Situational Crime Prevention Essay

situational measures for reducing opportunities to commit crime by using an effective design, management and use of urban space and the products that are at society’s utility (Cozens, 2008). There is further divide into forms – social interventions and situational, CCTV systems belong to de reams of the situational crime prevention, that aims at modifying the immediate conditions in which crime occurs (Tilley, 2009).
It is widely recognised that opportunity plays an important role in behaviour shaping, a way of reducing undesirable behaviour is to remove opportunity or modify environment around it. Removal of opportunity or modification of environment does not mean that criminal behaviour is made impossible. The best illustration of the situational crime prevention at work is Clarke and Mayhew’s (1988, cited in
According to Tilley (2009) situational crime prevention is heavily backed up with the theory, and the basics were laid out in a Home Office Research study, Crime as Opportunity, in 1976. Study displayed the power of opportunity in determining behaviour. Opportunity was classified in two ways - in relation to the people and in relation to the object. In relation to the people the most common variables are age, sex and lifestyle, opportunities for crime can be affected by patterns of daily activities that follows from forms of social organisation (Tilley, 2009). Clarke (2012:2) translates it into criminological concept, stating that “…crime is a result of an interaction between a motivated offender and a criminal opportunity” or as Garland (2000) labelled it ‘criminology of everyday life’. He notes that opportunity and provocation appeared to be more important than dispositional factors. Clarke (1992, cited in Ainsworth,