7.2.3.1 Crime Prevention Measures
People can take crime prevention measures to protect themselves and their property, to reassure themselves and reduce risk.
The British police, for example, have published advice – Protecting your home from crime – and many insurance companies also make recommendations. The police want to reduce crime statistics and the insurance companies want to reduce the number of payouts they have to make.
The UK Government has also published advice on how neighbours can watch out for each other to Help make your neighbourhood a safer place. These ‘neighbourhood watch schemes’ have the advantage of increasing community cohesion as well as helping to deter crime. Potential criminals know that it is more likely that neighbours would notice suspicious activity, and that the police are more likely to be called, where such schemes are in operation.
There has been a marked increase in the number of gated communities in Britain and America. These are crime prevention measures for those inside them, but they are divisive. They increase everybody’s level of fear and distrust – both inside and outside – as described, for example, in an article entitled Why are fear and distrust spiralling in twenty-first century Britain?[1]
“While crime has been falling steadily since 1995, the majority of Britons think it is rising. Liverpool is a classic example of a place where fear of crime rather than crime itself is the problem.
The evidence from around the world and from different historical periods shows that increasing levels of fear are the consequence of growing visible physical inequality and segregation in the environment.
…Fear and distrust are linked, with research showing that levels of trust correlate with fear in society.
Increasingly stark segregation fuels a human tendency to surround oneself only with groups similar to oneself and perceive those who are different as dangerous.”
Fear and distrust, fuelled by sensational media reports and the National Rifle Association, have also led to an increase in gun ownership and the employment of private security services in America – as reviewed in the following sub-sections.
A population might pay less tax, because of the reduced cost of policing, if it takes responsibility for a level of self-protection. Also, some insurance companies offer reduced premiums for households which have installed crime-prevention measures, and for those in neighbourhood-watch areas, reflecting their effectiveness.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/7231a.htm.
[1] This article was available in January 2019 on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website, at https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/why-are-fear-and-distrust-spiralling-twenty-first-century-britain. It is no longer online.