Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention

Situational crime prevention has drawn increasing interest in recent years, yet the debate has looked mainly at whether it ‘works’ to prevent crime. Little attention has been paid to how it alters conceptions and strategies of crime prevention in modern society, and to the ethical questions concerning its potential impact on freedom and privacy.This volume addresses the ethics of situational crime prevention. Are situational crime prevention strategies likely to constrain unduly people's freedom of movement? Do such strategies involve an intrusive scrutiny of people's everyday activities? Can ethical principles be developed that would help distinguish acceptable from unacceptable forms of intervention?It also examines the place of situational crime prevention within criminology. To what extent does its emergence represent a basic shift in thinking about the nature of crime, and about prospects and strategies for dealing with it? To what extent is crime being treated as a ‘normal’ risk to be managed? How far does situational crime prevention place responsibility for crime prevention beyond the state apparatus to the organisations and institutions of civil society? What are the social and political implications of doing so?These questions are addressed by twelve distinguished criminologists in the papers which make up the volume. Together they advance our understanding of the ethical and societal questions underlying crime prevention.Contributors:Ron Clarke, Adam Crawford, Antony Duff, David Garland, Tim Hope, Richard Jones, John Kleinig, Clifford Shearing, David J. Smith, Richard Sparks, Andrew von Hirsch and Alison Wakefield.'...presents several unique questions regarding the use of crime prevention strategies.' Robert Hanser writing in The Literature of Criminal Justice January 2001