CRIME PREVENTION PROGRAMMES

CRIME PREVENTION PROGRAMMES

Introduction into the Subject Problem

As it has been outlined in the previous discussion of crime prevention, the primary duty of the government is to provide safe and fair justice systems to its citizens. Several factors influence the occurrence of criminal activities. The factors range from social factors, environmental, political, and even individual human characteristics (Oseiet al., 2016). In that case, it is adequate to say that taking care of the above factor could act as a form of protection from antisocial crimes. Any earlier intervention practices that are put in place to deter the occurrence of a crime is the best tool for crime prevention.

The issue of crime prevention has been active on debate platforms for quite some time now. It gets to be a challenge to define what to be addressed in the boundaries of crime prevention. Defining the term “crime prevention” is sometimes confusing. The word prevention has been previously used in different contradictory activities. One of the definitions of crime prevention is all efforts, programs, and policies developed from the private sector to control or reduce the damage that results from all acts defined as crimes in a particular state. In the above definition, the contribution of law enforcement is not regarded as part of the crime prevention activities(Osei et al., 2016). However, the description faced sharp criticism such that it was altered to cater to the part played by the law enforcement units towards crime prevention.After the alteration of the previous definition of the term crime prevention, the new meaning described it as all strategies, policies, and measures that are applied to reduce the possibility of the occurrence of various types of crime. This definition is concerning the role of the police, the judicial system, society, and other stakeholders that participate in activities that seek to reduce the occurrence of crimes. Below is a description of some of the most critical terms that are used when addressedmatters that concern crime prevention ((Elliott & Fagan, 2017)..

• Community Safety –refers to the possibility of the absence of harm from all aspects of society. It takes into consideration all various forms of damage to society or the public. It is a unique lens through which the community looks at the various programs that seek to manage or control the possibilities of harm.
• Crime prevention – It involves all types of activities, could it be from an individual, a group, private sector, or even the public, that seek to prevent the occurrence of a crime. The subject of crime prevention exists in three perspectives. Primary crime prevention works universally. The secondary crime prevention is activities that focus on crime prevention for the population at risk. Tertiary crime prevention measures that focus on controlling the activities of the offenders.
• Crime Reduction – these are measures and procedures that focus on reducing the number of criminal activities. They also focus on maintaining the side effects or ripple effects of a crime that has already occurred.
• Crime Control –it appreciates the occurrence of a crime and seeks to establish measures that ensure that the consequences of the crime remain controlled. The crime is not controlled, but it is contained.

The Current Situation of Crime Prevention

It is undeniable that the various law enforcement agencies have had an excellent job when it comes to handling crime issues. There is also a significant contribution to the same matters from the judicial systems. The government has ensured that there are adequate law enforcement officers in the country. It has also established some specialized agencies that focus on particular crimes such as drugs. Currently, there is so much contribution to the Judiciary in matters of handling crime activities. The collaboration of the judiciary system and the law enforcement agencies has achieved a reasonable impact in the field. Juvenile courts and prisons have been established to control the issue of delinquency. However, there is so much left out by the collaboration of the courts and law enforcement agencies. Take the place of the judicial systems. The courts have the tendency of waiting until a crime is committed so that they can take action(Segrave&Ratcliffe, 2017). More so, the court has no jurisdiction of going out into the streets to look for offenders of the crime. In that case, many are the time when the perpetrators of crimes do not get to the courts for legal action. The reason is that there might have been no police officer who to the responsibility of hunting down the offender. Another issue is that even when a police officer makes the efforts of hunting down crime perpetrators, many are the times that they take in the wrong person. Some police officers have elements of police brutality and racism. In such cases, you find that some of the police officers don not act in their limits when handling crime perpetrators.There have been several cases of police shooting, some of which end up shooting the wrong persons. On top of the assertions above, the police force is not adequate to control the issue of crime. They tend to chip in when a crime has already occurred. However, my argument is that the two entities discussed above could have an easy time if there was a contribution by other stakeholders in the matters that concern crime prevention. This calls for the development of private crime prevention programs(Segrave&Ratcliffe, 2017). Crime prevention programs are essential because their work has precedence over that of law enforcement agencies and the judicial system. The priority comes in because the crime prevention programs have their primary role in preventing the occurrence of crimes.

On the contrary, law enforcement agencies and judicial systems take action after a criminal activity has occurred. Therefore, including the efforts of the crime prevention programs could be a relief to the Judiciary and the entire police force. The reason is that crime prevention programs reduce the number of crimes that could have occurred in the community. As a consequence, the police force and Judiciary will have fewer criminal cases to handle, and thus, they could have resources to focus on other vital matters of nation-building.

The Role of Crime Prevention Programs in the Community

The law enforcement officers cannot be everywhere at the same time. This means that at some point, their reasonable people who not under the direct supervision of the police. One of the benefits of implementing crime prevention programs is that they encourage individuals in the community to play a role in preventing crimes in their neighborhood. Crime prevention programs encourage the participation of individuals, small groups, private organizations, and even voluntary community organizations into crime prevention. The earliest form of crime prevention program was a unique program implemented by law enforcement agencies(Segrave&Ratcliffe, 2017). The police played the public relations tactic to create a positive image for the community. Once the police got close to the people, they conducted mass education, focusing on the need and importance of individual and collective crime preventions. However, for confidential reasons, the police had only a few individuals who were made to be the ears and eyes of the police. However, typical the program was, it achieved so much the government decided to allocate more resources to establish independent community programs other than those managed by the police(Segrave&Ratcliffe, 2017). Scholars of the 1980s preferred the efforts of the community to prevent crimes to the police force. A compelling crime prevention program calls for the participation of individuals, groups, communities, business entities, and the government. The above entities result in the development of quality strategies for fighting against crimes in the community.

Reasons for adopting Crime Prevention programs

Crime prevention is more oriented to the community as it is to the government administration. This means that the government is at the advantage of having a more workforce fin the field of fighting crimes than it could afford. The government has only a few thousands of police officers that are deployed to manage crimes. However, crime prevention programs work to supplement the efforts of police polices. It is worth to know that the police force prioritizes security in public places. This leaves a room or vulnerability for criminals to target private facilities(Segrave&Ratcliffe, 2017). However, empowering every individual to have the responsibility of ensuring safety and prevention of crimes is an advantage as single individuals can reach where the police officers cannot. More so, the implementation of crime prevention programs is quite cost effective when compared to using the police to conduct that actual surveillance.

Evidence from various research projects indicates that there are better and cheaper outcomes when the government collaborates with the community to prevent the occurrence of crimes.A crime prevention program focuses on strengthening the basic and simple security and safetymeasure from the local contribution. Funding these programs means that they can get access to a broader population, and in the long run, the whole country will be connected by a network of these programs. It is worth understanding that there are different kinds and levels of crimes. Therefore, having one or two government agencies to deal with the issue of crime prevention compromises their effectiveness. However, the government might not be in a position to have tens of agencies that deal with every type of crime that is committed. It would be a burden even for their administration(Segrave&Ratcliffe, 2017). The reason provided earlier could justify one of the many reasons for having crime prevention programs. There could be as many programs as possible. This introduces the ability and chance of having specialized programs that deal with particular types of crimes only. The specialization of these programs introduces their effectiveness because their goals and objectives are narrowed down. It gets more manageable for the government to have reports generated by the programs. The government could then analyze the various reports to have statistics of how different kind of crimes is progressing. Where the progress is negative, there are ways of strengthening the efforts of the program concerned to correct the deficit. More so, when several programs are dealing with different approaches to crime prevention, it is possible to have some kinds of competition among the crime. In that case, the efforts of the programs are motivated, and their performance improves as a consequence.

As the current situation is, there is a high demand for criminal justice services. The rate of crimes has remained constant for some time. However, the recent changes in the sentencing laws and the strengthened parole systems have also contributed to the rise in demand for criminal justice services(Fennelly& Perry, 2018). The other factor that increases the cases of criminal justice is the recent move by the police force to target instances of family violence and drug-related crimes. The higher the demand for the judicial; systems, the higher the cost incurred to finance the services.

Other than the increase in the demand for judicial services, I believe that there is a reasonable economic burden that results from criminal activities(Fennelly& Perry, 2018). The economy suffers significant losses due to damages and vandalism of property, loss of human productivity due to injuries from violent crimes, accidents that cause loss of valuable property, and loss of life. It is a massive loss for the economy when the government spends millions of dollars to facilitate education programs, and the youth decide to indulge in drugs or other unwanted activities.

The other issue is that people tend to develop a fear of crimes(Fennelly& Perry, 2018). People will not be comfortable to live in a place where crimes are frequent. If they decide to live in such areas, then their participation in the community will be compromised. More so, the fear will disrupt the social and economic productivity of the victims. The criminal justice system might be adequate to control the offenders of crimes. However, the criminal justice system has little or nothing to do with the victims of crime fear victims. Therefore, there is a genuine reason to use other tools that fill in the gaps where the police force and judicial systems do not. In other words, community-based crime intervention programs are vital to address such exceptions.

A Case Study of the Community Crime Prevention Program: Its Effectiveness

Community Crime Prevention Program (CCPP) is focused on providing public safety by growing and nurturing the efforts of the local communities in fighting crimes. It provides a grant to help the local communities finance their routine activities in their efforts. The government works together with the local people through this program. There are many communities in the United States which have benefited from this program. The program focuses its energy on those populations that are at high risk of crimes. Recently, there have been donations designed for handling delinquency. Delinquency was given precedence over other crimes because it is exposed to the most vulnerable portion of the population(Kennedy, 2016). If not carefully addressed, delinquency could lead to a generational gap where the United States will lack human force for a given length of time because a part of its population will have gone to waste because of delinquency. The program has been quite active as it has invested in education. Involving youths in school is one of the strategies to reduce or prevent crime. Education is instrumental in molding children into responsible part of the community. It also helps a student to engage in more productive issues as they spent most of their life in school. This reduces their exposure to cases of crimes and other delinquency. The program is taking advantage of the fact that education is the best strategy to fight against crime. The program also has a focus on family crimes. CCPP has established other child-programs such as the Royal Commission. It recently allocated $40 million to the program so that it could handle crime activities resulting from families.Below is an outline of the benefits(Kennedy, 2016)

• Crime Prevention programs are efficient in reducing the costs that are associated with criminal justice systems. There is so much expenditure on government expenditure in the form of vehicles, lawyers, judges, processes of evidence collections, and many other more.
• The programs are quite efficient on how they lower the social and economic costs that are associated with crime
• The crime prevention programs have a hand in reducing the indirect costs of crime as they manifest themselves in hospitals and other forms of social services
• Crime prevention programs work as a tool for building social cohesion and also improve the quality of life in a community.

Community Crime Prevention Program Reduces the Cost of Jurisdiction System

It is obvious that crime prevention programs have a high cost of establishment. The program spends much of the government grants funds to establish a workforce that will be committed to its objectives on a daily basis. However, the high cost of the establishment of these programs is a shadow compared to the impact of the programs when they gain momentum. Below is a discussion of the various ways in which prevention of crimes contribute to building the economy.

As the current situation is, there is a high demand for criminal justice services(Elliott & Fagan, 2017). The rate of crimes has remained constant for some time. However, the recent changes in the sentencing laws and the strengthened parole systems have also contributed to the rise in demand for criminal justice services. The other factor that increases the cases of criminal justice is the recent move by the police force to target cases of family violence and drug-related crimes. The higher the demand for the judicial; systems, the higher the cost incurred to finance the services. Everyone can guess the portion of the budget in the Judiciary and police agencies that is spent on handling these cases. However, the work of crime prevention programs plays a significant role by reducing the number of these cases.

Other than the increase in the demand for judicial services, I believe that there is a reasonable economic burden that results from criminal activities. The economy suffers significant losses due to damages and vandalism of property, loss of human productivity due to injuries from violent crimes, accidents that cause loss of valuable property, and loss of life(Elliott & Fagan, 2017). It is a huge loss for the economy when the government spends millions of dollars to facilitate education programs, and the youth decide to indulge in drugs or other unwanted activities. Imagine where a part of the economy remains idle because of crimes. It is more than enough when the programs influence the revival of such economic sections by preventing the occurrence of crimes that had rendered them inactive.

References

Osei, G. K., Gorey, K. M., &Jozefowicz, D. M. H. (2016, February).Delinquency and crime prevention: Overview of research comparing treatment foster care and group care. In the Child & Youth Care Forum (Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 33-46).Springer US.

Elliott, D., & Fagan, A. (2017). The prevention of crime.John Wiley & Sons.

Segrave, M., &Ratcliffe, J. (2017).Community policing: A descriptive overview.

Fennelly, L. J., & Perry, M. A. (2018).Crime and Effective Community Crime Prevention Strategies. In CPTED and Traditional Security Countermeasures (pp. 364-366). CRC Press.

Kennedy, D. (2016). Community crime prevention. Advancing Criminology and Criminal Justice Policy, 92-103.