Prevention & Control Of Crime Term Paper

Abstract

In this policy paper I am trying to give an overview of a hazy topic termed as “crime” and how to control it. In so doing, it draws explicitly upon the growth of community, safety and to a lesser extent restorative justice. This essay casts a critical eye over some of the assumptions which are often ignored and underlie recent appeals to community in crime prevention and control. The article considers the philosophical origins, ambiguities and tensions within such appeals.

Particularly it focuses upon the way in which appeals to community converge and collide with changing social relations which may undermine their progressive potential. Crime is a demoralizing and costly problem affecting our society. The victims of crime suffer injury, financial loss, and intimidation. Everyone is affected by higher prices for products, taxes, insurance premiums, and the sense of insecurity and fear that result from criminal acts. Those who live or work in “high crime” areas can be prevented of some of life’s normal opportunities and pleasures by the social and economic impact of crime and by the alienation and despair that accompanies the fear of crime.

The study of crime, society’s response to it, and its prevention, including examination of the environmental, hereditary, or psychological causes of crime, modes of criminal investigation and conviction, and the efficacy of punishment or correction as compared with forms of treatment or rehabilitation. Crime prevention is any initiative or plan which reduces or eliminates the aggregate level of victimization or the risk of individual criminal activation. It includes community and government based programs to minimize the incidents of risk factors correlated with criminal activation and the rate of victimization, as well as efforts to change perceptions.

Even though society as a whole participates in many ways in fighting against crime and preventing crime, the state remains the key organization responsible for the personal safety of its citizens and therefore plays a useful role in solving the crime problem. Everyone should accept that law and order is among the spheres of public life most sensitive to the whole spectrum of changes which state and society can undergo – political, social, emotional, economic and demographic, as well as fundamental changes in moral values. I has always been the case that the problem of crime is particularly confusing and complex for societies which are having deep transition.

When Machiavelli, at the beginning of the 16th century, stated that, ‘New states are full of all kinds of dangers’; he was in fact referring to crime. It has been unable to avoid many of the dangers of a ‘new state’. Among the most persistent dangers are the rapid increase in the numbers of crimes and offenders, and the changing crime patterns. It has become more difficult for state, society and system to effectively control and curb these negative processes.

An example :- Crime committed by: According to a survey of Soviet ‘perestroika’

Two factors that have contributed to this upward trend are a decrease in moral values and population rise. As a result of the introduction of Universal Primary Education (UPE), every school-age child (7 years) now attends primary school to start formal education. Primary and secondary school education are free of charge. To date, the same can be said of university education, where students either receive full government scholarship or are sponsored by non-governmental organizations. Absorbing the lack of jobless youths, mainly primary school students, has placed a heavy burden on the community.

This unemployed workforce now seems to be the reason behind the violent behaviors of youths in urban centers. Of late the authorities have had to tackle with groups of youths who terrorize the population by committing a number of crimes, including larceny, fraud and even rape. Over the last ten years, due to the growth in crime levels, increase in public fears about security and declining service delivery from public police, many people and organizations (private security industry, municipal authorities, businesses, the public and even the police themselves) in some form or another utilized and made use of the resources offered by the private security industry in the fight against crime. In particular such security services revolving around security villages, gated neighborhoods/enclosed areas and armed patrols of residential areas by private security personnel.

On the surface, the prison would look like the perfect example of a controlled environment and it might be supposed that there is little that prison administrators can learn from situational prevention. However, typically control in prison lacks the micro-level, problem-solving approach that characterizes situational prevention. But we can’t say the lessons are all in one direction. While situational crime prevention has been concerned largely with decreasing opportunities for crime, prison control often deals with institutional pressures that give rise misbehavior. As well as tightening-up to restrict opportunities for misbehavior, prison control can also involve loosening-off to decrease these pressures. These opposing approaches to control need to be carefully balanced to avoid counterproductive intervention.

The idea of situational precipitators and control through loosening-up can be applied more broadly to community settings. Thus, while prison administrators can learn from situational crime prevention, situational crime prevention practitioners have something to learn from prison control.

A national concept for crime control was prepared by the country’s criminologists, which was approved by the Government. It gave importance to an active state policy in the sphere of crime control and prevention, giving the necessary preconditions for carrying this out. It can be stated that, given the short period of restored statehood, much has been done in developing the preconditions for crime control and prevention.

As political force of society, the state should guarantee the personal security of its people and social stability. So it has a special role to play in the fight against crime and crime prevention. Mass media also plays a role in crime prevention and control deserves a separate note. It is difficult to evaluate this from a single perspective, because media work itself is not uniform. On the one hand, many journalistic investigations help law and order institutions uncover serious crimes and their perpetrators. Information in the press and on television and newspaper assists in involving the public in the crime prevention process.

And on the other hand, seeking to attract readers or spectators by informing them as quickly as possible, journalists often obstruct law and order operations by giving important information which allows criminals to take suitable measures to avoid being detained and convicted.

Nowadays crime gangs provide pain-in-the-neck of our society. Due to increasing number of gangs crime becomes serious and serious. Mostly offenders attached from gang commit serious crime like murder, rape, smuggling etc.

Gang members often spend years in the community committing various offenses before ending up in confinement, becoming a fatality of gang violence, or desisting from gang membership Situational gang crime prevention focuses on the situational causes of crime and less on the dispositional traits of specific potential offenders. Interventions may focus on a particular type of gang crime, on a situational crime prevention technique, or on a particular location. These interventions are often seen as addressing the environmental and opportunistic factors that influence offender decision making.

I think that the state, local government and public institutions should aim for the following destinations:

1. Regular fundamental and applied criminological research into the problems of crime prevention and criminal justice must be conducted. A concept for such type of research must be developed.
2. The material foundation of criminological studies should be stronger, multi-disciplinary educational programs involving lawyers, sociologists, criminologists, economists, philosophers, demographers and teachers should be developed, along with international co-operation in implementing such programs.
3. There should be the adoption of a national strategy for the promotion of non-violent attitudes
4. Formulation of the state budget should predict real probabilities for scientific research programs and funding crime prevention. Support for the methodological and scientific side of crime prevention may considerably reduce greater ‘crime-induced’ losses for the state and the population.
5. There should be an improvement in the availability of precise information about the extent and nature of violence so as to provide a proper basis for decision-making.
6. To initiate and implement the most critical local prevention programs and measures which would help to stop the increase in crime.
7. To co-ordinate preventive institutions’ functions and focus on measures to control the enhancement of crime in high risk population groups. This includes those children and teenagers neglected by family and society who have often ended up on the street, young people who are out of work and not in school, the convicted, the socially excluded and disadvantaged, the homeless and others who particularly need special state and public support.
8. The problem of social assistance for crime victims must be dealt with.
9. Special international and national programs and measures should be carried out to deal with the transnational area of organized and professional criminal activity and corruption.
10. Evaluate gang membership prevention programs that have shown promising results in more limited previous studies.
11. Develop and validate individual-level gang membership risk assessment instruments.

There is some other the parameters of the prevention of crime:-

• What crime prevention programs exist in the jurisdiction?
• Are there grass-roots or community-based organizations that are working to prevent violence? If so, where do they exist?
• Is there multidisciplinary, community-wide task force addressing crime prevention strategies?
• Are there sanctions against criminal justice personnel if victim rights are not observed?
• What informal, alternative systems of justice exist? If such systems exist, how are the interests of victims addressed?
• How do victim rights in a case compare to the rights of the accused?
• What are the alternatives to trial, for example, diversion programs, plea agreements and the like?
• What crime prevention programs are available, for example, law-enforcement-driven, school-based, church based?
• Are those involved in crime prevention trained in dealing with victim issues and providing cross-cultural service delivery?

There are some other recommendations to implement the system for prevention and control of crime, which are:

1. To make an effective system prevention of social crime would in essence improve the safety of the population and the protection of human rights and interests by circumstances on an all-round basis those factors which negatively influence the social behaviors of groups, families and individuals.
2. Define priorities for, and support research on, the causes, consequences, costs and prevention of violence.
3. Promote primary prevention responses.
4. Integrate violence prevention into social and educational policies, and promote gender and social equality.
5. Strengthen responses for victims of violence.
6. Increase exchange of information on violence prevention.
7. Promote and monitor adherence to international treaties, laws and other mechanisms to protect human rights.

Some additional Requirements for crime prevention:

1. Civil Rights Compliance
2. Confidentiality and Human Subjects Protection Compliance
3. Financial and Government Audit Requirements
4. Anti-Lobbying Act
5. Single Point of Contact Review
6. Criminal Penalty for False Statements
7. No supplanting of State or Local Funds
8. Suspension or Termination of Funding
9. Compliance with Office of the Comptroller Financial Guide
10. Funding to Faith-Based and Community Organizations
11. Rights in Intellectual Property

This policy paper has examined the philosophy and elements of crime prevention, and presented appropriate crime prevention strategies and techniques. As we deal with the divergent trends of today progress in decreasing crime and reclaiming communities versus escalating youth violence and growing distrust, the challenge clearly stands before us. In order for crime prevention to be truly effective, partnerships must exist between communities and law enforcement. Such cooperation propels crime prevention beyond safety into neighborhoods and community-wide actions that target the causes of crime. One of the chief reasons of situational prevention is its “do-ability.”

The behavior-specific focus means that interventions need not involve environmental changes on a basic scale. Situational measures offer the potential for relatively quick, cost effective and practical solutions to instant control problems. Interestingly, prisons show us clearly that situational control cannot be got merely through the reduction of opportunities, and indeed, that at some point tightening limits on behavior can produce outcomes that are opposite to those intended. I think no one person or organization can fight crime alone in this practical world. Law enforcement, schools, youth, parents, churches, businesses, local government, and citizen activists must all unite in the crime prevention effort. Together, we can make a positive difference!

Reference

1. Crime: Control and Prevention. Web.
2. Crime Prevention and Control in Tanzania by Joseph Masanche. 2008. Web.
3. Research on Crime Prevention and Control: Focus on Gangs. Web.
4. Crime Prevention Techniques. Web.
5. Richard Wortley, Situational Crime Prevention and Prison Control: Lessons for Each Other. Web.