The enforcement approach to crime prevention

Abstract

When local government authorities began to develop criminal policies with the police in the 1980s, crime prevention was advocated as an inclusive, holistic approach to crime control that had the potential to challenge the prevailing justice paradigm. To date this new prevention paradigm has not been realized in England and Wales. The police and courts are being relied upon more than ever, and relatively few crime prevention initiatives are directed towards the underlying social and economic determinants of crime. Moreover, in the past 15 years crime prevention partnerships have increasingly resorted to administrative and civil law powers such as fixed penalty notices and injunctions. Rather than provide an alternative to the enforcement approach of the criminal justice system, in England and Wales crime prevention has so far proven to be an addition to, even an extension of criminal justice.