Crime prevention

Although the complete eradication of crime is a utopia, focusing the action plan on the mere repression of crime has only proven useful in the short term. It is therefore necessary to address the psychosocial factors of every community, attend to the origin and design preventive programs based on tackling the factors that lead to violence and criminal behaviour.

Crime prevention focuses on addressing individuals and groups at three levels. These three levels -primary, secondary and tertiary- differ in several aspects, such as the relevance of the programmes implemented, their targets, the instruments they use, the mechanisms for intervening, the scope of action and, more importantly, the purpose they pursue.

Primary prevention consists of taking action before the problem appears, hence it is the most effective intervention. Due to its comprehensive approach, it is targeted at general factors that trigger violence, lacks and social conflicts, inhibiting aggresive behaviour. It mainly involves key issues such as drugs, youth to name some, which are closely linked to a potential criminal conduct.

Secondary prevention intervenes once the conflict arises, and is consequently tailored to specific sectors. The proposed measures are in the medium and short term and focus on police actions and relocation of urban centres so as to avoid hotspots -the Chicago School and its social ecology-. The International Centre for the Prevention of Crime's programmes are stopping the spread of crime at this level nowadays.

Tertiary prevention is the least efficient, but of a great importance. It constitutes a late intervention since it just intervenes with the prisoner, being the convicted person the only target. This perspective is not enough because it neither eliminates the etiology of the crime nor the root cause of the offence because it takes action only after the crime has been commited. Its aim is to prevent re-offending through rehabilitation and reintegration. In the handbook 'The prevention of recidivism and the social reintegration of offenders' the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime endeavours to achieve this holistic goal.

There is no doubt the fact of walking into prison carries a label -labelling theory- which is actually real tricky to get rid of, no matter how many changes for the better you have shown to make nor how many specific treatment programmes you have attended. Former detainees will be stigmatised for life as social and cultural structures hinder the process of reintegration into society, thereby the previous prevention models are essential to societal change. It's high time we turned the tables by sensitising the public opinion to the problems faced by fellow human beings that have already paid their dues.