This chapter reflects on the crime control approach. Criminologists and criminal justice practitioners who adopt this standpoint accept that crime is inevitable; but they are also committed to minimising its effects, either by restricting opportunities to offend or by acting decisively where crimes are committed. Crime control and retributive interventions may well coincide, despite their differing motivations, for example in the case of imprisonment. But crime control also extends well beyond deterrent sanctions to include other measures geared towards the assessment and management of potential risks, target hardening, proactive policing, offender surveillance, and restrictions. The chapter then looks at the role of the police in crime control including zero tolerance, intelligence-led policing, and community policing as well as the role of other agencies, such as architects, the community, private security providers, and the judiciary. It considers how predictive tools might be used to minimise the risk of reoffending and assesses some of the impacts and outcomes of crime control strategies.
Chapter
27. Crime control
Chapter
29. Policing and the police
Trevor Jones, Tim Newburn, and Robert Reiner
In this chapter we review some of the key themes in scholarly work on policing, one of the major sub-fields within criminology. The focus is primarily upon the United Kingdom though many of the themes are familiar across all western democracies. We begin by considering what is meant by ‘policing’, before outlining the emergence of this field of academic research. The chapter then examines the development of modern policing, and the challenges of establishing and maintaining police legitimacy. This leads into a discussion of a series of key themes in policing research, including the operation and control of police discretion, occupational cultures, matters relating to diversity and discrimination, and the politics and governance of the police. The next section outlines distinctive policing ‘models’ that have emerged in recent times. The policing landscape is increasingly complex and the chapter concludes by considering two of the most significant developments: pluralization and transnationalization.
