Crime control measures aim to reduce the likelihood of criminal activities. Also, it helps prevent the potential adverse effects of such crimes on the community and people, such as fear of crime, through offering interventions that will influence the multiple causes of these crimes. Criminality may be approached from three basic angles: the immediate surroundings, the social sphere, and the larger society and surroundings. Criminal activities can be mitigated by employing situational crime prevention strategies. The society aims at reducing crime through the application of various theories. The paper explores situational crime prevention and how it utilizes rational choice theory to help individuals understand and reduce criminal activities.
Situational crime prevention is a strategy that aims at reducing the occurrence of crimes in society through various techniques, such as increasing risks, eradicating offenders’ excuses, avoiding provocations, boosting the efforts that offenders may need to carry out the crime, and reducing rewards. It is a procedure reflecting on a theory that explains why and how criminal acts occur in a particular area (Berkell 9). Usually, situational crime prevention offers a framework for intervention by assessing the chances provided by specific crime situations. Therefore the situation crime prevention method begins with a thorough examination of the nature and scope of a crime issue, finds potential causes, develops and executes remedies, and then assesses the efficacy of those measures (Berkell, p.9). Research shows that the method differs significantly from other criminal viewpoints since it aims to forecast criminal conduct by concentrating on the origins of offenses in the situations where they occur rather than arresting and punishing criminals.
Reducing crime chances is the primary focus of situational crime prevention, rather than attempting to solve “root causes” of criminal activity, including societal disparities (Clarke). Research considers that introducing rational choice theory in criminal investigations has been beneficial (Clarke). Rational crime theory links with situational crime control in dealing with illegal activities. Research also shows that rational crime theory and its relation to situational crime prevention offer the most effective and cost-efficient means of addressing the world’s most pressing crime issues.
Situational crime prevention link with rational crime theory in various ways, helping understand and control crime. First, situation crime control explores the environment that makes an individual commit a crime by examining rational crime theory that states individuals commit offenses due to their willingness (Berkell 9). Situation analysis help understand crime by exploring the surroundings that make an individual feel to commit a crime in reflection on rational crime theory (Clarke). Rational crime theory provides situational crime prevention with methods that are part of the surrounding that individuals use to commit a crime (Clarke). The situation crime prevention linked with rational crime theory controls crime by inducing risks and reducing benefits in the environment that makes an individual commit crime (Clarke). Besides, it also reduces temptations and excuses for crime.
In conclusion, situation prevention theory discourages crime in society by exploring the environment that makes individuals commit crimes through rational crime theory. In eliminating offenses, situation crime prevention increases risk and minimizes rewards in the environment that makes an individual commit offense. Rational crime theory focuses on why the individual commits an offense, not the environment. Together the two theories help understand criminal activities in society and how the environment may lead to individuals committing offences, which help reduce instances of crime in community.
Work Cited
Berkell, K. “A criminological approach to preventing terrorism: Situational crime prevention and the crime prevention literature.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 30.9 (2019): 1283-1311.. https://icct.nl/app/uploads/2020/11/Chapter-3.pdf
Clarke, Ronald V. “The theory and practice of situational crime prevention.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. 2018.https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.327
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