Reducing Opportunities for Crime at Places Can Improve Society and Its Social Institutions

• In Event: Crime Prevention for Social Impact and Social Justice III

Abstract

Reducing crime opportunities at places is a successful strategy to reduce actual crime. Rooted in the crime prevention model of situational crime prevention, this is often viewed as tertiary crime prevention. There is a myriad of empirical support for such approaches to prevent crime in the context of property crime, violent crime, and social disorder. However, despite its theoretical grounding and empirical support, reducing crime opportunities at places has its criticisms. One of those criticisms is that reducing crime opportunities at places does not address the underlying social processes that lead to crime and, therefore, falls short when it comes to social impact and social justice. These underlying social processes, or root causes, are often stated as being the crime opportunities themselves, but this is an oversimplification of the environment within which crime occurs. This conceptual paper will examine how reducing crime at places is also an opportunity to have a greater social impact and improve social justice, particularly when displacement may occur. It will discuss opportunity reduction in its traditional form, but also in a broader context that considers a fuller extent of the costs and benefits of different opportunity reductions for crime at places.

Authors

• Martin A. Andresen, Simon Fraser University

• Tarah Hodgkinson, Wilfrid Laurier University