Car theft is a major problem in Australia as the following statistics show. In 1987-1988, 120,305 vehicles were stolen Australia wide, and in 1988-89 this increased to 122,542. A large number of these vehicles were never recovered which would indicate that car theft has become a serious organised criminal activity.
"People don't seem to handle their anger well any more." These words were spoken by an official of an industry staff association whose members are widely subjected to customer harassment. The comment highlights an apparently growing phenomenon in the workplace: aggression expressed by consumers/clients/customers and others toward service providers.
Not all graffiti are written by alienated teenagers, and not all vandalism constitutes wilful damage. Graffiti and vandalism are complex, multi-faceted problems requiring a range of responses for their solution.
If beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, nowhere is this more evident than in the response to graffiti. To many train travellers they are ugly, anti-social daubs, while for their practitioners they represent an expression of individuality in an impersonal world.
In the past a rather gloomy picture of close-knit migrant communities, particularly in urban or industrial areas, has been painted. Biased media reporting and prejudice in wider society have depicted minority group enclaves as suffering from crime, disorder and inter-cultural conflict.
Effective crime prevention is any action that causes a reduction in the level of criminal activity and the resulting harm, or in the number of criminal offenders and their victims:
Crime prevention can be described in terms of three stages or levels - primary, secondary and tertiary prevention.
"Crime reduction" and "crime prevention" are essentially the same things - combinations of actions designed to eliminate and/or minimise the occurrence of crime and the harm associated with it. There is no empirical basis for the use of one term over the other.
Situational crime prevention is a primary prevention measure. This means that it is directed at stopping crime problems before they occur. Like other primary crime prevention measures, situational prevention tends to focus on reducing crime opportunities rather than on the characteristics of criminals or potential criminals.
Situational prevention seeks to reduce opportunities for specific categories of crime by increasing the associated risks and difficulties and reducing the rewards. It comprises three main elements:
Developmental and early intervention strategies for the reduction and prevention of crime can operate across all three levels of prevention: primary, secondary and tertiary.
Developmental prevention is intervention early in developmental pathways that may lead to the emergence and recurrence of criminal behaviours and other social problems. It does not just mean early in life, although inevitably many of the critical moments for effective intervention will occur during the early years.
Community crime prevention is a mixture of primary and secondary approaches. Typically a combination of developmental and situational crime prevention, it is intended to change the social conditions that are believed to sustain crime in communities. There are four closely related approaches to community crime prevention.