OFFICE CRIME PREVENTION

Office Crime Prevention

Office Crime Prevention

Introduction

Situational crime prevention is the science of reducing opportunities for crime. It focuses on specific forms of crime or disorder and analyzes the opportunity structure giving rise to these problems in particular, the immediate settings in which they occur. It then seeks to identify the changes in the design and management of these settings that will reduce crime with fewest economic and social costs. The changes are intended to discourage potential offenders by increasing the risks or difficulty of crime, making it less rewarding or excusable and reducing temptations or provocations.

Early situational prevention projects focused on ordinary crimes of burglary, car theft, vandalism, robbery, street prostitution, and violent assaults. More recently, situational prevention has been applied to a greater variety of crimes, in a greater variety of contexts, which include crime and misconduct in prisons, Internet frauds, organized crime, and terrorism.



Opportunity and Crime

Situational prevention is based on theories of environmental criminology, including routine activity theory, the rational choice perspective, and crime pattern theory. These theories share the following two assumptions that are important for situational prevention:

Opportunity is a cause of crime. Crime can only be explained as the result of the interaction between two broad causes: criminal motivation and opportunities for crime. Both must exist for a crime to occur. In fact, opportunity is an important cause of every form of crime, even a crime as important as homicide that is usually thought to be driven by strong motivation. This is shown by a comparison of homicide in the United States and in the United Kingdom. At present, the risk of being murdered in the United States is about 6 to 8 times greater than in the United Kingdom and in most other European countries. This is not because the United States is a more criminal country. In fact, recent research has found that rates of burglary and car theft are lesser in the United States than in the United Kingdom. Rather, the high U.S. murder rate is related to the widespread availability of guns, especially handguns, in America. In other words, the availability of guns is an important situational cause of homicide.

People are not compelled to commit crime by their backgrounds or personalities, but they choose to commit crimes because they judge these will bring them some benefit. The benefit is not always financial, but it might be excitement, sex, power, intoxication, revenge, recognition, loyalty, and love—indeed, anything that people want. Whether they choose to commit crime depends on their calculation of the chances of obtaining the reward and the risks of failure. Their choices may be made under emotional pressure or when intoxicated. They might also be split second, foolhardy, ill informed, or ill advised—but they are still choices.

These principles have important corollaries for situational prevention. First, criminally disposed individuals will commit more crimes if opportunities for crime increase. Second, generally law-abiding people can be drawn into committing (Clarke, 2005).

Crime Prevention

Crime tends to expand, gaining more strength and becoming more ...