Community As Cultural Opportunity

Emanuel Llano

Instructor Name

Art 101

29 October 2019

Research Essay: Community as Cultural Opportunity

There is rising attention in the practice of environmental design to decrease the occurrence of definite kinds of unlawful activity. Crime anticipation methods based on efforts to recognize communal, mental and commercial backgrounds of delinquency have unsuccessful to produce noteworthy practical outcomes. The environmental design method appears to propose the option of more or less instant pay-offs in the relation of crime decline. It undertakes that considerable criminal action is spontaneous and the outcome of chance rather than cautious arrangement (Cohen, 2018). It is also assumed that by decreasing opportunities, consequently, one decreases crime.

Investigators have established a link of crime and the terror of crime to be connected to demographic and other communal variables (Gecer et al., 2018). Earlier study has suggested that the level of misconduct in a community is meaningfully connected to its associates' schooling, revenue, ethnic makeup, age, and interval of placement. Crime is additionally predominant in zones where inhabitants have subordinate levels of schooling and revenue, are young, are associates of minority societies, and are extremely mobile. Routine activity theory is a sub-field of crime opportunity theory that centers on circumstances of crimes (Matza, 2017). It was initially projected by Marcus Felson and Lawrence E. Cohen in their description of increasing misconduct ratio in the United States 1947 – 1974. The routine activity theory evaluates crime as an incident strictly narrates crime to its atmosphere and highlights its environmental process, thus distracting theoretical consideration away from mere criminals. Gresham Sykes and David Matza established a neutralization theory to define how criminals refract feelings of guilt and disgrace (Schweitzer et al., 1999). According to social control theory, it is chiefly related to the work of Travis Hirschi (1969), an America social researcher who projected that individuals overall imitate social standards due to robust social pledges. Equally, they involve in criminal actions once these pledges are wrecked or damaged.

According to Oscar Newman and his theory of defensible space theory, it states that crime can be inhibited from the communities and societies. It states that environments such as specific buildings, grounds, houses, and other structures can be made crime-free by utilizing defensible space theory (Hirschi, 2017). It states that by defending the areas from the outsiders one can prevent the communities from crime. The process, named the Bystander Effect or Genovese Syndrome, tries to clarify why somebody observing delinquency would not support the victim. The Bystander Effect was castoff by the media as a story of an ethically bankrupt current culture losing its empathy for others, predominantly in states.

Keeping the ideas of environmental design, the number of researches has specified that ample illegitimate behavior is of a thoughtless nature, i.e. the behavior is mainly inspired by the chance which occurs in the criminal's environment (Gecer et al., 2018). The degree to which this is factual has significant inferences for a crime anticipation method grounded on environmental variations which, in result, decreases opportunity. It would appear critical, consequently, to grow a considerable and stronger knowledge of the part of opportunity in diverse kinds of criminal behavior (Matza, 2017). Prevention and anticipation or crime would take a crucial and considerable approach along with environmental and cultural factors. There must be a strong declaration of the method and approaches, its powers and boundaries should be clearly defined for implementation. The contribution and struggles of those having experience of this environmental context should be utilized to decrease the crime rate in the communities (Schweitzer et al., 1999). Utilization of Oscar Newman and environmental theories is essential for deteriorating the crime rate from communities. Deleting and erasing the opportunities can also significantly reduce the criminal behavior from societies.

Works Cited

Cohen, Albert K. "The Sociology of the Deviant Act: Anomie Theory." Deviance and Liberty. Routledge, 2018. 44-53.

Geçer, Ekmel, and Hüseyin Serbes. "Judgment, Surveillance and Cultural Desensitization Triangle in TV Series: The Case of Black Mirror." OPUS Uluslararası Toplum Araştırmaları Dergisi 8.15 (2018): 1669-1695.

Hirschi, Travis. "On the compatibility of rational choice and social control theories of crime." The reasoning criminal. Routledge, 2017. 105-118.

Matza, David, and Gresham M. Sykes. "Juvenile delinquency and subterranean values." Cultural Criminology. Routledge, 2017. 3-10.

Schweitzer, John H., June Woo Kim, and Juliette R. Mackin. "The impact of the built environment on crime and fear of crime in urban neighborhoods." Journal of urban technology6.3 (1999): 59-73.

Wilcox, Pamela, and Francis T. Cullen. "Situational opportunity theories of crime." Annual Review of Criminology 1 (2018): 123-148.