Situational Crime Prevention Strategies

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Situational crime prevention in some crimes is more successful than that of developmental. Situational Crime prevention takes an approach that the victim is responsible for implementing measures to protect themselves whilst developmental needs programs to be undergone by the offender. The two prevention strategies will be discussed in relation to burglary.

Ronald V Clarke originally developed the idea of situational crime prevention in the 1980’s (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). This particular crime prevention theory addresses techniques that increase the effort required to commit the crime, increase the risks involved with committing the crime, reducing the reward gained by the offender after committing the crime, reducing the provocation between the offender and others and remove excuses (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Majority of crime is believed to be committed because there are no high risks of being caught and the rewards outweigh the risks (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Increasing the effort by controlling access to locations and target hardening can deflect many offenders, as more effort is needed to commit the crime (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Another main technique would be to increase the risks; this may be achieved by extending guardianship, creating natural surveillance or artificial surveillance such as CCTV (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005).

Situational theory believes that offenders are often opportunistic therefore; it aims to limit the opportunities that offenders have to participate in criminal behaviour (Morgan, Boxall, Linderman, Anderson 2012). This particular crime prevention strategy incorporates a range of measures that emphasise targeting very specific forms of crime in certain circumstanc...

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