OCR A-Level Sociology H580
Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity
Families and RelationshipsComponent 01
Youth SubculturesComponent 01
MediaComponent 01
Research Methods and Researching Social Inequalities
Understanding Social Inequalities
Globalisation and the Digital Social World
Crime and DevianceComponent 03
EducationComponent 03
Religion, Belief and FaithComponent 03
Crime and Deviance
Situational crime prevention, zero tolerance and punitive justice
- 3 things to know
- Component 03
Overview
Recall questions on situational crime prevention, target hardening, rational choice and displacement, Wilson and Kelling's broken windows thesis, zero tolerance policing and the disputed New York evidence, environmental crime prevention, retributive justice, punitive punishment, deterrence and incapacitation, and Foucault's disciplinary power.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
Distinguish between general and individual deterrence, and explain what incapacitation adds.
How does Foucault's account of disciplinary power help explain modern crime control?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
Define situational crime prevention.
Model answer
Situational crime prevention aims to reduce the opportunities for crime by altering the immediate physical and social settings in which it occurs, rather than by changing offenders or the wider society.
- 2
What is target hardening, and what are its typical forms?
Model answer
Target hardening means making a potential target physically more difficult or risky to attack, using measures such as door and window locks, shutters, vehicle immobilisers, security tagging on goods and surveillance cameras.
- 3
On what view of the offender does situational crime prevention rest?
Model answer
It rests on rational choice: because offenders are assumed to weigh effort, risk and reward before acting, increasing the effort and risk and reducing the reward is expected to deter them at the point of decision.
- 4
What is displacement, and what forms can it take?
Model answer
Displacement is the diversion rather than the prevention of crime when opportunities are blocked, and it can be spatial by moving to another area, temporal by offending at another time, target displacement to a different victim, tactical displacement using a different method, or functional displacement to a different type of offence.
- 5
Give two further criticisms of situational crime prevention.
Model answer
It ignores the root causes of offending and so offers no long-term solution, and it concentrates on opportunistic street and property crime while doing nothing about domestic violence, corporate crime or state crime.
- 6
What is the broken windows thesis?
Model answer
Wilson and Kelling argued that visible signs of disorder such as broken windows, graffiti and begging signal that nobody cares about an area, so respectable residents withdraw, informal control collapses and more serious crime moves in.
Other ways to work this
The same content, four other ways.
What is inside Levo
Six ways to work the same material.
Every question in Crime and Deviance, on a schedule.
Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.
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