Saturday, July 3, 2010
Crime and Community
I enjoyed reading the short section in our Introduction to Sociology textbook on Crime and Community. The authors propose that preventing violent and serious crime has been the main focus, but that recently there has been an increasing realization of the need to maintain proper order and civility. I think it is very true that the small crimes of vandalism, graffiti or rowdy youth gangs can have a cumulative effect on a community. In communities where these crimes occur frequently, citizens feel discomfort, avoid public places and withdraw from community. This creates a societal vacuum, devoid of the normal societal controls that would be in place on potential criminals just by the mere presence of others and the need to practice basic civility. In this way, it seems that overlooking small crimes in a community can in fact lead to the occurence more serious crimes. I think this is a good argument for the broken windows theory in its approach to crime prevention.
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I liked your post. It really made me think. I think, if a community really wants to have a safe place to live, they have to get on the "little" crimes from the beginning, and make an example of those who commit them. If they can instill pride in the young, towards their neighborhoods, then there might be a better chance of those kids not wanting drug and violence in their neighborhoods, and not falling for the pressures to allow them there. It would be nice to think that just by simply getting these kids to have more pride in their neighborhood, they would join together to fight and keep the criminals out.
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