Author: Rob White, Adam Sutton and Adrian Cherney
ISBN No: 9 780 521 6842
Review date: 13/12/2025
No of pages: 191
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
Progress on prevention: Good crime prevention needs to be based on explicit guiding values, progressive planning principles and extensive social participation. It’s also about politics. That’s according to a crime prevention textbook by a trio of Australian academics.
Although these authors are criminologists or sociologists, private security readers will find that the book does not regard them as somehow oppressors of mis-understood criminals. However, do shoppers truly prefer, as the book suggests, ‘to go to places where there is a more lively and energetic atmosphere, to which graffiti may be a contributor’? Tellingly – and usefully, if you have a mind to chuck up the UK for a new life – Australia seems to have the same sorts of crimes as Britain: graffiti, shop theft, and youth gangs hanging around shopping malls and other public places. The solutions too are known to the UK: CPTED, crime prevention through environmental design; and situational prevention. That seeks to make ‘orderly and amenable spaces’, to stop people doing harmful things such as shoplifting, rather than trying to change people into something better. Crime prevention is basically about making life safer and better, the authors say; and yet they show there is more to the subject than ‘what works’. For all the talk of ‘tool kits’ and cost-benefit analysis, (and though the authors don’t put it this way), crime prevention is an art, and a science. Because how do you measure well-being or fear of crime? or ‘nuisance’ youths? This assured, creative book is of use as an introduction to the topic for security people thinking of taking a masters degree in a career-related subject; or for people who just want to think about what they do at work, and why it works. As for the politics, the authors argue that you don’t have to be ‘tough’, or throw money at CCTV, to bring law and order. One quibble: it’s rather dear for quite a (compared say with the Handbook of Policing, as reviewed last month) thin book, even though it packs a lot in, including a 20-page book list.
