Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
takes time to plan. In addition, it is also likely that there is a greater risk of being
caught . This is a result of several factors: the increasing number of private security
guards who now outnumber police in many countries; the use of new police tech-
nologies and smarter tactics , issues that are described in subsequent sections. This
is linked to the application of more preventative policies , especially with the type
of Safe City strategies described below, which are also starting to have an effect,
especially in the past few years. Yet these decreasing recent crime trends should
be placed in perspective; they are still only declines from the very high rates of
crime that peaked in the early 1990s and the costs of crime keep growing. Also
one must remember the on-going safety problems caused by the actions of long
lasting criminal organizations in many countries, such as the various Mafia orga-
nizations in America and Italy, Corsican gangs in France, South American drug
cartels or the Yakuza in Japan—problems that have rarely been solved. So most
commentators believe that crime levels need to be drastically reduced before the
public begins to feel substantially safer, especially in the high crime areas, such
as inner cities and many public housing estates. Despite all these changes that ac-
count for lower crime there is far less public confidence in the ability of the cur-
rent police-judicial system-custodial system in developed countries to achieve the
goal of reducing current crime rates, mainly because of deficiencies in the opera-
tion of its various parts.
12﻽3
Problems of the Current Safety System in Cities
The typical approach to crime prevention over the last two centuries has been to
rely on the traditional three-fold approach represented by: the policing of urban ar-
eas, followed by the investigation and arrest of people who committed crimes; the
judicial review, which involves the decision of courts about the guilt or innocence
of the accused about the evidence presented about the crime; and the punishment
of those found guilty, which may involve a custodial sentence. Most people in
democratic countries, apart from those opposed to what they see as the oppressive
apparatus of government, see the system as mainly, but not completely corruption-
free. Certainly there are scandals involving corrupt or over-violent police, biased
judges and political interference, as seen by a recent expos← of a rogue narcotics
squad in Baltimore who robbed small grocery stores and fabricated evidence as
well as stealing drugs (Ruderman and Laker 2014 ), or the devastating report by
Judge Macpherson (HO 1999 ) on the inadequacies of the London Metropolitan Po-
lice in investigating the murder of a young black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, with
the police accused of 'institutional racism among many other charges. But in most
cases in the developed world judicial reviews of these problems leads to the imple-
mentation of new procedures to prevent their recurrence, although many minority
groups, especially if coloured, still have many unresolved grievances at the way
that they are treated. This is not to deny that the problems of poor police behaviour
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