Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the creation of specific crime areas in the largest nineteenth century cities as pre-
existing policies to control crime proved ineffective. Areas dominated by people of
criminal behaviour were vividly described as 'Rookeries' in the novels of Charles
Dickens (Tomalin
2011
); they were essentially 'no-go' areas that outsiders pen-
etrated on pain of their life. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, many cities
deliberately razed these densely populated, slum areas that had high crime rates,
replacing them, as in the case of Haussmann's work in Paris, with wide boulevards
and attractive apartments for the middle and upper classes (Mumford
1961
). Yet
more generally, crime, especially petty crime, was held in check by three main
changes in the countries that became the known as the developed world. First, his-
toric crime reduction was due to the development of more comprehensive policing
and judicial policies from the 1840s, increasingly using professional and technical
methods. Second, new prisons were built, many based on enlightenment principles
designed to get away from the brutal prison standards of the past—in which torture
and mutilation, the drastic punishment of small offences, even the transport of pris-
ons to colonies, were typical. However there are great variations between countries
in the extent to which these prisons are designed for retribution—creating harsh
conditions as punishment for crime—or rehabilitation, the attempt to change the
behaviour of offenders before they are released. A third factor of change lay in the
general socio-economic and political changes in society from the mid-nineteenth
century onwards that reduced the numbers of the criminal underclass and oppor-
tunistic offenders. These involved: more employment opportunities and improved
work conditions and pay; universal education; as well as greater democratic rights
and legal acceptance of individual rights; and new housing standards and improved
sanitation, which eradicated or at least reduced most of the old slum areas.
These changes, with increasingly professionalised and technically advanced
crime-fighting methods, seemed adequate to hold the rates of urban crime in check
from the mid-nineteenth century. But from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s the
amount of crime and anti-social behaviour recorded by police increased dramatical-
ly in most developed countries except Japan. However, the rates and types of crime
varied from country to country, and from city to city as McClain (
2001
) has shown
in her comparison of the United States and European countries. Some of the biggest
post 1970s crime increases were experienced in America, as seen in Fig.
12.1
. Vio-
lent crimes and property crimes rose four times between 1960 and 1990, trends that
are also present in most other categories identified in the annual crime reports of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The growth is dramatically shown in the spike
in murders in New York City, from around 500 per year before 1960 to a peak of
over 2,245 in 1990. Since crimes against persons and property have many causes it
is not surprising to find that many different theories have been proposed to explain
the phenomena (Georges-Abeyie and Harris
1980
; Gottfredson and Hirschi
1990
;
Graham and Clarke
2001
). In general, however, the general causes of crime can be
summarized in terms of five sets of explanations, namely: deep-seated societal forc-
es, group or subculture causes, explanations based on individual behaviour; areal
factors; and those linked to short-term changes in society (Davies
2005
). Although
various criminologists differ in the extent to which they stress one set of factors over
