Understanding Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Crime Prevention
Understanding Crime Prevention: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Strategies
Primary Prevention: Focuses on preventing social problems or risk factors from emerging, strengthening individual and community resources. These measures aim for long-term effects, often with limited immediate political gains. Environmental programs based on the “defensible space” theory are examples.
Objective: Reduce opportunities for crime by addressing structural social, health, and urban issues.
- Delinquent: Address structural social, health, and urban issues.
- Victim: Reduce feelings of insecurity.
- Formal and Informal Social Control: Improve police organization, judicial and corrections systems, and strengthen social structures in neighborhoods.
- Crime: Implement urban planning and defensible space strategies.
Secondary Prevention: Aims to prevent problems from becoming entrenched, targeting at-risk groups. Examples include research on truancy, aggression, drug use, and unaccompanied minors.
Objective: Prevent the consolidation of problems through individual prevention and social work interventions.
- Delinquent: Individual prevention through social work, such as drug therapy or guardianship.
- Victim: Self-defense training and awareness of how to react to an offender.
- Formal and Informal Social Control: Avoid discriminatory law enforcement or judicial reactions based on the type of crime, perpetrator, or victim.
- Crime: Implement protection systems like alarms (Felson, 1992).
Tertiary Prevention: Synonymous with treatment, this approach occurs after an offense has been committed. It focuses on preventing future criminal behavior, addressing the victim, social control, and the urban environment.
Objective: Reduce damage and avoid duplication of offenses through reintegration and rehabilitation.
- Delinquent: Reintegration and rehabilitation (treatment of offenders) (Redondo, 1998).
- Victim: Crisis therapy and restitution.
- Formal and Informal Social Control: Citizen collaboration in crime-solving.
- Crime: Repair and prevent deterioration of buildings.
Situational Crime Prevention and its Effectiveness
Situational crime prevention highlights the importance of environmental factors. Urban reforms and specific control measures in one area can lead to crime displacement to other areas. Criminal behavior is often routine, triggered by existing opportunities and a lack of control. Prevention should focus on reducing opportunities for offenders and increasing self-policing.
Effective crime prevention starts with understanding the specific issues in a particular area and addressing its shortcomings. Community policing and support systems can prevent crime when police actions are guided by clear and concrete objectives.
Video surveillance is effective in reducing or preventing crime in enclosed spaces like stores or parking lots. However, its effectiveness in open public spaces is often limited. Urban improvements, such as street lighting, can reduce crime.