NCJ Number
139883
Date Published
Unknown
Length
18 pages
Annotation
Many life- and society-threatening events have been confronted by an approach that combines prevention and a situational orientation. This same approach can be applied to crime prevention, as has been done in the Netherlands, as an alternative to the increasing rates of incarceration found in the U.S. and other Western countries.
Abstract
Even though the crime rate in the Netherlands began to rise drastically in the 1980s, it remained low contrasted with other countries. The main response to increasing imprisonment rates was the decriminalization of abortion, squatting, drug use, and other minor offenses. However, as general social reform and rehabilitation lost credibility, there was a shift toward enhanced crime prevention. An Interdepartmental Committee for Social Crime Prevention was created in 1985 to subsidize promising local crime prevention projects. Crime prevention was expanded to victims and situational factors; key words were target hardening, environmental design, defensible space, and opportunity reduction. There was an increased emphasis on informal and semi-informal means of community social control. Four examples of successful situational oriented projects are described involving public transport, schools, public housing, and shopping centers. Despite the results of a meta-evaluation of these projects, which indicated that situational crime prevention has good possibilities to solve present and future crime problems, there are critics who raise specific arguments against the prevention approach. Three arguments appear most frequently: (1) crime prevention works only for minor offenses; (2) crime prevention results in displacement; and (3) crime prevention is superficial. 64 references