Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Working with communities to prevent and reduce crime

This report examines four approaches to crime reduction and community safety. It outlines the background to each approach, giving illustrations of the type of intervention that each approach might lead to. 

Title: Communities and Crime Prevention
Authors: Australian Institute of Criminology
Series: AICrime Reduction Matters, Number 5
Number of pages: 1
Date published: July 2003

There are four closely related approaches to community crime prevention:

Overcoming Community Disorganisation

Offending behaviour is seen as a result of breakdown in community social order.
Three potential causes for this breakdown are identified as

• Low socio-economic status

• Multiple ethnic groups 

• High rates of residential mobility.

Interventions in this approach take form through physical rehabilitation ie. improve housing stock; although recent emphasis has been on the empowerment of local residents to take preventative action to reduce crime through local community groups.

Responding to Community Disorder

Extension of first approach, rooted in "broken windows" argument, that run down areas attract further vandalism and low-level disorder simply by virtue of being run-down. Disorder is considered to be largely an urban problem marked by social and physical dysfunction. Interventions under this approach focus on efforts to tackle the disorderly behaviour before they take root in the community and lead to serious disorder. This prevention involves partnership between local authorities and the police.

Community Empowerment

Enables residents to take part in decision-making processes and management of activities that directly affect the perceived causes of crime. Programs under this approach can take many different forms, including services such as after-school recreation programs.

Community Regeneration

Includes crime prevention as part of a concept of overall community 'wellness'. Involves warding off onset of factors conducive to delinquency and crime such as middle class residents moving away, a lack of economic investment in the area. and high number of rental properties. Key goal of community regeneration programs is transfer of economical and political resources to local institutions and residents, helping enable the community to tackle key community level risk factors of delinquency.

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Last update: Tuesday, August 26, 2008