Preventing Crime

Combating crime and preventing crime are two sides of the same coin: preventing criminal acts occurring or preventing them from occurring again. Nonetheless, people commonly think of prevention as primarily being about “soft” measures aimed principally at children and young people, while “real” crime fighting involves collecting intelligence, making arrests, investigating and punishing after criminal acts have been committed. This is a narrow, old-fashioned and not particularly productive approach.

Burglaries and the associated theft of valuables from homes are often referred to as “everyday crimes”. This form of property crime affects many ordinary people in what they like to think of as the safety of their own home. In addition to causing financial loss and physical damage to buildings, fixtures and fittings, it is often the psychological harm that is worst for the victims. Their home has been invaded by strangers, their sense of safety has diminished, and their home and property has been desecrated and defiled. It is, therefore, not strange that this is a form of crime that most people want the police to take seriously, even though burglary prevention and investigation have not always been at the top of the police’s list of priorities.

What is the problem with young people participating in gangs? And why do gangs represent a crime problem? A boy is not necessarily a criminal just because he is going out to “meet the gang”. In today’s slang the term “gang” could mean a regular group of friends who do fun things together.¹ However, in a criminological sense, the term “gang” has a far more specific meaning. Gang researchers (e.g. Decker and Van Winkle 1996: 31) would claim that a group must satisfy at least three criteria in order to be considered a gang in a criminological sense: a gang is an age-graded peer group that exhibits some permanence, engages in criminal activity as a core activity and has some symbolic representation of group membership (name, symbols, dress, etc.). If a group does not satisfy all three criteria, then it is something other than a gang, for example a group of friends, a network or part of a broader subculture. Similarly, the Eurogang network, a group of American and European gang researchers, has defined gangs as “any durable, street-oriented youth group whose identity includes involvement in illegal activity” (Weerman et al. 2009: 20).²

What constitutes organised crime, or how it should be defined, is a subject of intense debate (Korsell and Larsson 2011; Beare 2003; Edwards and Gill 2003). Part of the disagreement concerns whether organised crime is a phenomenon that should be defined on the basis of what characterises criminal organisations or what characterises organised criminals and their illegal activities. Taking the latter perspective as our starting point, we can at least say that it involves profit-oriented criminal activities with multiple participants who collaborate over time based on a degree of structure and role allocation. Much of our understanding (some would say the “social construct”) of the phenomenon of organised crime has traditionally been based on the Italian Mafia as a sort of archetype of a hierarchical criminal organisation (Cressey 1969). Recent analyses by both researchers and the police have shown that most of what we consider organised crime can better be understood as criminal networks rather than hierarchical organisational structures (Paoli 1998; Williams 1998; Klerks 2001; Korsell and Larsson 2011). Meanwhile, statutory provisions covering organised crime are often based on notions of fixed and hierarchical organisations. In reality, much of the organised crime such provisions seek to impact is often based on looser “project teams” originating from criminal networks that disband once the specific project has been completed.

In most countries it is a criminal offence to drive a vehicle under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants. There are good reasons for this. According to The Handbook of Road Safety Measures (Høye et al. 2012: chapter 8.6),¹ the effects of alcohol on drivers is one of the factors that most increases the risk of road accidents. Alcohol and other intoxicants impair your senses, reduce your ability to process information and make decisions, impair your ability to react and can weaken inhibitions against driving under the influence, exceeding the speed limit or other risky behaviours. Your chances of having an accident increase dramatically the higher your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) (Figure 5.1).

What does a counterterrorism strategy look like if we consider terrorism primarily as a serious form of crime and base our countermeasures on a holistic crime prevention approach?

One of the main aims of this book has been to develop a comprehensive, generic, theory-based model for preventing various forms of crime. The holistic theory of prevention mechanisms has proven to be a good basis for thinking systematically about this, while at the same time most people find it easy to understand. The nine different prevention mechanisms described in the book explain how measures can help to reduce the occurrence of criminal acts or the consequences of such actions. Based on the nine mechanisms and five very different types of crime, we have specified relevant means and who is responsible for implementing them, who the target groups are, and the strengths and advantages of the sub-strategies, as well as the limitations and the unintended side effects. The purpose has been to demonstrate that the model really is generic and can be used to develop comprehensive strategies for preventing most — and very diverse — forms of crime. The model is both a theoretical aid for expanding our understanding of a crime phenomenon and a practical tool for those professions in society tasked with preventing crime, meaning that they will have more room for action and will be helped to discover and assess possible means. The model could have been far more complex and sophisticated,¹ but this would have made it harder to understand for ordinary practitioners and thereby also less useful for practical crime prevention. One of the goals has been to make the theoretical model so simple and obvious that it can be understood and used by ordinary police officers, crime prevention officers, politicians and policy-makers.