Crime Prevention: Promise or Threat?
| Author | Adam Sutton |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486589402700103 |
| Published date | 01 June 1994 |
| Date | 01 June 1994 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Crime
Prevention:
Promise
or
Threat?
Adam
Sutton
•
In
many
Western countries, traditional criminaIjustice responses
to
crime are
being questioned.
Crime
prevention
has
been
endorsed
as
a
policy
objective
by
arange
of
govemments
including
Australia's,
with
most
States
and
Territories
implementing
programs.
The
paper
summarises
approaches
to
prevention
and
reviews
promises
and
threats these developments pose.
Promises
include
less divisive
and
'exclusionary'
modes
of
social
control,
and
greater
policy
relevance
for
criminology. Threats include
the
possibility
that
organising
social
initiatives
around
crime
prevention
themes
may
detract
attention
from
underlying structural issues,
and
that
techniques
of
opportunity reduction
and
surveillance will extend
social
control
and
accelerate
the
'privatising'
of
safety
and
security.
The
paper
acknowledges
the
relevance
of
these critiques
to
currentpractice in Australia.
However
it
argues
that
problems
are
due
to
political
and
economic
pressures rather
than
to
flaws
in
prevention theory itself. Criminologists
should
insist
that
prevention
programs
and
strategies
be
located
within
the
context
of
critical
social
theory.
Most
Western
countries,
Australia
included,
are
experiencing
a
'crisis
in
penological
modernism'.
1 •
Throughout
the
19708
and
1980s,
rationales
for
the
traditional
criminal
justice
responses
to
crime
have
been
questioned.
Deterrence,
retribution,
incapacitation
and
rehabilitation
all
have
been
criticised
as
beyond
the
capabilities
of
systems
which
are
becoming
increasingly
costly
to
maintain
and
more
and
more
limited
in
the
proportion
of
offences
and
offenders
they
reach.
2
Clearest
evidence
of
this
uncertainty
is
the
extent
to
which
governments
now
are
acknowledging
the
need
to
experiment
with
alternatives.
Using
Cohen's3
metaphor,
the
key
to
the
new
rhetoric
is
that
rather
than
relying
on
~downstream'
reactions
by
police,
courts
and
correctional
systems,
it
may
be
more
appropriate
to
move
'upstream'
and
start
addressing
causes.
Such
concepts
even
are
being
endorsed
internationally.
The
unanimous
resolution
of
the
August,
1990
United
Nations
Congress
on
the
Prevention
of
Crime
and
the
Treatment
of
Offenders
was
that
prevention
is
not
simply
a
matter
for
police
but
must:
....
bring
together
those
with
responsibility
for
planning
and
development,
for
family,
health,
employment
and
training,
housing
and
social
services,
leisure
activities,
schools,
the
police
and
the
justice
system,
in
order
to
deal
with
the
conditions
that
generate
crime
4
On
the
surface
at
least,
the
United
Nations
Declaration
and
support
materials
5
seem
vindication
of
pre-
and
post-war
liberal
and
'critical'
criminology.
After
all,
it
is
these
schools
that
have
been
most
persistent
in
highlighting
the
limited
and
belated
nature
of
criminal
justice
•
PhD.
Principal
Research
Fellow,
Department
of
Criminology,
University
of
Melbourne.
5
6
(1994)
27
The
Australian
and
New
Zealand
Journal
of
Criminology
interventions
and
in
documenting
ways
conferring
the
label
offender
can
exacerbate
deviance.
More
than
any
other
discipline,
criminology
has
been
arguing
that
law
breaking
should
be
conceptualised
not
simply
in
terms
of
individual
pathology
but
as
the
product
of
factors
in
broader
social
and
physical
environments.
In
endorsing
the
Declaration,
signatory
nations
appear
to
have
committed
themselves
not
just
to
taking
these
concepts
and
arguments
seriously,
but
to
finding
ways
to
translate
them
into
working
policies.
Australia
was
one
such
country,
and
even
before
the
United
Nations
Congress
individual
States
and
Territories
had
been
developing
and
implementing
prevention
strategies.
The
objective
of
this
paper
is
to
review
the
promises
and
the
challenges
these
developments
pose,
both
for
society
and
the
discipline.
For
criminology,
of
course,
the
major
promise
is
of
renewed
relevance:
of
shrugging
off
'nothing
works'
pessimism
6
and
helping
shape
and
give
direction
to
programs
rather
than
offering
only
critical
perspectives.
For
society,
the
~romise
is
of
a
move
away
from
punitive,
divisive
and
'exclusionary'
models
of
social
control,
toward
approaches
that
are
more
'inclusionary'
and
integrative.
After
decades
of
virtually
llninterrupted
growth
in
expenditure
on
policing
and
other
aspects
of
criminal
justiceS
and
major
increases
during
the
1980s
in
sentence
lengths
and
prison
populations,9
Australia
is
reaching
a
crisis
in
ways
it
deals
with
crime
and
deviance.
One
possibility
is
to
continue
to
emulate
the
contemporary
United
States
model:
increases
in
punishment
accompanied
bJ'
the
deployment
of
ever
more
intrusive
public
and
private
security.
1
The
other
is
to
shift
focus
to
underlying
causes
such
as
economic
and
social
dislocation
and
the
proliferation
of
opportunities
associated
with
the
advent
of
mass
prodl\ction
and
consumerism.
To
a
considerable
extent,
the
debate
about
crime
prevention
is
a
debate
about
this
choice
-
and
its
outcome
has
major
implications
for
quality
of
life
and
the
nature
of
society.
In
its
very
magnitude,
however,
this
choice
also
poses
threats.
There
are
good
reasons
for
criminologists
in
Australia
to
treat
promises
of
prevention
with
some
scepticism.
For
a
start,
they
are
made
by
governments
whose
records
on
such
issues
as
sentencing
and
law
enforcement
often
belie
their
posturings
at
international
conventions.
Accepting
an
invitation
to
become
involved
with
these
administrations
carries
with
it
the
risk
of
helping
renew
cycles
of
reforms
co-opted
or
betrayed.
1l
More
fundamentally,
reflection
and
research
12
on
decriminalisation,
community
based
corrections
and
other
justice
'reforms'
raise
disconcerting
questions
about
what
these
policies
can
hope
to
achieve,
other
than
refine
and
help
extend
techniques
of
control.
For
example,
if
the
'real'
causes
of
crime
lie
in
the
alienation
of
major
parts
of
a
whole
generation
of
young
people,
stigmatised
as
failures
by
school
and
denied
career
oriented
work
in
an
economy
which
no
longer
has
use
for
their
skills,13
what
can
local
prevention
programs
do
other
than
spot
weld
some
temporary
recreation,
cultural
and
perhaps
even
work
placement
programs,
to
keep
these
youngsters
busy
and
'diverted'
during
times
of
particular
stress?
As
a
critical
discipline,
criminology
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