Situational crime prevention

Situational Crime Prevention Situational Crime Prevention is crucial because it eliminates certain crimes by reducing the opportunity for the reward. Most prevention can start with people locking their doors and windows, or placing bars on their homes and business. The opportunity for crime can happen at any time due to what the target is, what is motivating the offender to commit that certain crime, and the lack of guards in the area during the time of the incident. (Clarke) To decrease criminal problems police need to increase patrol where areas are considered “hot” to make it difficult to commit the crime because the opportunity has been removed. Crime will happen if the criminal is given the opportunity or if the offender is provoked to commit a crime, the crimes will be intentional and not just done at random and can cause someone to get hurt. Situational crime prevention is the result of strategies use by police to firewall any opportunity a criminal might consider to commit and make it harder to see the rewards for that particular crime by elimination suitable targets with proper patrol. (NCPC) One way to prevent crime is to focus on any poor condition in your area such as abandoned homes or poor lighting to avoid any crime. By developing an organized neighborhood watch in your area you can eliminate crime. (NATW) Through neighborhood watches things that could lead up to a crime can be avoided because the community is involved and watching out for one and other. Neighborhood watch was introduced in Queens, New York in the late 1960’s when Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered. It was not until 1972 when the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) began the “watch group” called National Neighborhood Watch Program that it gained nationwide recognition for its efforts. (Pastore, Maguire) Although in recent years the neighborhood watch system started becoming controversial because of some using weapons against Neighborhood watch policies. In 2012