Reclaiming crime prevention in an age of punishment: An American history
| Author | Rebecca D Pfeffer,Brandon C Welsh |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474513504798 |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Punishment & Society
15(5) 534–553
! The Author(s) 2013
Reclaiming crime
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prevention in an age
DOI: 10.1177/1462474513504798
pun.sagepub.com
of punishment: An
American history
Brandon C Welsh
Northeastern University, USA and Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law
Enforcement, The Netherlands
Rebecca D Pfeffer
University of Houston–Downtown, USA
Abstract
Crime prevention has long figured prominently in the scholarly and applied traditions of
criminology. Using a socio-historical approach, this article examines the developments
of and influences on the concept of crime prevention in the USA over the last century.
We argue that crime prevention is a unique social and environmental strategy for
reducing crime and is distinct from crime control or punishment. Prevention’s main
characteristics include a focus on intervening in the first instance – before a crime has
been committed – and operating outside of the formal justice system. The historical
record of the scholarship and practice of crime prevention in the USA embraces this
view. A more current perspective sees crime prevention as the full range of techniques,
from prenatal home visits to prison sentences, defined more by its outcome – the
prevention of a future criminal event – than its character or approach. A return to
the original meaning of prevention is considered.
Keywords
crime policy, crime prevention, criminological theory, history of criminology,
punishment
Corresponding author:
Brandon C Welsh, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, Churchill Hall, 360
Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Email: b.welsh@neu.edu
Welsh and Pfeffer
535
In one of the first scholarly attempts to differentiate crime prevention from crime
control or punishment, Peter Lejins (1967: 2) espoused the following: ‘If societal
action is motivated by an offense that has already taken place, we are dealing with
control; if the offense is only anticipated, we are dealing with prevention.’ What
Lejins was after was the notion of a ‘pure’ prevention, a view that had long existed
in the scholarship and practice of US criminology, but was becoming confused with
the use of the term ‘delinquency prevention’ within the juvenile justice system.
Joseph Weis and David Hawkins (1981: 2) put it more bluntly: ‘Historically,
what has been passed off as delinquency prevention within the juvenile justice
system is basically delinquency ‘‘control,’’ simply because it has been implemented
after the illegal behavior and even after a juvenile justice system reaction has
occurred.’
Weis and Hawkins (1981) went on to differentiate between corrective prevention
and preclusive prevention. The former was largely made up of system-level efforts
designed to treat offenders so as to prevent them from committing further criminal
acts. Preclusive prevention was considered the ‘purest type of prevention’, with the
aim to ‘‘‘preclude’’ the initial occurrence of delinquency, primarily at the organ-
izational, institutional, social structure, and cultural levels of intervention’ (1981:
3). Like Lejins, they too were trying to reclaim the original meaning of prevention
by drawing a distinction between prevention – efforts designed to prevent crime
from occurring in the first place – and control, or efforts aimed at preventing the
recurrence of offending.
A more current perspective sees crime prevention as the full range of techniques,
from prenatal home visits to prison sentences, defined more by its outcome – the
prevention of a future criminal act – than its character or approach (e.g. Sherman
et al., 1997, 2006). Here, programs and policies may include a police arrest as part
of an operation to deal with gang problems, a court sanction to a correctional
facility, or, in the extreme case, a death penalty sentence. These measures are more
correctly referred to as crime control or punishment.
It is our thesis that crime prevention is best understood and utilized as a unique
social and environmental strategy for reducing crime, one that is distinct from
crime control or punishment. It is not the outcome (the prevention of crime),
but the approach taken that characterizes crime prevention. In this article, crime
prevention refers to efforts to prevent crime or criminal offending in the first
instance – before the act has been committed. Crime prevention and crime control
share a common goal of trying to prevent the occurrence of a future criminal act,
but what further distinguishes them is that prevention originates outside of the
formal justice system.1 Crime prevention necessarily takes place outside of the
justice system because one of its goals is to prevent young people from coming
in contact with the formal justice system. In this respect, prevention is considered
the fourth pillar of crime reduction, alongside the institutions of police, courts, and
corrections (Waller, 2006).
This distinction draws attention to crime prevention as an alternative approach
to the more traditional responses to crime. Broadly, three main types of crime
536
Punishment & Society 15(5)
prevention can be delineated. Developmental prevention refers to interventions
designed to prevent the development of criminal potential in individuals, especially
those targeting risk and protective factors discovered in studies of human devel-
opment (Tremblay and Craig, 1995). Community prevention refers to interventions
designed to change the social conditions and institutions (e.g. families, peers, social
norms, clubs, organizations) that influence offending in residential communities
(Hope, 1995). Situational prevention refers to interventions designed to prevent
the occurrence of crimes by reducing opportunities for offending and increasing its
risk and difficulty (Clarke, 2009).
To explore our thesis we have written about the history of crime prevention in
the USA, a history that is largely unknown. We believe this to be important
because crime prevention has long figured prominently in the scholarly and applied
traditions of criminology. This contributes to the history of criminology as a dis-
cipline of which there is a robust body of scholarship (see, for example, Beirne,
1993; Laub, 1983; Laub and Sampson, 1991; Rafter, 2010; Rock, 2004;
Schlossman, 2012).
Many of these important writings draw upon our discipline’s early and famous
pioneers, as well as sometimes the ‘half-forgotten and misunderstood’ (Rafter,
2004: 735) and the completely ‘forgotten’ (Sherman, 2005) figures, in an effort to
situate their scholarly or applied influences during a particular period of time in the
advancement of criminological knowledge or its lineage to the modern era. This
makes for undoubtedly rich analysis and engaging reading. Less common are
histories of criminological concepts or sub-areas of the discipline that are not
framed around the biographical accounts of storied figures, men and women
alike. This makes for no less penetrating analysis, but it does have the effect of
introducing a wider cast of characters whose biographical details are sometimes left
out of the narrative. Broadly speaking, this is our approach here.
In the tradition of the social-historical approach, this article examines the devel-
opments of and influences on the concept of crime prevention in the USA over a
period spanning almost a full century. It is through this approach that we are able
to situate our subject in the political landscape of the day and among the institu-
tional influences that have come to shape criminological knowledge more generally
(Savelsberg and Flood, 2004).
We begin by documenting the early conceptions of crime prevention in the USA,
from the early 1930s to the 1960s. This is followed with analysis of the presidential
crime commissions of the 1960s, the associated loss of faith in the criminal justice
response to crime, the emergence of situational crime prevention, and the develop-
ment of a new generation of early childhood prevention studies. Next, we examine
a truly memorable development in the annals of US crime and justice: the 1994
federal crime bill. One of our interests here is in the debate, oftentimes vitriolic, that
occurred between proponents of prevention and punishment, and how prevention
came to be understood in the public discourse on crime. The modern movements of
prevention science and evidence-based policy complete our coverage of the history
of crime prevention in the USA.
Welsh and Pfeffer
537
Early conceptions of crime prevention
Historically, responses to crime in the United States have been influenced by the-
ories and strategies developed in Europe, with a particularly strong influence from
Britain. The history of crime prevention as a unique social concept in the USA can
be traced back to the early 1930s, with Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay’s (1942)
Chicago Area Project (CAP). The idea that crime prevention could take place
outside of the formal justice system may have already been considered due to
earlier influences, but the CAP was the first documented initiative in the United
States that measured crime prevention. The CAP was designed to produce social
change in communities that suffered from high delinquency rates and gang activity.
As part of the project, local civic leaders coordinated social service centers that
promoted community solidarity and counteracted social disorganization. More
than 20 different programs were developed for youths, featuring discussion
groups,...
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