered a clear message to
the members that they will have intensive police scrutiny if they continue
the violence
• Resulted in a reduction in youth homicide
More Effective Sanctioning
• Restorative justice approaches aim to sanction offenders more
effectively
• Inspired by Braithwaite
• Promotes reintegrative shaming
• Offenders are held accountable for their crimes and through a
conference that includes the offender(s), victim(s), and community
representatives, where the offenders are made to understand the harm
they have caused
• Undermines beliefs justifying or excusing the crime
• Develops a plan to repair the harm (e.g., apology, community service)
• After the harm is repaired, the offender is forgiven and steps are taken to
preserve or strengthen the offenders’ bonds with conventional others
• Research shows this approach is effective
More Effective Sanctioning
• Other researchers focus on rational choice and routine
activities theory
• Develop strategies for increasing the costs and/or reducing the
benefits of crime
• Argue it is difficult to change offenders’ dispositions for crime, but it
is easier to alter the characteristics of situations
• Make crime more difficult, more risky,
rewarding, and less easily excused
less
More Effective Sanctioning
• Situational crime prevention may increase several
costs in addition to the likelihood and severity of
official sanction, such as informal sanctions and the
moral costs of crime
• Situational crime prevention also reduces benefits of
crime
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp stress the importance of
probation and parole officers taking steps to reduce
supervisees’ criminogenic propensity and opportunity
• Offender supervision often fails because:
Officers embrace specific deterrence – offenders will obey the law
if watched closely
1.
•
In the 1980s punishment-oriented intensive supervision programs
(ISPs) were trumpeted
•
Found ineffective because officers lack resources and ability to watch
offenders so closely
•
Also does not address underlying propensity to offend
•
Uses uncertain and distant threats
•
Does not do much to change the opportunities that motivate
offenders
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Offender supervision often fails because:
Ignores insights of environmental criminology
2.
•
Two events needed for a criminal event: 1) a motivated offenders
(propensity) and 2) an opportunity for crime
•
Environmental corrections would have probation and parole officers
seek to use rehabilitation to reduce propensity and other strategies
to reduce access to criminal opportunities
•
Traditionally given a standard list of conditions which are typically not
individualized for offenders
•
Environmental corrections would involve creating and using assessment
instruments measuring opportunities and seeing how offender handlers
and place managers can assist in blocking offenders from criminal
influences
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• What works with propensity
• Rehabilitation can be effective when following the principles of
effective intervention
• Using cognitive behavioral intervention with multimodal programs, target
known predictors of recidivism, focus on higher-risk offenders, apply
sufficient dosage of treatment, and provide appropriate aftercare
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Core proposition of environmental corrections is that the
effectiveness of probation and parole supervision will be
increased to the extent that officers systematically work
with offenders, family and community members, and the
police to reduce the extent to which offenders are tempted
by and come into contact with opportunities for crime
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Probation and parole officers should be problem solvers
• Reconceptualize their supervision function as not only watching
and busting offenders but also problem solving
• Key problem to solve is to reduce offenders’ access to opportunities
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Instruments to assess offenders’ potential criminal
opportunities—opportunity assessment
• Insights gained from mapping in detail locations where past
offending took place, interviewing offenders asking about the
sequence of activities that led them to search for crime, and map
out routine activities of offenders
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Informed by the opportunity assessment, officers should
focus on three tasks:
1.
With individual supervisees, try to disrupt the routine activities
that increase crime opportunities (e.g., specific conditions such
as prohibiting contact with specific people), traveling on certain
streets, and access to certain places
2.
Develop daily activity calendars scheduling prosocial activities
3.
Become handlers of offenders, not just enforcers of supervision
•
Build informal social control, use positive reinforcements, building
bonds with offenders, challenge excuses
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Officers should also enlist the help of the offender’s family,
prosocial friends, and community members
• All potential handlers for offender
• Have a problem-solving conference
• Jointly identify problematic routines and places
• Supply positive reinforcement if offenders fulfill behavioral contracts
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• Officers should develop relationships with place
managers in the community
• Could be used to contact officers when offenders enter prohibited
locations
• Boston’s Operation Night Light
• LEIN
Cullen, Eck, and Lowenkamp:
“Environmental Corrections”
• In practical terms, environmental corrections is most likely
cost effective with high-risk offenders
• Evaluation research is needed
Placing More Emphasis on Rehabilitation
and Prevention
• There have been several major analyses of the
effectiveness of rehabilitation and prevention
programs, with many being meta-analyses
• Well-designed and implemented programs can reduce rates
of crime 50 percent or more
• Well-designed programs address the known causes of crime
(e.g., strain, low self-control), are intensive (lasting several
months or longer), focus on high-risk offenders, and employ a
range of techniques to reduce offending (e.g., direct
instruction, demonstrations, role playing with feedback)
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Contend the most effective programs focus on
individual traits, family, school, peer groups, and
community factors
• The major causes of crime include impulsiveness, low self-
control, poor parental supervision, and association with
delinquent peers, so target these to reduce crime
• Argue that it is best to address these causes early in
life
• Early intervention is more effective because children are
more receptive than adults to interventions, and they prevent
individuals from embarking on a pathway that may eventually
lead to long-term, serious offending
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Focus mainly on prevention rather than rehabilitation
because “prevention is better than a cure”
• Identify and tackle key risk factors before they originate or
escalate
• Research has provided much information about early risk
factors for delinquency and later criminal offending
• Early risk factors most strongly associated with delinquency
and later criminal offending are found at the individual, family,
and environmental levels
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Individual risk factors include: low intelligence and
attainment, personality and temperament, empathy,
and impulsiveness
• Family risk factors include: criminal and antisocial
parents, large family size, poor parental supervision,
parental conflict, and disrupted families
• Environmental risk factors include: low
socioeconomic status, associating with delinquent
peers, attending high-delinquency-rate schools, and
living in deprived areas
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Early intervention has been found to be extremely
effective
• At the individual level, preschool intellectual enrichment and
child skills training programs are effective in preventing
delinquency and later offending
• At the family level, parent education plus daycare services
and parent management training programs are particularly
effective
• Among environmental approaches, school-based initiatives
and after-school and community-based mentoring are
effective
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Risk-focused prevention
•
Crime prevention strategies are divided into three
categories:
1.
Primary
 Measures targeted on the whole community to prevent the onset
of delinquency
2.
Secondary
 Focuses on intervening with children and youth who are at risk of
becoming delinquent because of the presence of one or more risk
factors
3.
Tertiary
 Measures targeted on offenders
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
There are four major prevention strategies:
1. Developmental prevention or risk-focused prevention
•
Interventions designed to prevent the development of criminal
potential in individuals, especially targeting risk and protective
factors
Community prevention
2.
•
Change the social conditions and institutions that influence
criminogenic influences in communities
Situational prevention
3.
•
Designed to prevent the occurrence of crime by reducing
opportunities for offending and increasing its risk/difficulty
Criminal justice prevention
4.
•
Traditional deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative strategies
used by the criminal justice system
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Individual prevention
• Target factors found within the individual and directed only at
the individual
• Wide support for these programs
• Implemented early in life when children are most
impressionable
• A primary emphasis is on improving school readiness,
providing families in need with various other services, and
reaching about half of all impoverished
children
• Example: Head Start
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Individual prevention
•
Two main types of individual-based programs have been found
effective:
1.
Preschool intellectual enrichment

Target on the risk factors of low intelligence and attainment

Provide economically disadvantaged children with cognitively stimulating
and enriching experiences that their parents are unlikely to provide at
home

Improved cognitive skills, school readiness, and social and emotional
development are the main goals

Key features of these programs include:
a.
Developmentally appropriate learning curricula
b.
A wide array of cognitive-based enriching activities
c.
Activities for parents so they can support the school
experience at home
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Individual prevention
•
Two main types of individual-based programs have been
found effective:
2.
Child social skills training
 Target the risk factors of impulsivity, low empathy, and selfcenteredness
 Directly teach children social, emotional, and cognitive
competence by addressing social skills, effective problem-solving,
anger management, and emotion language
 Often combines child skills training and parent training
 Includes coaching, peer modeling, role playing, and reinforcement
 Found to be effective 3 years after treatment
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Family prevention
• Target poor child rearing, poor supervision, and inconsistent
or harsh discipline
• Include parent management training, functional family
therapy, multisystemic family therapy, and family prevention
programs
• Attempt to change the social contingencies in the family
environment so children are rewarded for appropriate
behavior and punished for inappropriate behavior
• Cost effective
• Also effective for adjudicated juvenile and adult populations
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Family prevention
•
Two main types of family-based programs have been
found effective:
1. Parent education
a. Home visiting programs
 Home visits with parents delivering general parent education
 Main goals center around educating parents to improve the life
chances of children from a very young age, often beginning at
birth, preventing preterm or low-weight births, promoting
healthy child development or school readiness, and preventing
child abuse and neglect
 Also attempt to improve parent well-being and link parents with
community services
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Family prevention
•
Two main types of family-based programs have been
found effective:
1.
Parent education
b. Parent education plus day care
 Day-care programs are distinguished from preschool programs
in that day-care programs are not focused on intellectual
enrichment but rather serve as a form of childcare that allow
parents to return to work
 Day care provides children with social interaction with other
children and stimulation of their cognitive, sensory, and motor
control skills
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Family prevention
•
Two main types of family-based programs have been found
effective:
2.
Parent management training

Refers to treatment procedures in which parents are trained to alter their
child’s behavior at home

Parents of antisocial children are deficient in their methods of child rearing


Failed to tell their children how they were expected to behave, failed to
monitor their children’s behavior, failed to enforce rules properly, and
used more punishments but failed to make it contingent on the child’s
behavior
Teaches parents to notice what the child is doing, monitor behavior over
long periods of time, clearly state rules, make rewards and punishments
contingent on behavior, and to negotiate disagreements so conflicts do
not escalate
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Peer, school, and community prevention all target
environmental risk factors
•
Peer-based programs
•
Two aims:
1. Reduce the influence of delinquent friends
2. Increase the influence of prosocial friends
•
•
Teach children to resist antisocial peer pressures that encourage
delinquent activities
Research has shown that programs using peer leaders
can reduce smoking, drinking, and drug use
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
School-based programs
•
Students who are impulsive, have little commitment to
school, are weakly bonded to school, and have weak
conventional beliefs are more likely to be delinquent
•
Four types of school programs have been found to be
effective:
1.
School and discipline management
2.
Classroom or instructional management
3.
Reorganization of grades or classes
4.
Increasing self-control or social competency using
cognitive-behavioral or behavioral instructional methods
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• School-based programs
• School and discipline management
• Project PATHE was effective
• Included increasing shared decision-making in schools, increasing the
competence of teachers, increasing the academic competence of students,
and improving the school climate
• Increases the students’ sense of belonging and
usefulness
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• School-based programs
• Classroom or instructional management
• Combine parent training, teacher training, and skills training
• Receive special attention at home and school to increase attachment
to school and parents
• Parents trained to notice and reinforce good behavior
• Teachers trained in classroom management (e.g., provide clear
instructions, reward children for good behavior, teach prosocial
problem-solving skills)
• Also receive training in interpersonal cognitive problem-solving
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• School-based programs
• Reorganization of grades or classes
• STATUS program
• Used school within school scheduling where high-risk students were brought
together for a 2-hour period to receive an integrated social studies and
English program with a law-related education curriculum that emphasized
maximum participation
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• School-based programs
• Increasing self-control or social competency using cognitive-
behavioral or behavioral instructional methods
• Teaches students factual information, increases their
awareness of social influences to engage in misbehavior,
expands their repertoires for recognizing and appropriately
responding to risky situations, increases their appreciation for
diversity, and improves their moral character
• RIPP program
• 18-session violence prevention curriculum, divided into seven topics:
building trust, respect for individual differences, nature of violence
and risk factors, anger management, personal values, precipitants
and consequences of fighting, and nonviolent alternatives to fighting
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
•
Community-based programs
•
Often a combination of developmental prevention, with its focus
on reducing the development or influence of early risk factors,
and situational prevention, with its focus on reducing
opportunities for crime
•
Two main types of programs:
1.
After-school programs
2.
Community-based mentoring
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Community-based programs
• After-school programs
• Based on the belief that providing prosocial opportunities after
school can reduce involvement in delinquent behavior
• Target alienation and association with delinquent peers
• Include recreation-based programs, drop-in clubs, dance
groups, and tutoring services
• Boys and Girls Club provides after-school programs in six
main areas: cultural enrichment, health and physical
education, social reaction, personal and educational
development, citizenship and leadership development, and
environmental education
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Community-based programs
• Community-based mentoring
• Involves nonprofessional adult volunteers spending time with young
people at risk for delinquency, dropping out of school, school failure, and
other social problems
• Mentors behave in a supportive, nonjudgmental manner while acting as
role models and forming strong bonds
• Big Brothers Big Sisters provides youth with an adult friend where the
mentor can support and aid the youth
Farrington and Welsh: Saving Children
from a Life of Crime
• Present a comprehensive national prevention strategy
• Focus should be on intervening early to save children from a life of
crime
• Grounded in the leading scientific evidence on the causes of
offending and what works to prevent delinquency and later
offending
• Needs a clear vision of intent that early prevention of delinquency
saves lives
Summary
• Much research has been done on the causes of
crime
• This research can and is being used to direct crime-
control policy
• From the 1800s until the 1970s, rehabilitation was the main
focus of the criminal justice system
• Since the 1970s, the U.S. has been involved in a get-tough
movement
• However, this movement is now being questioned and
replaced with situational crime prevention focused on crime
opportunities and prevention/rehabilitation initiatives