Situational crime prevention and Public Safety Canada’s crime-prevention programme

Abstract

This study examines the work undertaken by Canada's National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) under the auspices of the Public Safety Canada. NCPC operates with a social development approach to preventing crime, focussing largely on small pilot projects that work with at-risk youth. We suggest that this is a rather narrow definition of crime prevention and that it may not necessarily be an optimal strategy for all crime preventions in Canada. In particular, many international crime and safety organizations suggest the need for integrated approaches in crime prevention. In addition, there is an array of evidence-based situational crime prevention (SCP) strategies from which Canada might benefit. SCP has a history of success in designing out a wide range of crimes from credit card fraud to car theft and burglary. It is proposed that, at minimum, a more inclusive crime-prevention programme that incorporates SCP would produce a significant net benefit to the safety of Canadians.

Utilizing cyberplace managers to prevent and control cybercrimes: a vignette experimental study

“…The effectiveness of SCP in combating traditional crimes, ranging from robberies to vandalism, is well documented (Hodgkinson and Farrell 2018;Brewer et al 2019). Additionally, SCP is widely used to combat non-traditional crimes such as wildlife crime (Pires and Clarke 2011;Kurland et al 2017;Moreto and Gau 2017;Burton et al 2020), terrorism (Clarke and Newman 2009;Mandala and Freilich 2018;Freilich et al 2019), and maritime piracy (Shane et al 2015(Shane et al , 2018.…”

Reducing student burglary victimisation using the Nudge approach

“…Situational Crime Prevention (SCP), for example, developed by Ron Clarke in 1983 (Clarke, 1983) is concerned with developing practical measures to prevent crime by restricting the opportunities for its commission, primarily through manipulations of immediate environments (Hodgkinson & Farrell, 2017). SCP's theoretical underpinnings lie in routine activities theory (see Cohen & Felson, 1979) and rational choice theory (see Clarke & Cornish, 1985).…”