Criminal Prevention Program

Criminal Prevention Program

Introduction

According to Bja.gov (2013) crime prevention is described as the strategies or approaches used to recognize, anticipate, appraise and address crime or factors that may lead to a crime. Thus, just as crime is not exclusive to certain groups or individuals living in a society. Therefore, crime prevention programs are targeted for different segments such as families, regions, community and individuals. Moreover, crime prevention is also used to describe acts or approaches to prevent individuals to commit crime for the targeted segment. Crime prevention programs that are based on communities help to bring about a change in the infrastructural design of those communities in terms of a physical or cultural change, in order to reduce crime. Some examples of community crime prevention programs include neighborhood watch, weed and seed and community policing.

Conversely, according to Criminaljusticereform.gov.bc.ca (n.d.) crime prevention is described as that act or strategies that aim to see different individuals in a society. Such as adolescents, teenagers and elderly, and think about what measures would help to prevent these groups of individuals from any form of crime or criminal activity.

Thus, this paper aims to investigate the crime prevention program based on communities. The discussion relevant to this particular program would include highlighting its history, success results and relevant associated criminological theories with them. These are discussed in the following section.

Discussion

History

Shaw (2013) notes that crime rate in metropolitan cities such as New York has always been high. Tracing its beginning to the early 1970's, the residents of the city were subjected to frequent muggings and robberies causing immense fear and apprehension amongst the residents of different neighborhoods in the city. This lead to the creation of different neighborhood crime watch patrols, one of the most popular till today being the Westside Crime Prevention Program-WCPP, which was aimed of patrolling and fighting organized crime in the upper-west side area of New York City. This particular program was launched in 1981 by certain concerned west-siders who were concerned about a rise in the crime rate in the urban or posh area of the city. WCPP was managed by a freelance writer Marjorie Cohen who organized and led this program in this district of the city. Being a non-profit organization, volunteers were asked to be part of the main team to help mobilize the organization in the west side of the city against petty crimes and drug abuse. Similarly, WCPP initiated certain programs that helped better to reach out to the different neighborhoods in the district. This included Neighborhood Watch Program and Crime Victims Witness Assistance Project. Both of these programs by WCPP proved to be both popular and effective in reducing the crime rate and activity level in the west side. So much so, that these programs were begun to be used as ideal models for crime prevention in rest of the New York.

Moreover, the efforts of WCPP were so widely acknowledged and appreciated that the organization began to provide training assistance to the residents of different areas ...