Situational Crime Prevention (SCP)
Definition
A strategy targeting specific crime types by modifying the immediate environment to reduce opportunity. SCP operates through five categories of technique: increasing effort, increasing risk, reducing rewards, reducing provocations, and removing excuses. Associated primarily with Ron Clarke and Derek Cornish.
- Key figures
- Ron Clarke and Derek Cornish
- Technique categories
- 5: effort, risk, reward, provocation, excuses
- Target
- Specific crime types
- Mechanism
- Modifying the immediate environment
Common questions
Can you give an example of each SCP technique category?+
Increasing effort means target-hardening like locks; increasing risk means CCTV or guards; reducing reward means property marking; reducing provocation means better dispute-avoidance design; removing excuses means clear signage stating rules, so offenders cannot claim ignorance.
How does SCP's crime-specific focus shape how it is applied?+
Because SCP targets the situational factors of one crime type in one setting, such as car theft from a specific car park, measures are designed and evaluated per problem rather than as a single general anti-crime policy applied everywhere.
Related terms
- Burglary
- The offence of entering a building or structure without authorisation with intent to commit an offence inside. Distinguished from theft by the...
- 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...
- Displacement
- The relocation of crime following a prevention intervention. Can take five forms: territorial (to another place), temporal (to another time), target (to...
- Hot Products (CRAVED)
- The acronym CRAVED (Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable, Disposable) describes the characteristics that make consumer goods attractive theft targets. Developed by Clarke...
- Routine Activity Theory
- A criminological framework developed by Cohen and Felson (1979) that explains property crime as the product of three converging elements: a motivated...