Crime Prevention: Promise or Threat?

In many Western countries, traditional criminal justice responses to crime are being questioned. Crime prevention has been endorsed as a policy objective by a range of governments including Australia's, with most States and Territories implementing programs. The paper summarises approaches to prevention and reviews promises and threats these developments pose. Promises include less divisive and ‘exclusionary’ modes of social control, and greater policy relevance for criminology. Threats include the possibility that organising social initiatives around crime prevention themes may detract attention from underlying structural issues, and that techniques of opportunity reduction and surveillance will extend social control and accelerate the ‘privatising’ of safety and security. The paper acknowledges the relevance of these critiques to current practice in Australia. However it argues that problems are due to political and economic pressures rather than to flaws in prevention theory itself. Criminologists should insist that prevention programs and strategies be located within the context of critical social theory.