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Introduction
Criminology tries to explain the cause of criminal and deviant acts through several theories. The classical criminology theories posit that crime is a choice because people were created with free will (Burke, 2019). These classical criminology theories were instruments in developing the current criminal justice system encompassing courts, police, and correctional facilities. They emphasized punishing an offender because the general belief was that punishment would correct their free will. Positivist criminology theorists rely on scientific methodologies to determine the causes of crime (Burke, 2019). They use this scientific data to recommend the best course of action to correct deviant or criminal behavior. This school of thought rejects the free will concept and believes that people are products of the environment they interact with. This research paper will analyze environmental criminology by summarizing its major contents, identifying its weaknesses and strengths, and providing links to other theories.
Summary of Major Environmental Criminology Content
Environmental criminology tries to explain crime by specifically focusing on a geographical location. This view of causes of crime is a positivist view that asserts that crime is not a product of rational choice. Instead, the theory suggests that crime is at best influenced if not outright caused by an individual’s spatial environment (Burke, 2019). When this theory is applied to explain and interpret crime, the consensus is that no two criminals are similar because they are affected by unique and different circumstances that ultimately lead them to commit crimes. Deviant and criminal acts result from interactions and socialization with the immediate environment. For instance, a child raised in an upper-middle-class neighborhood with good schools, churches, and other social amenities is not likely to commit criminal acts. However, a child born in a working-class with poor social infrastructure and social amenities who regularly interacts with people who commit a crime is likely to commit a crime in the future. How these two individuals turn out is a product of the environment their interact and socialize with.
For environmental criminologists, mitigating and fighting against crime takes two approaches of crime mapping and broken window theory. Crime mapping is a tool used by law enforcement and environmental criminologist theorists to pinpoint the exact location a particular crime occurs and develop mechanisms to stop it (Burke, 2019). The data collected when mapping the location of a crime provides valuable insight and vision of the frequency and incidence of crime in a particular area which also helps in future operations. The broken windows theory postulates that if a disorder is left unattended in a specific location, it will continue to attract more disorder, eventually leading to more severe crimes.
The literal interpretation of the broken windows theory is that one broken window will attract more broken windows. In essence, the theory proposes that a single crime incidence that is left unaddressed leads to more crime, which displaces law obeying citizens, leaving the location filled with deviants and criminals. Thus, the strategy for law enforcement is to take stern action for any transgression no matter how trivial it may seem in order to protect the integrity of a location in the long term.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Environmental criminologist theory perceptively tries to explain why some people are more susceptible to deviant and criminal acts while others are not by analyzing an individual’s socialization process. In particular, environmental criminologists focus on immediate socialization agents such as school, family members, peers, and neighbors to stitch together information to explain why a specific person commits a particular crime. While this theory has its strengths that provide logical explanations for some criminal behavior, it is also fraught with weaknesses that fail to explain some criminal acts and have led to undesired consequences. This section will outline some strengths and weaknesses of the environmental criminologist theory.
One of the environmental criminologist theory’s strengths is that it focuses on specific characteristics making it possible to tailor-make solutions to a crime problem. Environment criminologists do not assume that all criminals and deviants are similar or that they are motivated by similar factors. Instead, they focus on establishing specific conditions that could lead an individual to commit a crime in order to develop strategies to mitigate or eradicate the occurrence of the crime. This approach towards crime prevention and eradication is comprehensively detailed and ensures the root causes of crime are established, and appropriate actions are taken to prevent or eradicate it. Some of the strategies adopted by environment criminologists, such as crime mapping and the broken window approach, ensure active instead of passive policing is adopted and implemented. Criminals are thus, stopped on their tracks before committing severe felonies that could disturb the peace and tranquility of an area. Active policing, in particular, is preferred compared to passive policing which waits on criminals to carry out their criminal deeds to elicit a reaction.
Further, environmental criminology shifts the focus from criminals to ordinary people to understand crime and its prevention. The core focus of the theory is the interaction and socialization between people, where the theory maintains that behavior is learned and thus criminal behavior can also be learned. Environmental criminology removes any ideas that criminals are inherently evil people through this shift in perspective. Instead, the theory humanizes them by placing them in social settings to explain the source of their conduct. This approach contrasts with other theories that look deep into the consciousness and biology of deviants and criminals to explain their behavior. By seeing them as humans first, humane solutions to the crime problems can then be developed and implemented and positively impact the community and the individual with deviant or criminal behavior. Thus, environmental criminology shuns the root causes approach in favor of a situational perspective that enables practical solutions to be developed to solve crime problems.
Despite the above strengths, environmental criminology has several weaknesses, with one of them being its narrow focus on the situation and conditions of an individual’s environment at the exclusion of other factors such as rational choice, free will, and biology in explaining deviant and criminal behavior. While behavior is learned, criminal behavior can be hereditary or arise from the sensible choices of free-willed individuals. Advances in technology and genome analysis allow scientists to isolate specific genes that are only present in certain people predisposed to crime (Burke, 2019). Further, criminal behavior can also be due to a rational choice after carefully weighing all costs and benefits. These two approaches deviate from the situational approach adopted by environmental criminologists by attempting to explain the root cause of crime. Additionally, these root causes approach make the situational approach inherently weak.
Practical solutions developed using the environmental criminology approach have had unintended negative consequences for a part of the population. Using the crime mapping and the broken window approach, police departments naturally profile low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly Black and Hispanic. With active policing encouraged by the theory, in places like the United States, most Black and Hispanic individuals from such communities find themselves targeted and put behind bars for minor transgressions. These tactics have created an environment of distrust where communities see police as their enemies. Further, the tactics have led to overcrowding in prisons, and a disproportionately high population of blacks and Hispanics compared to the majority white population. Interestingly, these tactics have not had any meaningful impact on the level of crime and raise essential questions on environmental criminology strategies’ effectiveness.
Links to Other Theories
The environmental criminology theory uses an almost similar approach as the psychological criminology theories. Psychological theories explain crime and how and how it can be eliminated by analyzing an individual personality. Sigmund Freud, who was an influential psychologist, asserted that human nature stores instinctive reservoirs that require frequent gratification (Burke, 2019). The urge for gratifications is restrained by a sense of morality and ethics internalized by children due to their interaction and socialization with their parents. However, adults develop a rational part that mediates between the morality and gratification urges. Because urges are constant, criminality is thus a failure of the mediating rational part of an individual. The psychological theories take a root causes approach but analyze individual actions at a personal level to understand crime and prevent it. This personal approach is similar to the environmental criminology theories that analyze an individual and develop solutions based on that analysis.
Further, environmental criminology theory refutes assertions by the rational choice theory that criminality is a result of a cost-benefit analysis by a criminal. Instead, the theory paints the picture of the inevitability of criminal behavior when an individual is exposed and learns certain behavior. The rational choice theory approach to criminology offers no concrete actions that could be taken to deal with crimes because its assertions assume anyone could be a criminal when the right conditions are in place (Burke, 2019). Instead, it offers an explanation of why and how crime happens with an emphasis on increasing the cost to deter but not stop crime. In contrast, the environmental theory’s scientific methodology explains why crime is happening and practical steps that could be taken to ensure that it is either eradicated or reduced significantly.
Conclusion
Criminology theories explain why individuals commit criminal and deviant acts and offer insights on how such crimes can be deterred or eradicated. Over the years, theorists have offered multiple theories that explain the root cause of criminal behavior or the situations that lead an individual to be involved in crime. One such situation perspective on crime is environmental criminology. This theory asserts that criminal behavior, like any other behavior, is learned through socialization with local agents of socialization such as immediate family, peers, and neighbors. This theory humanizes people involved in crime and offers practical solutions on how crime can be reduced through crime mapping and the broken theory approach. However, this theory ignores other factors that could lead an individual to be involved in crime, such as rational choice through free will and biological factors. Further, the solutions developed to combat crime using environmental criminology have had negative consequences on Blacks and Hispanics.
Reference
Burke, R. H. (2019). An Introduction to Criminological Theory. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
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