NCJ Number
148765
Journal
Deviance et societe Volume: 17 Issue: 3 Dated: (1993) Pages: 235-260
Date Published
1994
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This paper describes an original experiment in private policing, initiated in a sociocultural context favoring community, by a shopping mall in a neighborhood considered a hard neighborhood.
Abstract
This experiment challenges many generally accepted ideas about the prevention of incivilities in a privately owned space open to the public. A decline in the losses incurred by the supermarket cannot be the only criterion by which the efficiency of situational crime prevention can be evaluated. Specific community crime prevention programs, focusing on youth and on the perceived causes of their idleness and their incivilities should also be taken into account. This approach upsets the balance of the ordinary division of labor related to social control. Although a long-term evaluation of the experiment's success remains a difficult task, especially with respect to the evaluation criteria to be used, it still leaves room for a new approach to shopping malls in France. These malls can be viewed as more than organized victims struggling to defend their premises. Instead, they can be viewed as possible partners in the production of urban safety. (Author abstract modified)