Crime Prevention Programs
Crime Prevention Programs
Vickie L. Epperson
CRJ 305 ~ Crime Prevention
Jeffery Cudworth
July 09, 2012
I found the history of crime prevention very interesting and learned much about how this country has evolved to the various new theories regarding crime and its prevention. It has only taken the United States 200 years of failure to finally start considering proactive methods regarding crime prevention versus reactive. As our textbook asked, “Can crime be prevented? No.” (Champion, 2007, pg 3) As long as the Earth will exist there will be crime; however, that does not mean government agencies, law enforcement agencies, communities and volunteers can not combine their efforts to prevent as much crime activity as is possible. For years, the Department of Justice’s Correctional System’s main philosophy has been based on punishment and isolation, i.e., you do the crime; you do the time. It has truly been only over the past two decades that this philosophy has been questioned and efforts have been made to turn from the “punishment” concept to methods of handling all the various parts that cause an individual to turn to criminal activity. Reactive means punishment; proactive means not only taking a look at the outside or external causes of crime, e.g., environmental designs, poverty levels, education levels, etc., but taking a good look at the inside or internal causes, e.g. psychological, biological and sociological, that may have an impact on criminal behavior. We have also learned that the younger we start working with antisocial behaviors, the more successful we are with lowering not only the crime rate but recidivism. I have learned that antisocial behaviors can be detected in a young child as early as three years of age. That’s incredible to me yet makes a great deal of sense. I have known for a long time that the formative years in an individual’s life are from birth to five years of age.
Vickie L. Epperson
CRJ 305 ~ Crime Prevention
Jeffery Cudworth
July 09, 2012
I found the history of crime prevention very interesting and learned much about how this country has evolved to the various new theories regarding crime and its prevention. It has only taken the United States 200 years of failure to finally start considering proactive methods regarding crime prevention versus reactive. As our textbook asked, “Can crime be prevented? No.” (Champion, 2007, pg 3) As long as the Earth will exist there will be crime; however, that does not mean government agencies, law enforcement agencies, communities and volunteers can not combine their efforts to prevent as much crime activity as is possible. For years, the Department of Justice’s Correctional System’s main philosophy has been based on punishment and isolation, i.e., you do the crime; you do the time. It has truly been only over the past two decades that this philosophy has been questioned and efforts have been made to turn from the “punishment” concept to methods of handling all the various parts that cause an individual to turn to criminal activity. Reactive means punishment; proactive means not only taking a look at the outside or external causes of crime, e.g., environmental designs, poverty levels, education levels, etc., but taking a good look at the inside or internal causes, e.g. psychological, biological and sociological, that may have an impact on criminal behavior. We have also learned that the younger we start working with antisocial behaviors, the more successful we are with lowering not only the crime rate but recidivism. I have learned that antisocial behaviors can be detected in a young child as early as three years of age. That’s incredible to me yet makes a great deal of sense. I have known for a long time that the formative years in an individual’s life are from birth to five years of age.
References: Champion, D. J., Crime Prevention in America, (2007) Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey Thornstein, Hazel. (Aug. 18, 2011) How Does a Therapeutic Community Work? www.livestrong.com/.../179773-how-does-a-therapeutic-community-work/ Therapeutic Communities or “TCs” www.rehab-drug.net/therapeutic.html Therapeutic Communities of America National Addiction Treatment & Prevention Conference. (November 7, 2010) www.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org/.../therapeutic-communities-of-america-national-addiction-treatment-and-prevention-conference Restorative Justice Programs | Resolutions Northwest www.resolutionsnorthwest.org/restorative_justice University of Oregon, Office of the Dean of Students. Restorative Justice Program http://uodos.uoregon.edu/.../RestorativeJusticeProgram/tabid What is Restorative Justice? http://www.restorativejusticecolorado.org/what-is-restorative-justice.html