Psychological Theories on Crime Prevention and Offender Treatment

The first 200 words of this essay...

Evaluation of Crime Prevention

And Offender Treatment Programs.

This essay will discuss and critically evaluate methods used by psychologists in environmental crime prevention and offender treatment programs.

One theory of how the environment could both prevent or encourage crime came to our understanding through architectural journalist Jane Jacobs (1961) when she identified a relationship between the design of the urban environment and criminal activity believed that these older urban developments had a steady community spirit in place which acted as a form of surveillance against street crime as people knew each other and recognised outsiders more easily but these older urban developments also had unsafe places where criminals could carry out their deviant trades without fear of apprehension. Jacobs further identified that whilst the older urban developments encouraged community spirit the newer urban developments encouraged a fortress spirit and communication between neighbours was more limited. She pointed out that the new forms of urban design broke down many of the traditional controls on criminal behavior, for example, the ability of residents to watch the street and the presence of people using the street both night and day, she suggested that this lack of natural guardianship