Community Crime Prevention

Community Crime Prevention

Crime prevention is viewed as a community responsibility. In collaboration with the police, society can rally against deviant behaviors and prevent crime from occurring in their neighborhoods. The reading from Schneider Stephen on “Refocusing crime prevention: collective action and the quest for community” gives a detailed report on how the community can be mobilized to play an active role in the prevention of crime. The reading explores several themes regarding crime prevention.

Community crime prevention has historical roots in America. Despite modern perceptions of crime control as the exclusive purview of the state, (re-)emergence of crime prevention in the United States beginning in the late 1960s represented the type of responsibilities that for centuries had been carried out by local communities (Schneider, 2007, p. 20). Therefore, the community plays a significant role in preventing crime before the implementation of modern crime control methods.

Informal social control is an effective way of preventing crime locally. Informal social control is based on and is said to restrict, crime and incivilities through proprietary enforcement by community members of local custom, joint agreement, social norms, and unwritten rules that guide what they consider to be appropriate and acceptable behavior for their neighborhood (Schneider, 2007, p. 24). When the members of a community understand the unwritten norms, they maintain high moral standards to avoid being labeled as deviants. Furthermore, children born in communities practicing informal social control grow up with the societal, ethical V Vin them. Thus, such children cannot engage in crime since it goes against their moral standards.

Collective action strategies are the best way of implementing community crime prevention. Private-minded policies undermine the essence of community crime prevention because when people begin to protect themselves as individuals and not as a community, the battle against crime is effectively lost (Schneider, 2007, p. 28). When society implements crime prevention collectively, they share the same values, and it is easier to unite. Furthermore, collective action helps the community develop strong bonds that are useful in implementing other societal developmental projects.

Reference

Schneider, S. (2007). Refocusing crime prevention: Collective action and the quest for community. University of Toronto Press.