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Research Paper Draft

Christian Hernandez

ENC 1102: English Composition II

April 11, 2024

Draft

A multitude of factors can be pointed towards in order to label the cause of “crime.”

However, it is a far too common misconception to say any offender of any crime is simply a foul

person and a vile criminal. The majority of crimes committed are low level offenses that are

much more circumstantial than one may believe. It must be understood that crime occurs for

reasons beyond the individual, as the physical environment can influence the decision making

behind committing a crime, and so can the infrastructure of a given area as well as upbringing

and backgrounds. The process of “why” most crime happens is far more nuanced and rational

than many people might assume it to be. Lots of small factors, many of which can be influenced

for the sake of prevention, contribute to why people commit crimes. Poverty and necessity can

be reasons to commit crime just as much as malice and impulse. The act of committing a crime is

far more philosophical and psychological than one may assume. As the definition of a "crime" is

commonly inaccurate and misunderstood, this leads many to have an have incorrect assumptions

on the nature of crime. Because of this, we must first take some time to explain the issues with

this mistaken perception. Crime is perceived as an abhorrent and evil action, to which the

solution is harsh retribution. But that way of thinking is largely due to the more extreme cases

being more televised or sensationalized. The reality of the situation is that most crimes

committed are very small and largely non violent illegal actions. The focus of this paper centers

around crimes and offenders such as these for the most part, and the rate at which they occur.
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What I want to make clear is that crime is preventable, but there is no need for harsh policing or

any similar extreme methods to lower crime. Making life more livable is how you lower crime.

Making life more enjoyable is how you lower crime. There are so many small, doable things that

can be used in order to achieve this. Despite crimes being voluntary, certain things are still able

to influence that voluntary action. The environment, social and literal, are both brought up as a

component of that notion and are the main driving forces for most of the information to be

mentioned later on.

To begin with, what is the definition of crime? The Merriam-Webster English Dictionary

describes crime as “an illegal act for which someone can be punished by the government.” Crime

is universally regarded to as “wrong” and “immoral.” Nothing about that statement is untrue. The

issue, however, lies in the general response. There is a wide spectrum as to what is classified as

an illegal act, and while much of it is largely in line with what the average person would consider

immoral or unjust, much of it is not nearly quite as bad. Nonetheless, regardless of any further

specifications or classifications on the severity of crime: felony, misdemeanor, etc., what remains

true, whether it is a brutal murder case or a common shoplifter, is that all exist under the

umbrella term of “crime.” Modern media has sensationalized the most extreme crimes with play

by play coverage of high profile chases, televised trials and many more things on news channels

and other sources. Many people have come to associate the word crime with such. This extends

to the discussion of “crime rates” in any given city, town or urban center in America. The first

thought to spring to the mind of many is high profile dangerous life threatening crimes that

provoke an extreme response such as more police or major legal changes. The reality is that the

majority of crime does not need that response. Why? Because the majority of crimes are not any

kind of high profile extreme case. Majority of crimes are much lower level offenses such as
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various property crimes and theft. Furthermore, the appropriate responses to these crimes, in

order to facilitate change, are much simpler than many would believe.

Christopher Freeze in “Adverse Childhood Experiences and Crime” largely wants to

focus on outside factors beyond the individual desire or propensity of a person to commit crime,

and look at components of the equation beyond that. One such factor is the adverse childhood

experiences that offenders go through that could influence moments that lead to criminality.

Many of these things, according to Freeze, such as trauma, witnessing violence as a youth, abuse,

neglect, or a generally unsafe neighborhood have the capability to lead to crime and

incarceration. Freeze particularly mentions the community as a factor both in causing or working

to fix the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Crime and what drives someone to commit a

crime goes past what is within them and extend to beyond themselves, to their surroundings and

their community in more ways than one.

In Taylor, Ralph B., and Adele Harrell’s “Physical Environment and Crime.” Taylor and

Harrell question the literal physical features of a neighborhood and address the link to fear of

crime, crime, and other similar topics. It begins with the notion that offenders operate in a

“rational” manner, that crimes tend to be committed if they are low effort. The report details that

areas that are more run down, deteriorated and lacking any kinds of physical barriers were

conducive to crimes such as burglary. On the contrary, various housing designs and layouts were

found to have potential to discourage or prevent crime within a neighborhood. Much of these

assertations connected back to what’s known as “broken windows theory,” or the theory that

physical features and visible signs of social disarray and crime, which as flawed as it is, has

elements that prove useful and relevant to this paper and the ideas being brought forward by it.

While the immediate premise of “broken windows theory” is useful and relevant, what is not
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useful and relevant is the typical response. It is of utmost importance to distinguish the elements

of this theory that provide useful information and the elements that do not. What is being focused

here is the notion that a run down and poorly maintained cityscape may facilitate criminal

behavior. That in particular has elements of truth to it, whereas responding to higher crime in

such areas with extreme and authoritarian policing strategies, cracking down on every person for

every crime in each corner of the place will only harm the community.

Often, when met with social disarray, the solution some cities come up with is “zero

tolerance policing,” or an incredibly aggressive and strict order maintenance style of police

activity. Intense policing is not the primary and most effective solution to reduction of crime.

What would be most effective is improving quality of life and generally the quality of a place,

down to the physical environment of a given area. From Tom Gash’s Ted Talk, “Manipulating

the Moments That Turn Us into Criminals,” such tactics are discussed and the results are shown.

A resort with a rampant issue of drunken brawls and a number of other small crimes ponders its

options to reduce the violence going on. The solution they come to is minor quality of life

changes in the area to mitigate the factors that could lead to each crime. Such changes include

affordable bus fares so people can get home at night instead of wander the street in the dark.

More affordable non alcoholic options to incentivize purchasing drinks that would not get

anyone drunk. Expanding the clientele to include more than just heavy drinkers, so as to create

an environment less prone to trouble. Crime went down dramatically after such changes,

showing how well they worked. Gash tells the audience that roughly nine out of ten people end

up committing some form of what can be considered “crime” through their lives, whether

intentional or not and whether it is a major or minor crime. What Gash means to illustrate with

this is the notion that human nature is very “malleable,” and that most people are not particularly
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far from committing a crime, and that outside factors could help or hinder that. Tiny things end

up the difference between whether or not someone chooses to commit a crime. Changing these

little things changes many peoples’ minds. This way of thinking is the approach that should be

looked into and utilized further in order to achieve a particularly noticeable effect on decreasing

crime. Gash goes on to discuss another problem and solution, namely in terms of auto security.

In the past several decades, car theft has decreased by an extreme amount. The reason for this

was that car security has advanced by a small amount. The main difference now was that would

be carjackers need a tool from a black market as opposed to a hanger or a brick. The difficulty of

the task only increased by a marginal amount. However, this marginal amount was enough to

deter thousands upon thousands of potential thefts and burglaries each year. A small change such

as that was able to make such a big difference. Many such cases exist where such a seemingly

minor change can manifest into a larger difference.

“The Impact of Green Space on Violent Crime in Urban Environments: An Evidence

Synthesis.” By Shepley M, Sachs N, Sadatsafavi H, Fournier C, Peditto K. from the International

Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health discusses the effect of the green space in

urban environments. The researchers conduct an empirical and detailed study on “green spaces”

in urban spaces and their effect on violent crime. Green spaces are sections of an urban

environment adorned with vegetation such as grass, trees or gardens. Particularly, the presence of

trees, gardens and similar vegetation in neighborhoods and how its residents are affected by it.

Their studies found that a number of people felt safer in a greener environment, and that a nicer,

greener space would indirectly influence greater levels of informal social control in order to

generate a safer environment. While many would assume that increased vegetation would be

more of a catalyst for crime due to the possibility of lower visibility making an area a prime hot
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spot for criminals to get away with committing various illegal acts, the notion of green spaces

actually circumvent such issues. While true canopy covers, poorly lit parks and dense forests

could facilitate crime, many other forms of green space exist. A large benefit of certain green

spaces is the way in which they facilitate informal social control. One example that has

previously been mentioned is gardens. Well maintained front yards and lawns are likely to be

seen as owned by people consistently paying attention to them. Maintaining a garden requires a

homeowner to be spending lots of time in it, stationed outdoors in the sun. Another example

would be picnic grounds. Placing a picnic area in a community creates a space not only for

families to gather and spend time at but also for any kind of big community event or get together.

What these places share is that they are getting people out of their homes and in the outdoors. If

many people are outside having picnics and spending time with their families and whatnot, the

“streets,” so to speak, become less of an impetus for crime due to how the visibility has

increased. This is what informal social control is. The pressure of being witnessed committing a

crime is no longer down to the perpetrator and perhaps an officer or a handful of bystanders. The

entire community is out and about and their mere presence reduces the likelihood of crime due to

all the eyes being outside where crimes are to be committed. Kuo, Frances E, and William C

Sullivan’s “Environment and crime in the inner city: Does vegetation reduce crime?” is another

study on the presence of vegetation on crime. What is also mentioned is the psychological

precursors to violent crime, like stress or aggression. Particularly, Kuo et al. look at how

vegetation has the capability to reduce the presence of such feelings, thereby reducing the

likelihood of crime. Essentially, green spaces are nice to look at and another contribution to the

reduction of crime comes from the ability they have to be a relaxing setting that dissuades the

sensations of crime or aggression by their presence.

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Another very obvious element of what can influence crime is the amount of lighting in a

given area. This has already been mentioned previously, but it is worth bringing special attention

to as light is a physical element of a setting that can be manipulated and changed that has a

particular effect on crime. A continuous major factor to many people in terms of public safety is

the presence of “street lighting.” Crime tends to be associated with places of dark and low

visibility, due to the nature of crime being easier to commit when it is more difficult to be seen

and thus caught in the act. Chalfin et al. in Street Light Outages, Public Safety and Crime

Attraction. conduct a study regarding street light outages and find empirical evidence of how

outages disrupt typical crime patterns not quite by increasing crime in a given area when an

outage occurs, but by causing crime to spill out into nearby areas, showing that street lighting, or

lack thereof, causes a bit of a ripple effect in terms of crime rates. This sequence of events comes

back to the point of a better maintained more livable, and in this case illuminated, city is

typically regarded as safer and less crime-ridden.

More than just green spaces and fixing street lighting can be done to make a city more

livable. As previously mentioned it is possible to include better public transportation options to

keep people off the streets at night, public spaces to reinforce informal social control and get

people out into plain view and plain sight with families and family friendly activities. Many

cities such as Miami, Florida and Queens, New York have reduced property crimes and

vandalism by creating designated graffiti areas for people to put up street art, as opposed to doing

so the illegal way.

Again, dozens of minor things, very particular factors, can be pointed at so as to blame

for the presence of crime. However, in the same vein, many seemingly small and minor things

can also be suggested to dissuade the presence of crime. To conclude, while getting to the root of
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crime is an all but impossible task, there are steps along the way to make cities safer without any

extreme measures such as increasing police foot patrol or major legislative decisions. Crime

control has aspects that are much more psychological and philosophical rather than

straightforward and fixable with force. Simpler, more amicable solutions exist in this world, such

as just making places nicer to live in. Greener spaces, nicer urban environments, improvements

in the city. Many solutions and small changes exist that can have more of an impact on crime

than one might assume.

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Works Cited

Armitage, Rachel, and Paul Ekblom. Rebuilding Crime Prevention through Environmental

Design: Strengthening the Links with Crime Science. Routledge, 2020.

Caplan, Joel. “Focus on Places, Not People, to Prevent Crime.” TEDxStocktonUniversity.

YouTube, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hKWLY1lZrs

Chalfin, A., Kaplan, J. & LaForest, M. Street Light Outages, Public Safety and Crime

Attraction. J Quant Criminol 38, 891–919 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-021-

09519-4

Freeze, Christopher. “Adverse Childhood Experiences and Crime.” Law Enforcement

Bulletin, 2019, leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/adverse-childhood-experiences-and-

crime.

Gash, Tom. “Manipulating the Moments That Turn Us into Criminals | Tom Gash |

Tedxathens.” YouTube, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRZMOVE153U.

Kuo, Frances E, and William C Sullivan. “Environment and crime in the inner city: Does

vegetation reduce crime?” Environment & Behavior, vol. 33, no. 3, 1 May 2001, pp.

343-367, https://doi.org/10.1177/00139160121973025
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Shepley M, Sachs N, Sadatsafavi H, Fournier C, Peditto K. “The Impact of Green Space on

Violent Crime in Urban Environments: An Evidence Synthesis.” International Journal of

Environmental Research and Public Health, 2019. Accessed Feb 10. 2024.

Taylor, Ralph B., and Adele Harrell. “Physical Environment and Crime.” U.S. Department

of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, 1996.

Tretter, Eliot. “Sustainability and Neoliberal Urban Development: The Environment,

Crime and the Remaking of Austin’s Downtown.” Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland)

50.11 (2013): 2222–2237. Web.

Wikström, PO.H., Ceccato, V., Hardie, B. et al. Activity Fields and the Dynamics of Crime.

J Quant Criminol 26, 55–87 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-009-9083-9