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Definition/Overview
“Situational crime prevention is the science of reducing opportunities for crime” through the ‘“management, design, and manipulation of the immediate environment”’. The goal is to discourage criminal activity by making it less rewarding, more difficult, and less excusable. It consists of three main principles: an articulated theoretical framework, a standard methodology for tackling specific crime problems, and a set of opportunity-reducing techniques. Situational crime prevention originally “focused on ordinary crimes of burglary, car theft, vandalism, robbery, street prostitution, and violent assaults”. These ordinary crimes involve a “suitable target” and one or more predatory offenders. More recently, however, it has been “applied to a greater variety of crimes, in a greater variety of contexts, which include crime and misconduct in prisons, Internet frauds, organized crime, and terrorism”. This perspective is based on the assumption that crime is a rational decision and has evolved to consist of “five general crime prevention principles. . . : (1) increase the degree of effort necessary to carry out the offense; (2) increase the risk of detection prior to, during, or after the completion of the criminal act; (3) reduce the rewards that can be obtained by engaging in the offenses; (4) reduce situational conditions that may provoke an unplanned criminal action; and (5) remove the offender’s ability to make excuses that justify criminal actions or that absolve the offender from responsibility”. These principals “depend on the offender’s perspective of the effort, risks, rewards, provocations, and justifications that a particular situation offers. . . There are 25 specific tactics or techniques [(shown on Table 1)] that have been used to implement these crime reduction principles”.

This theory is very controversial for many reasons and is not widely accepted within mainstream academic criminology. Unlike criminology, which attempts to understand the psychological and social forces that create an offender, situational crime prevention works with police and other governmental agencies in hopes of understanding and dealing with the immediate circumstances of the crime. As a result, criminologists often classify situational crime prevention as “administrative criminology” and see it as an approach to dealing with crime rather than an actual theory. “Criticisms of situational crime prevention are of two broad sorts—those questioning the theoretical and conceptual adequacy of the approach and those attacking the ethical foundations and social outcomes situational interventions”.



Origins
Although situational crime prevention emerged from several different sources, it can be argued that it was first articulated in Mayhew’s Crime as Opportunity and was advocated by Ron Clarke among others. More specifically, it emerged from the work of the Home Office Research Unit of the British government’s criminological research department on correctional treatments in the 1960s and 1970s. Their discovery that manipulating situational factors could control institutional misconduct led them to believe that the same approaches might work on everyday forms of crime. Although theories of crime at the time were based on social factors, biological inheritance, and personality, the Home Office position found support among criminological studies and among the disciplines of psychology and sociology, which found the situational crime prevention consistent with some of their research findings. The United Kingdom’s adoption of situational crime prevention as their national strategy led to governments in Europe and North America incorporating this approach to crime prevention into their own government initiatives. Ron Clarke continued to promote this approach to crime when he became the head of the Research and Planning Unit in 1982.

Clarke described situational crime prevention as an alternative to ‘dispositional’ theories of crime prevention and he strongly believed that understanding criminal events at certain times and places was much more important than understanding the root causes of criminal activities. More specifically, “[h]e advocated a ‘choice model’, insisting that it was useful to view criminality less as the product of deep social, economic and psychological causes than as the choices of individuals”.

In the United States, several disciplines were studying the relationships between situational variables and crime. More specifically, “[t]he concepts of “crime prevention through environmental design” or CPTED and “defensible space” both draw attention to the role that physical environments play in helping to encourage or inhibit criminal activity. Additionally, “problem-oriented policing” developed as a way to approach specific crime problems, construct practical responses, and gauge the effectiveness of police efforts”. These viewpoints influenced both Clarke’s latter work and the development of major principles of contemporary situational crime prevention.

Opportunity and Crime
“Situational crime prevention is based on theories of environmental criminology, including routine activity theory, rational choice perspective, and crime pattern theory. These theories share the following two assumptions that are important for situational prevention:

1) Crime is the result of the interaction between opportunities for crime and criminal motivation. For example, in the United States, guns are widely available which makes it easier for the criminally minded to murder people.

2) People commit crimes because they believe that it will benefit them in some way. These benefits are not necessarily financial; benefits could include sex, revenge, power, among other things. The chances of obtaining the reward as well as the risks of failure determine whether or not the person commits the crime”.

These principles indicate that the criminally minded commit more crimes when crime opportunities increase; easy opportunities for crime can result in law-abiding people committing crimes; and “society unintentionally creates opportunities for crime by its physical and social arrangements”. Furthermore, society produces “criminogenic” goods (such as handguns), poor management practices, and environmental design that facilitate crime.

The Three Components of Criminal Opportunity Structure

The three components of the criminal opportunity structure are targets (e.g., convenience stores, automobiles, etc.), victims (e.g., drunks, strangers, etc.), and crime facilitators (guns, automobiles, and disinhibitors such as drugs and alcohol) (see Figure 1). Targets are a function of the physical environment and the lifestyles and routine activities of the population whereas lifestyle and routine activities often play a role in who is victimized. The socioeconomic structure of society as well as lifestyle and routine often determines the number of offenders as well as their motives. Overall, “a complex interplay between potential offenders and the supply of victims, targets, and facilitators determines the scale and nature of opportunities for crime”. Furthermore, “offender perceptions and judgments about risks, effort, and rewards play an important part in defining the opportunity structure”.



Defensible Space and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)
Preceding situational prevention by a few years were two related strands of policy research in the United States, “defensible space” and “crime prevention through environmental design” or CPTED”. Although the ideas of defensible space and CPTED did not facilitate the development of situational crime prevention and did not contribute to its theoretical basis, it played a significant role in promoting situational crime prevention as a strategy to prevent and reduce crime.

The main basis of Newman’s concept of defensible space is that space needs to be defended against someone through the proper use of environmental designs that focus on territoriality, increases surveillance, reduces anonymity, and reduces escape routes for offenders. Although quite similar to defensible space, CPTED focuses more on controlling access to the crime target (known as natural access control), reducing through-movement of people, territorial reinforcement, and natural surveillance as strategies to prevent crime.

Although the concepts of defensible space and CPTED played a large role in the promotion and development of situational crime prevention, it is important to note how they differ : situational crime prevention is focused on limiting opportunities for crime in all behavioural contexts whereas the theories of defensible space and CPTED are more fixated on the design of buildings and places. For the most part, many criminologists and government agencies have lost interest in defensible space and CPTED but continue to utilize situational crime prevention.

The Rational Choice Perspective
According to Ronald V. Clarke (1995), “[t]he earlier “choice” model formulated to guide situational prevention efforts has more recently been developed into a “rational choice” perspective on crime. This borrows concepts from economic theories of crime but seeks to avoid some of the criticisms made of these theories, in particular the following: (i) that under economic models the rewards of crime are treated mainly in material terms (how much money an offender can make), while mostly ignoring rewards that cannot easily be translated into cash equivalents; (ii) that economies have not been sensitive to the great variety of behaviours falling under the general label of crime, with their variety of costs and benefits, and instead have tended to lump them together as a single variable in their equations; (iii) that the formal mathematical modeling of criminal choices by economics often demands data that are unavailable or can only be pressed into service by making unrealistic assumptions about what they represent; and, finally (iv) that the economist’s image of the self-maximizing decision maker, carefully calculating his or her advantage, does not fit the opportunistic and reckless nature of much crime”.

This perspective assumes that offenders commit crimes with a purpose in mind, such as a desire for money or status, and that their decision to engage in criminal activity depends on their own special categories of information. Since these decisions are based on perceived costs and benefits, poor, impaired, satisfying, or emotionally driven decisions that may not seem rational to most people are seen as rational to the offender. Some advocates of this perspective argue that every single human possesses the incentive to commit a crime and one does not have to be poor to do so because environments have the ability to tempt anyone to commit a crime. This means that just like the rest of society, offenders are rational actors and can therefore be deterred from committing crimes through effectively designing the built environment. Furthermore, since different offenses depend on different information and decision processes, different situational crime prevention techniques must be utilized for different crimes.

Keith Hayward criticizes situational crime prevention theory and rational choice theory for lacking reflexivity because it does not adjust to changing knowledge, circumstances and criticisms. McFadden, on the other hand, disagrees and instead believes that this theory incorporates new theories as it grows and adapts to new knowledge. He does, however, believe that this theory lacks empirical research on the significant role of perceptions.

Hayward also criticizes this perspective on the basis that "'not all actors are economically self-interested’”. He believes that rational choice perspective only considers decisions based on money but in doing so ignores other types of non-monetary elements of a decision (see Table 2), such as psychological costs, which is why situational crime prevention cannot prevent expressive crimes (“[e]xpressive crimes are those which contain a significant emotional element such as anger, hostility and excitement” ) and can only prevent acquisitive or property crime. Although the main goal of people who commit acquisitive crimes is money, most of the benefits from crime are known as intangible costs and include psychological and non-monetary costs. These benefits include the thrill of the crime and/or being able to control or impress another individual. Often, these perceived benefits are subjective and therefore need to be taken into consideration.

Hayward also points out that rational choice perspective does not consider discounting to the extent that it should. “Discounting is a process used in cost-benefit analysis to account for the influence of time upon preferences and value. The fact that preferences are time-sensitive (we prefer some things now but will defer others) is referred to as the social rate of time preference”. This is based on personal preferences and therefore needs to be considered in the rational choice theory.



Reducing Opportunities for Crime
According to Fisher and Lab (2010), “[t]he following principles have been identified as crucial to the success of any situational prevention project: [t]he project should deal with a very specific category of crime or disorder; [i]t should seek to understand how the crime is committed; [and] [i]t should consider a variety of solutions”.

Some argue that offenders pay more attention to the immediate chances of getting caught than to the severity of the punishment that they might receive later. Therefore, the situational crime prevention technique known as “situational deterrence”, which increases the risks of being caught and therefore makes the potential offender more afraid of being caught, is believed to deter people from committing crimes.

The development of a twelve-category classification of techniques that further develops the classification system created by Clarke and Mayhew in 1980 contains examples of successful applications of each technique (see Table 3).



The Twelve Techniques of Situational Crime Prevention
Increasing the Effort Required to Commit a Crime

1.	Target Hardening

Target hardening involves using physical barriers such as locks and safes to prevent the vandal or thief from committing a crime.

2.	Access Control

The technique of utilizing measures to exclude potential offenders from places such as apartment buildings and offices is called “access control”.

3.	Deflecting Offenders

“The provision of public urinals, litter bins, and “graffiti boards” (the latter being supplied for people’s public messages) channels people’s behaviours in more acceptable directions and constitutes an example of deflecting offenders".

4.	Controlling Facilitators

Placing controls on crime facilitators such as alcohol, automobiles, telephones, checks, credit cards, etc. is one effective way to prevent crime.

Increasing the Risks of Committing a Crime

5.	Entry/Exit Screening

The purpose of entry screening is to detect those who do not meet the entry requirements. This differs from access control because the purpose of access control is to exclude potential offenders. The purpose of exit screening, on the other hand, is to deter the illegal removal of objects.

6.	Formal Surveillance

Police, security guards, and store detectives provide formal surveillance. Their main job is to discourage potential offenders from engaging in criminal activity. Electronic hardware, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV) and burglar alarms, can also be used as formal surveillance to deter crime. Encouraging the public to participate in formal surveillance is yet another way to reduce crime.

7.	Surveillance by Employees

Employee surveillance is an essential part of crime prevention. Hotel doormen, parking lot attendants, shop assistants, train conductors, park keepers, etc. can all play a role in crime prevention.

8.	Natural Surveillance

Some examples of natural surveillance include street lighting, lighting the interior of banks at night, neighbourhood watch programs, and limiting the amount of bushes in front of houses. Natural surveillance is very popular but does not seem to be very effective.

Reducing the Rewards of Committing a Crime

9.	Target Removal

Target removal is the removal of a target so that an offender cannot commit the crime. A good example of target removal is Great Britain’s attempt to deal with attacks on public telephones. By replacing larger glass panes with smaller glass panes and booths with kiosks in high-risk locations, Great Britain managed to reduce vandalism on public telephones.

10.	Identifying Property

Identifying property, such as vehicles, is a technique designed to prevent theft.

11.	Removing Inducements

In many cases, reducing inducements discourages crime. For example, developing gun controls and/or reducing the availability of weapons can reduce crime. Another example of removing inducements includes painting murals on bare walls to prevent vandalism and quickly removing graffiti to prevent further vandalism.

12.	Rule Setting

It is essential for all organizations to have rules about conduct and to avoid ambiguities in these regulations so as to prevent offenders from finding ways to exploit these rules.

The Five Main Principles of the Twenty-Five Situational Crime Prevention Techniques
In 2003, Cornish and Clarke revised this twelve-category classification of techniques and turned it into a twenty-five-category classification of techniques (see Table 1). It consists of five main crime prevention principles each divided into five specific techniques to implement these principles. The five general principles include increasing the effort required to commit a crime, increasing the risks of committing a crime, reducing the reward of committing a crime, reducing provocation, and removing excuses for doing crime. All of these principles “depend on the offender’s perspective of the effort, risks, rewards, provocations, and justifications that a particular situation offers”.

1) Increase the Effort Required to Commit a Crime

Situational crime prevention assumes that people commit crimes because it is easy for them to do. Therefore, advocates of situational crime prevention believe in the importance of using target hardening, controlling access to facilities, utilizing screen exits, deflecting offenders, and controlling tools/weapons as techniques to increase the effort required to commit a crime and therefore hopefully decrease the number of crimes.

2) Increase the Risks of Criminal Activity

Increasing the risks of criminal activity can decrease crime. Good ways to increase the risks of criminal activity include extending guardianship, assisting natural surveillance, reducing anonymity, utilizing place managers, and strengthening formal surveillance.

3) Reduce the Rewards of Criminal Activity

Potential offenders are less likely to commit a crime when the potential targets are less visible and are an unknown quantity because this reduces the rewards of the crime. Examples of reducing the rewards of criminal activity include concealing targets, removing targets, identifying property, disrupting markets, and denying the benefits of committing the crime.

4) Reducing Provocations

In order to reduce provocative elements of criminal activity, it is important to understand the immediate triggers for criminal events. Techniques used to reduce provocations include reducing frustrations and stress, avoiding disputes, reducing emotional arousal, neutralizing peer pressure, and discouraging imitation.

5) Reducing Excuses

Removing excuses is one of the more common techniques of situational crime prevention. Examples of techniques used to reduce excuses include setting rules, posting instructions, alerting conscience, assisting compliance, and controlling drugs and alcohol.

Specific Categories of Crime
Situational determinants of crime differ depending on the specific category of crime (each category may have offenders with different motives, resources, and skills). As a result, the strategies to prevent these different categories of crime differ.

How the Crime is Committed
In order to determine how to prevent specific forms of crime, people need to try and determine the steps involved in committing the crime. This requires looking at the crime from the offender’s point of view. Although critics often point out that situational crime prevention does not try to understand or change the offender’s motives, it is important to note that this is not necessary in all cases.

Diffusion of Benefits
‘“Diffusions of benefits” refers to the fact that situational prevention can often bring about reductions in crime beyond the immediate focus of the measures introduced”. There are two types of diffusion: deterrence and discouragement. Deterrence influences the offenders’ assessments of risk whereas discouragement is the assessment of effort and reward. Diffusion of benefits may occur as a result of criminals overestimating the scope and reach of crime prevention measures. Examples of diffusion of benefits include installing closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and “red light” cameras in some areas, which can prevent crime in other areas.

Anticipatory Benefits
Offenders often believe that crime prevention measures have been taken before they are actually implemented, thereby resulting in a reduction in crime.

Adaptation
Adaptation is a long-term process and occurs when offenders discover new crime vulnerabilities in places where preventative measures have been in place for a long time. For example, in the 1970s, screening measures were used to prevent hijackings between the United States and Cuba. Other countries began to take the same preventative measures and as a result saw a decline in hijackings. Displacement did not seem to occur. Unfortunately, however, 9/11 (the September 11 attacks) occurred as a result of hijackers being able to find loopholes in the system (this is an example of adaptation).

Similarities and Differences between Broken Windows Theory and Situational Crime Prevention
A notable difference between broken windows theory and situational crime prevention is that broken windows theory focuses on behaviours whereas situational crime prevention is more truly about the built environment. More specifically, unlike broken windows theory, situational crime prevention utilizes a more analytic focus on the built environment as well as rational choice theory. Despite these differences, “[b]oth approaches are identical in terms of their core spatial logics: they both stress the importance of semiotics of landscape”. Central to their core spatial assumption is that the landscape emits symbolic messages to criminals, particularly messages of defenselessness. This assumption supports another concept that these two approaches share: that community health is expressed territorially. Although this idea is emphasized in both approaches to crime prevention, it is more overtly emphasized in situational crime prevention. Furthermore, both approaches rely on the relationship between social health and territorial action in crime prevention.

Just like broken windows theory, situational crime prevention emphasizes the local scale of barriers between insiders who exert control and outsiders who are seen as potential criminals. (Neither of these approaches consider the wider forces outside of the local scale. ) More specifically, it is thought that “normal” users of space need to construct spaces that will allow them to watch “abnormal” users of space so that they can prevent these “abnormal” users of space from committing crimes. This supports the situational crime prevention concept of defensible space and therefore the use of territoriality to exercise exclusion. As a result, “the social division between potential victims and potential criminals is mirrored in the spatial division between insiders who exert control and outsiders who are thereby rebuffed”.

Critiques of Situational Crime Prevention
Theoretical and Conceptual Criticisms Theoretical criticisms of situational crime prevention point out the fact that situational crime prevention does not discuss the sociological contexts of criminality nor the development of criminal dispositions.

Political Criticisms

The situational crime prevention theory has caused a lot of hostility among political parties. The Right disagrees with the fact that situational crime prevention does not address moral culpability and punishment whereas the Left criticizes it for not looking at the “root causes” of crime and for neglecting issues of social justice. Target-hardening forms of situational crime prevention have further fueled this hostility because these forms are believed to have created a “fortress society”. Furthermore, political parties have been concerned about civil liberties and people’s privacy.

Atheoretical, Simplistic, and Sterile

Some claim that situational crime prevention is simplistic, atheoretical, and sterile and does not improve our understandings as to why crimes occur.

Advocates of situational crime prevention counter this criticism by arguing that the approach is based on modern psychology concepts of person-situation relations and how different situations can cause different types of crimes.

Ignores the Root Causes of Crime

Situational crime prevention has been criticized for ignoring the root causes of crime. Those who support situational crime prevention believe that situations are causes of crime and therefore criticize other theories for ignoring situations.

Not Useful for “Irrational” Crime

Some critics believe that situational crime prevention may be useful in preventing prudent crimes but cannot prevent deviant impulses, crimes of passion, or crimes involving strong impulses because “[t]hese offenses are caused by emotional and psychological deficits of the offender and are beyond rational control via situational intervention”.

Those who support situational crime prevention, however, believe that “expressive violence might be prevented by altering situational conditions—crowding, frustration, excessive noise, and so on—that elicit aggression”.

Not Useful for Preventing Organized Crime

Due to being very resourceful, not dependent on certain structures in time or space, and a lack of cooperation among those involved in organized crimes when it comes to choosing a target (“[t]he ‘target’ is ‘the central object of the crime (through attack, theft, counterfeiting, illegal transaction, possession or trafficking)’”, situational crime prevention does not seem to work very well for organized crime. (Organized crime is “‘a diverse and analytically distinct range of actors, activities and harmful consequences’” ). More specifically, since organized crime varies over time and space, it can be very difficult to discern it, therefore making it extremely difficult to prevent the crime through situational crime prevention. For example, transnational crimes can be very difficult to prevent due to the target being very remote. The absence of a target can further complicate matters. Fortunately, as a result of the expansion of criminal law and policies against organized crime, organized crime that lacks a specific target is becoming quite rare.

Displacement

Although situational crime prevention has been successful in many cases, critics argue that “the reductions claimed are negated by displacement (e.g., the offenders shift their attention to other places, times, and targets; use different methods; or commit different crimes); that situational prevention results in escalation (i.e., offenders resort to more harmful methods to gain their ends); and that even if displacement does not occur immediately, the criminal population adapts in the long run to reduced opportunities by discovering new ways to commit crime”.

Supporters of situational crime prevention counter this argument by pointing out that the concept of displacement assumes that offenders will commit crime because they have an irresistible urge to do so. According to Rene Hesseling’s 1994 study on displacement, although there were some cases of displacement of crime, situational crime prevention was more likely to prevent crime than displace it. For example, it is unlikely that a shoplifter would go out of their way to a more distant store to shoplift when the store that they usually shoplift at increases their crime prevention measures.

With that said, it is important to note that displacement is not inevitable: it depends on the offender’s perception of the ease, risks, and attractiveness of alternative crimes. So, in order to fully understand the concept of displacement, one must look deeper into the motives of offenders.

Social and Ethical Criticisms – Benefits the Rich at the Expense of the Poor

Since situational crime prevention works with government and law enforcement agencies, it has been criticized for not adopting a social reform agenda. As a result, many critics are concerned about its emphasis on the privatization of public forms of protection and its decrease in government funding for publicly funded law establishment, both of which result in those who cannot afford to take security measures becoming increasingly victimized. More specifically, the privatization of public forms of protection benefits those who can afford to engage in situational crime prevention at the expense of those who cannot. In other words, those who have the means to protect their property will benefit from a more “secure and orderly society” because they can establish gated communities. The establishment of gated communities results in the displacement of those who are not as well off (those who are seen as undesirable) as well as the displacement of criminal and other social problems.

Advocates of situational crime prevention believe that these inequalities are overemphasized and that governments are not withdrawing from law enforcement.

Supports the Status Quo

Situational crime prevention is often described as “a tool that the authorities use to manage social problems and to protect the interests of the rich and powerful. It focuses on the crimes of the poor and disadvantaged (burglary, thefts, and the like) while ignoring crimes of the affluent and crimes against women and minorities”.

Advocates of situational crime prevention point out that they disproportionately target the poor and disadvantaged because the majority of crime involves the poor and disadvantaged. Advocates also point out that unlike political measures, which focus on punishing offenders in a harsh way, situational crime prevention focuses on crime prevention and is therefore not concerned with protecting the interests of the rich and powerful.

Blames the Victim

Many people believe that it is mainly the individual’s, not the government’s, responsibility to take measures to prevent crime. Although many people willingly take advice that protects them from crime, others don’t, which leads to the “blaming the victim” phenomenon. Although supporters of situational crime prevention disagree with the claim that situational crime prevention blames the victim, they do believe that “[i]n cases that risks are taken in blatant disregard to the costs of others, those responsible are open to blame”.

Invasive and Oppressive – Privacy and Civil Liberties

Since situational crime prevention champions the use of surveillance techniques, such as identity checks and closed-circuit television (CCTV), critics argue that these techniques invade people’s privacy and restrict their personal freedoms.

Those who support situational crime prevention point out that democratic societies ensure that these techniques are used in a way that will not significantly reduce people’s individual freedom and that most people are willing to tolerate increased surveillance because they appreciate the benefits of these techniques.

Future Research
Due to society’s improving understandings of criminal behavior, criminal events, and victimization experiences, it is quite probable that the model for situational crime prevention will continue to develop. Furthermore, as a result of the criticisms discussed in the previous section, situational crime prevention has been further conceptualized over time and will continue to evolve. The relationship between the decrease in crime in most advanced western nations and situational crime prevention need to be further researched so that situational crime prevention can be further developed and improved.