Step 40: Increase the risks of crime
According to interviews with offenders, they worry more about the risks of being apprehended than about the consequences if they are caught. This makes sense because they can do little to avoid punishment if caught, but they can do a lot to reduce the risks of capture by being careful. This is why situational prevention seeks to increase the risks of being caught and makes no attempt to manipulate punishment.
Step 39: Increase the effort of crime
Here we describe the most basic category of situational measures - those designed to increase the difficulties of crime - beginning with target hardening. Situational prevention is sometimes dismissed as being nothing more than this, though it is only one of the 25 techniques that the approach encompasses. Note that there is considerable overlap between the techniques.
Step 41: Reduce the rewards of crime
Rational choice theory holds that offenders are always seeking to benefit themselves by their crimes. These benefits may not simply be material, as in theft, because there are many other rewards of crime, including sexual release, intoxication, excitement, revenge, respect from peers, and so forth.
Step 42: Reduce provocations
When studying prisons and pubs, Richard Wortley noticed that crowding, discomfort, and rude treatment provoked violence in both settings. This led him to argue that situational prevention had focused too exclusively on opportunities for crime and had neglected features of the situation that precipitate or induce crime.
Step 43: Remove excuses for crime
This fifth category of situational techniques recognizes that offenders make moral judgments about their behavior and that they often rationalize their conduct to "neutralize" what would otherwise be incapacitating feelings of guilt or shame.
Step 44: Find the owner of the problem
Many problems arise through the failure of some institution - business, government agency, or other organization - to conduct its affairs in ways that prevent crime rather than cause it. In short, many problems occur because one or more institutions are unable or unwilling to undertake a preventive strategy, or because these institutions have intentionally established a circumstance that stimulates crimes or disorder.
Step 46: Conduct a process evaluation
The first critical step in assessment is to conduct a process evaluation.
Step 47: Know how to use controls
You should address three questions when assessing a response:
Step 48: Consider geographical and temporal displacement
Geographical displacement occurs when the intervention blocks crime or disorder opportunities at a facility or in an area, and offenders move to other facilities or areas to offend. Temporal displacement also stems from successful prevention, but in this case offenders shift offending in time to other hours or days.
Step 49: Examine displacement to other targets, tactics and crime types
In addition to geographical and temporal displacement, offenders can switch targets, change their tactics, or change crimes.