Showing papers in "European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research in 1995"

Identifying, explaining, and targeting burglary ‘hot spots’

Abstract: The data-gathering and crime analysis part of the Task Force programme (while not yet completed) has generated some useful information about burglary in Cambridge which might inform a crime prevention strategy. The research has shown that residential burglary is not evenly distributed across Cambridge, but tends to be clustered in the northwest of the City. It has also shown that even in these high-burglary areas there are ‘hot spots’ and ‘cold spots’ of crime. These hot spots account for a relatively large proportion of all burglary. One factor contributing to the high burglary counts in the hot spot area is the high number of repeat burglaries, with as many as 35 percent of all burglaries recorded in the area being one of a repeat series of burglaries. Another factor which might have contributed to the high burglary counts was the abundance of access and escape routes of the kind identified in the environmental survey. Perhaps the most important factor which explains the high number of burglaries was the closeness of the area to the place of residence of known offenders. The hot spot site thus provides a local source of easy and rewarding opportunities for offenders who live in these areas. In the second stage of its work, the Cambridge Burglary Task Force will collate the information that has been collected in the first stage and devise appropriate intervention strategies. We aim to continue to monitor crime and criminals in the area and to evaluate the effectiveness the programmes implemented.

Theft from cars: reduced or displaced?

Abstract: Over the last decade situational prevention has been an important part of Dutch crime prevention policy, and many programmes have proved to be successful in reducing crime (Ministry of Justice, 1990; Willemse, 1995). As our theoretical and empirical knowledge of the effects of situational prevention has grown, we now know that this type of crime prevention may have two side-effects (Clarke, 1992; Clarke and Weisburd, 1994; Hesseling, 1994). Firstly, the reduction in crime in a programme area may go hand in hand with some form of displacement to other targets, times, places, methods or offences. Secondly, the intervention may also reduce crime in areas adjacent to the programme or for other targets. Thus the opposite of displacement occurs, a phenomenon known as diffusion of benefits. Although displacement is usually limited in extent and scope it nevertheless limits the effects of crime prevention programmes. Furthermore, some forms of displacement could be considered as malign, for example, when offenders switch from non-violent to violent methods (Barr and Pease, 1992). So one should always be aware of the danger that some preventive measures or programmes may result in displacement. The issue of displacement was also one of the reasons for evaluating a programme to reduce theft from cars in the inner city of Rotterdam. During the planning of the programme several critics stated that it would merely displace crime to other areas or to other offences. For example, one of the participants in the programme, the Chamber of Commerce, feared that offenders would switch to robbing shopkeepers. Whether the programme led to displacement is the main topic of this paper. The findings are based on the evaluation carried out by the Research and Documentation Centre of the Ministry of Justice (Hesseling and Aron, forthcoming).

Insurance and Crime

Abstract: ARTICLES: 1. Editorial, 2. The role of the insurance industry in piloting private sector security and prevention policy - A. Lemaitre 3. Crime and insurance: a functional approach - R. Arnold 4. Moral hazard and insurance fraud - R. Litton 5. Insurance fraud - H. Niemi 6. Economics, crime and the market: the role of household content insurance - J. Spencer and D. Ward 7. Insurance, fraud and justice - J.-L. Bacher 8. The potential value of international comparisons; 9. The future VAT system in the European Union 10. Crime institute profile: Centre for Penal and Criminological Research (CPCR), Section of Penal Sciences, University of Athens