Crime prevention
Definition
Strategies and interventions aimed at reducing the incidence or severity of crime before it occurs. Includes situational prevention (modifying environments to reduce opportunity), social prevention (addressing risk factors in families and communities), and deterrence-based approaches.
Related terms
- Criminology
- The scientific study of crime, its causes and distribution across populations, the operation of criminal justice institutions, and strategies for prevention and...
- Dark figure of crime
- The gap between the actual volume of crime and the amount recorded in official statistics. Crimes go unrecorded when victims do not...
- Deviance
- Behaviour that violates social norms, whether or not it is also illegal. Criminology studies deviance as well as crime because the boundary...
- Penology
- The branch of criminology concerned with the theory and practice of punishment and imprisonment. It examines the aims of punishment (retribution, deterrence,...
- Victimology
- The sub-field of criminology that studies crime victims: their characteristics, the victim-offender relationship, the impacts of victimisation, and the adequacy of legal...
Explained in
- What Is CriminologyStrategies and interventions aimed at reducing the incidence or severity of crime before it occurs. Includes situational prevention (modifying environments to...