EFFECTIVE GUARDIANSHIP

Situational Crime Prevention, Developmental Crime Prevention, Community Crime Prevention

Effective guardianship is an aspect of the routine activities approach to understanding crime and in particular victimization.

This approach argues that three key factors are required for crime to happen: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and ineffective guardianship of that target.

Effective guardianship would include having locks on bikes, security lights in the backyard, or putting goods in the trunk of the car. Measures like this should reduce the risk of being victimized.

Crime occurs when there is an intersection in time and space of a motivated offender, an attractive target, and a lack of capable guardianship. People’s daily routine activities affect the likelihood they will be an attractive target who encounters an offender in a situation where no effective guardianship is present. Changes in routine activities in society (e.g., women working) can affect crime rates.

Male peer support and a feminist routing activities theory: Understanding sexual assault on the college campus
Authors: Schwartz, Martin; DeKeseredy, Walter; Tait, David; Alvi, Shahid
Source: Justice Quarterly, Volume 18, Number 3, September 2001, pp. 623-649(27)
Abstract: Routine activities theorists traditionally have assumed offenders' motivation and victims' suitability from demographic correlates, and have done little to study effective guardianship. In this paper we ask questions directly of male date rape offenders to test the proposal that male peer support provides motivation; we ask lifestyle questions directly of both female victims and male offenders; and we discuss the extent to which abusive peers eliminate guardianship. Data from the Canadian National Survey support routine activities theory, and show that men who drink two or more times a week and have male peers who support both emotional violence and physical violence are nearly 10 times as likely to admit to being sexual aggressors as men who have none of these three traits. - ingentaconnect.com

Specifying the Influence of Family and Peers on Violent Victimization 
Extending Routine Activities and Lifestyles Theories 
Christopher J. Schreck, Rochester Institute of Technology 
Bonnie S. Fisher, University of Cincinnati 
Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 19, No. 9, 1021-1041 (2004) © 2004 SAGE Publications
The fact that crime and victimization share similar correlates suggests that family and peer contexts are potentially useful for explaining individual differences in violent victimization. In this research, we used routine activities and lifestyles frameworks to reveal how strong bonds of family attachment can promote more effective guardianship while simultaneously making children less attractive as targets and limiting their exposure to motivated offenders. Conversely, the routine activities perspective suggests that exposure to delinquent peers will enhance risk. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we found that family and peer context variables do correspond with a higher risk of violent victimization among teenagers, net controls for unstructured and unsupervised activities and demographic characteristics. The role of family and peer group characteristics in predicting victimization risk suggests new theoretical directions for victimization research. - jiv.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/9/1021

Compulsory treatment of alcoholism: the case against 
Authors: MacAvoy, Michael1; Flaherty, Bruce1
Source: Drug and Alcohol Review, 1990, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 267-271(5)
Abstract: The need for compulsory detention in the management of alcohol-dependent persons is reviewed with a particular focus on legislation in New South Wales (NSW). It is argued that there is no justification for the severe loss of civil liberties in order to provide a general power of involuntary alcoholism treatment since such treatment is basically ineffective and in any case little treatment is actually given to those detained. The selective operation of the NSW Inebriates Act (in terms of class and race biases) is noted. The special circumstances of those who suffer severe alcohol-related brain damage and those who are in acute life-threatening circumstances are discussed. It is suggested that these cases are adequately covered by existing Mental Health and Guardianship legislation, obviating the need for special legislation such as an Inebriates Act. .... effective guardianship legislation before repeal ... - ingentaconnect.com

The Span of Collective Efficacy: Extending Social Disorganization Theory to Partner Violence 
Christopher R. Browning
Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 64 Issue 4 Page 833 - November 2002 doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2002.00833.x Volume 64 Issue 4 
This research applies the social disorganization perspective on the neighborhood-level determinants of crime to partner violence. The analysis brings data from the 1990 Decennial Census together with data from the 1994–1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey, the 1994–1995 Chicago homicide data, and data from the 1995–1997 Chicago Health and Social Life Survey. The findings of this study indicate that collective efficacy—neighborhood cohesion and informal social control capacity—is negatively associated with both intimate homicide rates and nonlethal partner violence. Collective efficacy exerts a more powerful regulatory effect on nonlethal violence in neighborhoods where tolerance of intimate violence is low. Collective efficacy also increases the likelihood that women will disclose conflict in their relationships to various potential sources of support. - An emphasis on the crime-inhibiting role of effective guardianship rooted in collective efficacy suggests that socially organized neighborhoods should exert ... - blackwell-synergy.com

Conventional Crime (From Criminology: A Canadian Perspective, P 242-269, 1987, Rick Linden, ed. -- See NCJ-108160) 
Author(s): D J Koenig 
Hindelang and associates have developed a lifestyle/exposure theory to explain the correlates of crime against persons, and Cohen and Felson have extended the theory to property crimes. 
Abstract: According to this perspective, the probability of criminal victimization varies by time, space, and social setting and by the extent to which routine activities increase target suitability and reduce effective guardianship. The patterns and correlates of conventional crimes are consistent with this approach. Crimes against property tend to be committed disproportionately against those whose lifestyle leave their possessions least effectively guarded. Crimes against persons have some different correlates than do crimes against property, but most of these differences are consistent with the lifestyle/exposure theory. For typical crimes, victims (and offenders) are most likely to be young, male, and engage in evening activities away from home. Thus, their lifestyles place them in social settings with a higher risk of criminal victimization. Strategies for crime control consistent with this theory would include those to increase effective guardianship and reduce the availability of motivated offenders. ... increase target suitability and reduce effective guardianship. ... - ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=108172

Routine Activities Impending Social Change and Policing 
Journal: Canadian Police College Journal Volume:7 Issue:2 Dated:(1983) Pages:96-136
Author(s): D J Koenig ; E P DeBeck 
This article discusses selected socioeconomic trends which should be of concern to the police manager in producing long-range forecasts which entail assumptions about future social trends and their impact on crime trends and policing functions. 
Abstract: After revealing inconsistent data support for the conventional wisdom relating crime rates to urbanization, population, age structure, and economic factors, a theoretical framework is provided whereby changing crime patterns are viewed as a normal response to changing routine activities of society that affect the motivation of potential offenders, target suitability, and effective guardianship of people and their property (formal and informal social controls). A discussion of the necessity of differentiating short-term fluctuations from long-range trends is followed by a forecast of various social trends expected to affect crime patterns to the year 2000. Highly probable changes include relative economic deterioration, centralization, public sector fiscal restraint, innovations in the computer and telecommunications industries, continuing increases in the private security industry, a continuing boom in economic crime, population redistribution away from central Canada, intensified metropolitanization, and a trend for more activities to take place outside the home. The effects of such social trends on target suitability, motivated offenders, and effective guardianship are outlined. Implications for various aspects of policing operations are drawn. ... target suitability, and effective guardianship of people and their property ... - ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=92157

Community crime prevention is a general category of prevention strategies which focus on the community itself.