Question
Chapter 10 of your text talks about predicting future offending. First, how does your text define secondary prevention? What are the common risk factors associated with offending/repeat offending? Given these risk factors, what are fruitful crime prevention approaches? Is there anywhere in the Bible where we read that certain types of behaviors/conditions of the heart (risk factors) lead to criminal behavior?
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Sample paper
Crime prevention
For decades, the police force has been given the responsibilities and duties to protect the people of a nation and minimize if not eliminate crimes in a region. It is worth noting that the duties and responsibilities of preventing unlawful and punishable activities by the state and other authorities should not be solely be left in the hands of the police force and other security agencies but rather should be a collective effort. Often, criminal activities are aimed at harming not only an individual but an entire community, society or a country. Therefore, there is the need for all security agencies as well as the general public to design, create and develop ways to which they can prevent these harmful activities before they take place (“Crime Prevention in the Twentieth Century,” n.d.,). The greater the numbers of risks factors present, the greater the risk of criminal involvement. Notably, secondary crime prevention programs are mainly focused on preventing crime before it happens as well as successive incidents. This assignment will focus and identify different approaches that can be employed to keep the society and the country in general safe preventing crime before it happens as well as successive crime.
There are some common factors that are often associated with repetitive crime and that influences people to commit criminal activities over and over again. These factors include:
- Peer influence such as gang membership- when individuals associate themselves with criminal gangs, there is an increased probability that they will be influenced or forced to commit another crime by other gang members or friends (Farrington & Welsh, n.d).
- Peer and community rejection – in most cases, criminals find it very hard to integrate and relate well with their families and the community in general after serving their sentences forcing them to feel rejected and unwanted. Such conditions and instances force these individuals to fall back and continue to commit these crimes.
- Violent neighborhood and poor academic performance – insecure community and poor academic performance go hand in hand. When students and youths perform poorly in schools and live in a violent neighborhood, there is a high probability that they will end up in crime in an attempt to make their lives better.
Crime prevention seeks to create, develop and implement strategies to curb the increase of factors that lead to crime and victimization. Given the common factors above, there are two major approaches that can be implemented to prevent crime and they include:
- Environmental crime prevention approach – this approach widely attempts to pervert the features of the ecology such as the neighborhood that may activate criminal minds and behavior (Farrington & Welsh, n.d). This approach helps to curb perpetration by planning as well as corrupting physical ecology to reduce possibilities and chances for crime to take place. For example, situational crime prevention that modifies contextual factors to limit chances of engaging in crime.
- Social crime prevention – unlike the environmental crime prevention approach that focuses on the physical environment, social crime prevention widely emphasizes on changing the underlying social and economic factors that lead to perpetration as well as criminal motivation to limit their chances of commit a crime (Sorensen, 2012). However, this approach may take the time to give substantial results, unlike the physical approach. For example, the developmental crime prevention approach helps to intervene in the early life of a child to make sure that they influence his or her social life and limit all the chances of the child getting in crime.
The Bible is strongly against criminal behavior and activities and in the book of Proverbs 1:10, the Bible says that “my sons, if sinners entice you, do not consent.” This verse clearly shows that the physical environment in which a person lives can trigger their criminal behavior, and it is upon them to decide what is right and what is wrong. They should fight the feeling of engaging in crime.
References
Crime Prevention in the Twentieth Century. (n.d.). Crime Prevention: A Critical Introduction Crime prevention: A critical introduction, 5-27. doi:10.4135/9781446251317.n2
Farrington, D. P., & Welsh, B. C. (n.d.). Family-based crime prevention. Evidence-Based Crime Prevention, 22-55. doi:10.4324/9780203166697_chapter_3
Sorensen, S. L. (2012). Situational Crime Prevention and Opportunity Blocking. Handbook of Loss Prevention and Crime Prevention, 143-147. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-385246-5.00011-0
