Assess Sociological View of Crime Reduction Strategies.

Assess sociological view of crime reduction strategies.

Sociologist look at ways in which crime can be prevented in a way to reduce crime rates, for this reason a variety of different crime strategies have been put forward. One sociologist which looks at this, addressed in item A is Wilson et al who looked bat environmental crime reduction. He believed that if a piece of property was that by leaving property’s abandoned and broken windows unrepaired this consequences into giving people the idea that no one cares. In these specific neighbourhoods there is an absence of both formal and informal social control. This is because police are only concerned with serious crime and turn a blind eye to petty behaviour while members of the community feel powerless leading to many of them moving out if given the chance. For this reason a zero tolerance policing strategy needs to be adapted to reduce crime. This consists of firstly an environmental improvement strategy needs to take place where any broken window must immediately be repaired, abounded cars towed without delay etc. otherwise more deviant behaviour will occur. Secondly the police must adopt a zero tolerance policing strategy where instead of merely reacting to crime they must proactively tackle even the slightest sign of disorder, even if it’s not criminal. This will stop neighbourhood crime and prevent serious crime taking place.

This techniques has shown great success especially in the New York clean car program, where cars are taken out of service immediately if they had graffiti on them, only returning when they are clean. As a result graffiti was largely removed from the subway. This is also useful in adapting it to other deviant activities for example drug dealing and taking. In addition when the same approach was extended to the city’s police areas, it was found that between 1993 and 1009 there was a significant fall in crime in the city including a 50% drop in homicide rate. However, this drop may not...