Finding the Root Causes of Crime
Crime prevention is not a new idea. In fact, most police forces have been actively engaged in crime prevention activities for a number of years, and their efforts are increasingly being supplemented by volunteer based neighborhood and community initiatives. What is new is the emerging tendency to shift away from an exclusive focus on police based approaches in favor of a broader conception of how to prevent crime. The result is a number of new possibilities for delivering on the promise of crime prevention, and the emergence of a number of new participants in the area of prevention activities. One example of this new development is the direct participation of municipal governments in the organization of crime prevention structures and the delivery of crime prevention services and activities.
The involvement of municipal governments in the area of crime prevention has been spurred by the popularity of municipal crime prevention councils in Europe (especially in France), and by the successes of locally organized and community-based initiatives in North America. In both cases, the involvement reflects a sense that, whatever crime prevention is, the police cannot do it alone. Moreover, there is a growing awareness that crime prevention is an inherently political domain: citizens are increasingly vocal about where and how scarce municipal resources are allocated in the “war” on crime, and politicians are increasingly being held accountable for the successes or failures of these initiatives. Crime prevention is everyone’s business, and given that crime both occurs and is fought in local communities, it is hardly surprising that municipal government involvement now goes well beyond the traditional role of funding a police force and leaving the problem to them.
When reflecting on society’s defenses against crime, criminologists and