Designing out
Draft text
David Garland as one of the most popular proponents of the cultural criminology approach locates fear of crime as a criminological subject of study as well as a public and political concern in the context of the change of the political culture of response to crime as it took place in the Western world in the 1970ies.[1] The decline of the ideal of rehabilitation of convicted, the emergence of new normative ideal of punitiveness and the evolution of "expressive justice" – meaning public shaming and humiliation of culprits together with overemphasizing personal feelings of the victim and public outrage over individual acts of crime – have introduced a new emotional culture into crime policy: Whereas fear of crime originally used to be investigated and politically perceived at the level of "a localized, situational anxiety, affecting the worst-off individuals and neighbourhoods", it now became “regarded as a major social problem and a characteristic of contemporary culture."[2] Accordingly, fear of crime can be read as being a cultural factor – if not "cultural theme"[3] – in itself, rather than being a dependent variable in part influenced by (other) cultural factors.
As Garland goes on to argue, the victim and its fears have become a "symbolic figure", individual victims are taken as "Everyman" and the public opinion rests on the assumption of a constant increase in crime rates met by no efficient public response, thus reducing public confidence and reinforcing the perception of certain types of victimization as symbol of the state of public safety/security affairs in general.[4]
The approach to "designing out" crime and terrorism[5] can be largely attributed to this symbolization tendency. The "designing-out" approach assumes that certain types and locations of urban space are significantly more attractive to perpetrators than others, mainly for social and cultural reasons. Therefore, the choice of urban targets is seen as mainly driven by factors such as maximum visibility of casualties, vulnerable and actually harmed people, maximum media exposure and potential for vast spread of fear among the wider population.
Owing to the "designing out" approach, initiatives such as "Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design" (http://www.CPTED.net) have directly derived practical urban planning principles to limit the damage of terrorist attacks.
References
- ↑ Garland, David: The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. 6-11.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 10.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 11.
- ↑ Practical example include Geason, Susan/Paul R. Wilson: Designing out Crime Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 1989.
