Recent Book: Reducing Opportunities: Police Crime Prevention
| Published date | 01 July 1973 |
| Date | 01 July 1973 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7304600316 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
tions/Iove
your
local
cop
pro-
gramme.
But
interspersed are
many
hard-core articles on a wide
range
of police crime prevention, juvenile
liaison
and
community relations pro-
jects, written by
top
professional
policeman
and
respected specialists
from
other
fields.
It
is
not
surprising
that
Charles
R. Gain,
Chief
of
the
Oakland, Cali-
fornia, Police
Department,
has con-
tributed
three
articles; his force has
done
much
to
lead
American think-
ing by the nose along
the
paths
of
crime prevention.
Nor
is it surpris-
ing to find Peter J. Pitchess, Sheriff
of Los Angeles
County
and
Patrick
V. Murphy, Commissioner of Police,
New
York
City,
making
valuable
contributions.
Add
the weight of
Clarence M. Coster, Associate Ad-
ministrator of
the
Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration (U.S. De-
partment
of Justice)
and
Robert
J.
Gemignani, Commissioner
Youth
Development
and
Delinquency Pre-
vention Administration (U.S.
Depart-
ent of Health, Education and Wel-
fare)
and
others of a similar calibre,
and
you will begin to see
the
range
of this compendium.
There
is a lot of the
"onward
and
upward"
strain in
the
style of
"Chests
Out
For
Law
Enforcement",
and
"Officer Friendly",
but
the
corny, the naive, the slick
and
the
sophisticated are all deeply woven
into
the
American fabric,
and
the
book
is none the worse
for
that.
Afascinating
book
for
the
Brit-
ish reader to dip into
for
serious
thoughts or a quiet chuckle as his
fancy takes him; one small regret,
it's a pity a comprehensive article on
the British approach to
crime
pre-
vention wasn't included.
The
reader
must rely on a
brief
reference by
M.
Jean
Nepote, Secretary
General
of LC.P.O.-Interpol, in the papers he
submitted to
the
3rd
and
4th
United
Nations Congresses on
the
Preven-
tion of Crime
and
Treatment
of
Offenders. P.M.
REDUCING OPPORTUNITIES
V. A.
LEONARD:
Police Crime Prevention, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield,
Illinois, U.S.A. $10.75.
Crime Prevention is a familiar
enough term in police circles in
Britain; it is widely accepted as re-
ferring to a fairly
narrow
range
of
activities which
can
be lumped
under
the heading "reducing opportuni-
ties". Specialist policemen have long
been employed in
home
forces as
Crime Prevention Officers with an
admirably comprehensive knowledge
of
the
nuts
and bolts
approach.
This
narrow
specialization is still
rare
in the U.S.A., yet
"crime
pre-
vention" is gaining currency
under
the stimulus of widespread public
concern over crime rates (and, of
course, the resulting political inter-
est in
the
subject) coupled with
growing academic attention to
the
nature
and
causes of crime
and
de-
linquency.
Police Crime Prevention, asmall
book
for small cities, reflects a wider
approach
than
we
are
used to, de-
voting only a
part
of
one
chapter
to
the
nuts
and
bolts of reducing
opportunities. Its
main
content
can
287
best be described as a crammer in
criminology with an A.B.C.
of
set-
ting up a police juvenile
bureau
thrown in.
With
our
well-trained
crime prevention officers
and
our
common
approach
to police Juvenile
Bureaux it is tempting to patronize
such a book, yet this
would
be un-
fair.
The
tight structure of the Police
Service in Britain, with
broad
com-
mon
policies
and
standards, con-
trasts markedly with the U.S.A.
where
more
than
40,000 police de-
partments, ranging
from
one-man-
bands to the giant New
York
City
Police Department, offer a breath-
taking variety of standards between
the highly professional
and
the
de-
moralized incompetent. Mr. Leon-
ard's
book
is therefore auseful
primer
for
the audience at which it
is aimed.
It
is also an interesting
and
occasi-
onally helpful reminder to
the
Brit-
ish reader of the thinking underlying
many
aspects of policing we tend to
take
for granted. P.M.
July 1973
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