Solutions to Crime

1001 Words5 Pages
Policies for the prevention and control of crime have generally come from sociologists, left realism and right realism which have then been adapted to other sociological theories. Both theories focus on explaining and preventing crimes that negatively impact upon the daily lifes of ordinary people. However left realists believe the organisation of society and the inequality as a result of marginalisation, relative deprivation and formation of criminal subcultures is the reason why crime can become a norm. Whereas Right realists emphasis crime happens due to individuals and that they offend because the benefits outweigh the cause. Right realists solutions to the problem of crime have been many based around the broken window theory of the right realists Wilson and kelling. They argued that high levels of crime occur in neighbourhoods where there has been a previous loss of informal social control and antisocial behaviour. They use the analogue of an abandoned building and point out that once one window has been broken, then soon after all the windows will get broken. From this they used situational crime prevention whereby it focuses on encouraging potential victims to design out of crime by making themselves harder targets by investing in surveillance and more security with the aim of the criminal being caught or being deterred. Also environmental crime prevention highlights that if anti-social behaviour can be prevented then the escalation of more serious crimes will also be stopped. The policy choose to introduce a range of legal powers through which the police and local authorities can issue antisocial behaviours, curfews, street drinking bans and dispersal orders, this was known as the zero-tolerance policy. Felson and Clarke are critical of this as they believe it will just lead to crime displacement whereby criminals will simply move to where there are softer
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