NCJ Number
217687
Date Published
2006
Length
406 pages
Annotation
This book provides a unique, new perspective for thinking about crime and how modern society can reduce crime’s ecosystem and limit its diversity.
Abstract
Crime is impelled by life itself. All people have a natural capacity to discover and enjoy what they are not supposed to do. Sometimes people stumble across illicit opportunities quite by accident. Other times they set out to find these opportunities. The term “natural crime reduction” might be used to describe measures that shirk a crime’s niche, or stop its growth. Such reduction includes a host of ideas and techniques known as situational crime prevention, crime prevention through environmental design, secure by design, and problem-oriented policing. Such prevention draws upon nature’s realities. National crime prevention seeks to design products that are hard to steal and settings that are more suitable for human use and safety. This book discusses crime and security as part of nature, drawing from the scientific outlook of the life sciences. Natural crime reduction prevents crime with actions that are as direct and tangible as possible. It does not promise human perfectibility or rely on eventuality. Rather, it looks toward changes that are quickly evident and verifiable. This book is about crime in motion, its living processes. Life has seven special requirements: organization, adaptation, metabolism, movement, growth, reproduction, and irritability. How crime meets each of these requirements is examined in the context of its larger environment. This book is intended for college-level students who have already been exposed to standard theories of crime. Exhibits and appendixes A-D