This book addresses the ethics of Situational Crime Prevention (SCP). It seeks not only to analyse specific SCP measures but to demonstrate how ethical analysis can support and improve the implementation of SCP strategies.
In ethically analysing a particular SCP measure, it is not enough to look at empirical data. Even if a measure is effective at preventing crime, it may turn out to be ethically unattractive because it harms more people than it benefits, or because it violates our right to free movement. The book proceeds from the assumption that decision-making about whether we should use SCPs can only be conducted by carefully identifying, clarifying, and critically evaluating the ethical arguments for and against use of the SCP measure in question. The author analyses several SCP strategies that have not been treated in detail in criminology or applied ethics literatures. These SCP strategies include gated communities, excluding people with a criminal record from housing or employment, the use of hostile design in public spaces, and the implementation of intelligent speed adaption in vehicles.
Ethics and Situational Crime Prevention is an essential resource for criminologists, moral philosophers, legal scholars, and social scientists with an interest in crime prevention.
1. Ethics and situational crime prevention
2. Gated communities: On displacement and unequal protection from Crime
3. Hostile design: Four moral objections
4. Hostile design and the resource diversion argument
5. Criminal records and excluding ex-offenders from the labour market
6. Criminal records and excluding ex-offenders from housing
7. Devices for controlling speeding
8. Ethical guidelines on the use of situational crime prevention
Biography
Thomas Søbirk Petersen is Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy of Law at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is the author of Doping in Sport: A Defence (Routledge, 2021) and Why Criminalize? New Perspectives on Normative Principles of Criminalization (Springer Nature, 2020). He has also co-edited several anthologies, the most recent being Preventing Crime by Exclusion (Routledge, forthcoming).
"Thomas Søbirk Petersen carefully and thoughtfully integrates ethical reasoning, the best available empirical evidence, and rigorous analysis in his examination of various kinds of situational crime prevention strategies. After laying out his methodology in the opening chapter, he employs it skillfully to examine measures both familiar and more novel that are aimed at reducing crime in communities, ones that are distinct from legal punishment. The result is a highly valuable contribution to the emerging literature on the topic."
Richard L. Lippke, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice, Indiana University-Bloomington, USA
"Thomas Søbirk Petersen has produced an impressive ethical examination of the various ways societies attempt to reduce crime not by deterring potential offenders or reforming wrongdoers, but rather by designing physical environments to make crime less likely. From gated communities, to housing restrictions on people with criminal convictions, to installation of speed bumps to slow traffic, these so-called ‘situational’ crime preventive measures pose important moral and political challenges. Rather than making sweeping assessments, Petersen’s detailed, nuanced account recognises that the ethical justification of particular measures will depend on the manner and the context in which they are implemented. It is an important and original achievement, a valuable contribution for criminal justice scholars, policy makers, and anyone interested in how states seek to prevent crime."
Zachary Hoskins, University of Nottingham, UK
"Ethics and Situational Crime Prevention is a fascinating and highly recommended study of an increasingly prominent approach to crime prevention. The argumentation is compelling and provocative, the case studies well-chosen, and the style straightforward, engaging and clear. It will become the landmark monograph on this topic, and will be of great interest not only to moral philosophers, legal theorists and criminologists, but to all with a serious interest in the future of crime prevention."
Thomas Douglas, University of Oxford, UK
