In South Africa, there has been a steady increase in the number of armed robberies within the retail industry which have many negative consequences for the victims, their families, and the community. Materialism and economic advantage are major factors, as these robberies are very lucrative, although socio-economic factors such as unemployment, poverty, and relative deprivation can also contribute to the phenomenon. The climate of violence prevalent in South Africa, the ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system, as well as the availability of illegal firearms also contributes to this climate of lawlessness. The intense fear aroused by these robberies, as well as the extent of this crime necessitates empirical research in this regard. A literature search of South African databases reflects that no specific research regarding retail robberies has been undertaken. In order to fill this void, it was decided to investigate the modus operandi of retail robbers from the victims' perspective, as well as relevant situational factors, victim reactions and the consequences of these robberies. The Model of the victim's experience after a retail robbery (see Figure 2) was formulated to serve as a theoretical framework to give direction to the study and interpret the findings. In order to actualise the set research expectations, various victims of retail robberies within Gauteng were selected to participate in this study. The sample was drawn according to the purposive theoretical and snowball sampling methods. The sample consisted of 20 victims. Individual interviews were conducted with these respondents. Upon analysis and interpretation of the data, it was found that most retail robberies occur in areas with a high crime-rate. The main reason for the selection of a specific target seems to be the obtaining of money. The findings further indicate that retail robberies are committed by groups of offenders who predominantly make use of handguns during these robberies and usually have getaway vehicles waiting outside the stores. It was also apparent in the study that verbal threats and violence are usually employed during retail robberies in order to ensure compliance by the victims and that victims are less likely to resist if the offenders are armed with firearms. Findings indicate that the robbers become more aggressive when resisted and that aggression is influenced by the size of the group. The findings further show that stores with few customers are more likely to become the victims of retail robberies. It was found that security measures such as armed response, alarms and panic buttons do not necessarily deter retail robbers, but most stores improved their security following a robbery. Stores with no surveillance appear to be more vulnerable. Another situational factor pertinent to the study was that most of the stores' interiors were visible to passers-by from the outside. Finally, the impact of retail robberies upon the lives of the victims in terms of financial, physical, emotional and social consequences was also investigated. Based on the findings, recommendations are made with regard to further research. Stemming from this, various suggestions concerning the prevention of retail robberies are also made. / Dissertation (MA (Criminology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

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This project examines the protection methods suggested by hackers to guard against online victimization through the lens of Situation Crime Prevention. Data were collected from 85 webpages representing three categories of electronic communications: forums, blogs, and fan pages. The goal of this project was to identify which of the 25 opportunity reduction techniques the hacking community recommend most often, as well as, what level of expertise was associated with the suggested security measures. Results indicate that the technique most recommended by the hacking community was to remove targets with 27% of the total codings. From the results three themes were found: (1) most recommendations are such that implementing the strategies would serve to protect against opportunistic, low-skilled attacks; (2) most recommendations could be considered routine precautions, that when bundled, would secure most people against cyber-theft; and finally, (3) the Situational Crime Prevention framework was not fully realized because much of cyber-theft does not involve direct victim-perpetrator interactions. From these three themes policy recommendation and limitations are presented as well as avenues for future research.

This thesis considers the structural characteristics of online criminal networks from a technical and an economic perspective. Through large-scale measurements, we empirically describe some salient elements of the online criminal infrastructures, and we derive economic models characterizing the associated monetization paths enabling criminal profitability. This analysis reveals the existence of structural choke points: components of online criminal operations being limited in number, and critical for the operations’ profitability. Consequently, interventions targeting such components can reduce the opportunities and incentives to engage in online crime through an increase in criminal operational costs, and in the risk of apprehension. We define a methodology describing the process of distilling the knowledge gained from the empirical measurements on the criminal infrastructures towards identifying and evaluating appropriate countermeasures. We argue that countermeasures, as defined in the context of situational crime prevention, can be effective for a long-term reduction in the occurrence of online crime.

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No description available.

This thesis makes two significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge within crime prevention. The first of these is to evaluate the success of repeat victimisation prevention interventions. Interventions across four crime types are assessed herein, and the context-mechanisms-outcome configurations examined. The second contribution of this thesis is to assess two techniques of meta-evaluation: systematic reviews and realist syntheses. Each of these techniques is used in turn to assess the repeat victimisation prevention interventions. The contribution of each technique to the knowledge pool is then discussed, and the question of whether they are complementary or contradictory approaches answered. The thesis is framed in the context of evolutionary epistemology, which is the philosophy underpinning both approaches to meta-evaluation addressed herein. The thesis starts, with an examination of: firstly, how the evaluation methods in question have evolved, and the background to their scientific worth; and secondly, how situational crime prevention measures have evolved over time. The thesis then examines the two competing approaches for their contribution to the evaluation ecosystem by using both to assess repeat victimisation prevention interventions. Finally, the last section poses the question of whether it is survival of the fittest, or whether co-existence or adaptation could be the key to survival for these two meta-evaluative methodologies. Repeat victimisation prevention is revealed as an effective way of reducing crime, with a need for further research to apply the principle across further crime types. A requirement is identified for a greater breadth and depth of information to be included in future crime prevention evaluations. The systematic review is shown to be a useful way of assessing the overall effectiveness of the interventions, whilst the realist synthesis fills in the detail of why some interventions work and others fail. It is concluded that both approaches to meta-evaluation have useful contributions to make, and that a third way incorporating the best elements from each method should be developed.

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) has been widely applied to crack down crimes. However, the comprehensive set-up of the CCTV in public space was controversial in terms of the issues of human rights, law, regulation, and of applications to detecting crimes. As the integration and application of CCTV are getting popular, it seems to be significant to explore the dilemmas of applying CCTV to collect information and meantime protecting people¡¦s privacy. The study is based on the architecture-oriented (AO), applying the method of situational crime privation (SCP) and architecture descriptive language (ADL) under the frame of Structure-Behavior Coalescence (SBC) of Enterprise Architecture (EA), to achieve the following goals: (1) to investigate the current CCTV management and regulation, (2) to construct a more appropriate CCTV management model, (3) to assure the public by making public the CCTV application procedure In the end, to increase the reliability and validity of the study, systematic observation approach was added to testify the operative and regulative procedures of using CCTV.

abstract: Problem-oriented policing (POP) dynamically addresses unique community issues in a way that allows police departments to be cost-effective and efficient. POP draws upon routine activities and rational choice theories, at times incorporating elements of crime prevention through environmental design. A recent systematic review found POP to be hugely popular, but not rigorously assessed or implemented. In 2009, the Glendale, Arizona Police Department and researchers from Arizona State University received funding through the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s (BJA) Smart Policing Initiative (SPI) to target crime at convenience stores through a problem-oriented policing approach. The Glendale SPI team devised an approach that mirrored the ideals put forth by Goldstein (1990), and provided a thorough undertaking of the SARA model. A comprehensive response plan was developed with several proposed responses, including: intervention with Circle K leadership, suppression, and prevention at the six highest-activity stores. Despite a thorough POP implementation, the initial descriptive evaluation of the Glendale SPI reported positive effects on crime, but left questions about the intervention’s long-term impact on convenience store crime in Glendale, Arizona. The policy and theoretical influence of the initiative warrants a more rigorous evaluation. Supplanting the original assessment, a difference in difference model, negative binomial regression, and relative effect size are calculated to ascertain the SPI’s long-term effects on target and comparison stores. Phi and weighted displacement quotient are calculated to determine the existence of displacement of crime or diffusion of benefits. Overall, results indicate support for the project’s effectiveness on crime reduction. Further, none of the six intervention stores experienced crime displacement. Five of the six stores, however, experienced a diffusion of benefits in the surrounding 500-yard area; that is, a crime reduction was observed at the intervention stores and in the surrounding areas of five of these stores. Disorder and property crimes at the targeted stores were most affected by the intervention. One of the intervention stores did experience an increase in violent crime, however. Future studies should strengthen the methodological design when evaluating POP projects and seek to flesh out more precisely the crime control effects of unique problem-oriented strategies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2016

Le développement de la vidéosurveillance en France depuis les années 1990 révèle une évolution atypique. Cette opportunité technique portée par l’innovation technologique s’est tout d’abord fermement inscrite dans un violent débat, confrontant des positionnements idéologiques favorables ou opposés à la charge symbolique que véhiculait la vidéosurveillance. Finalement, grâce à des campagnes convergentes de légitimation que cette thèse décrit, les caméras de surveillance ont progressivement été affranchies de leur image liberticide pour durablement s’inscrire dans les programmes locaux de sécurité ainsi que dans les politiques publiques nationales. Cependant, après plus de deux décennies d’installations et d’extensions de réseaux de vidéosurveillance sur la voie publique, il n’existait, avant ce travail de recherche, aucune étude scientifique des contributions de cette technologie à la sécurisation d’un territoire.Avant toute chose, une contextualisation, nationale et locale, du succès de cet outil sociotechnique permet une mise en perspective de l’opportunité d’une démarche d’évaluation de politique publique pour éprouver la vidéosurveillance. Ce travail préalable révèle l’état des études françaises relatives au développement des caméras de surveillance et examine les méthodes d’évaluation disponibles.Le cœur de cette recherche interroge une promotion de la vidéosurveillance qui semble dépourvue de tout fondement rationnel, en rapportant les enseignements et résultats issus d’une démarche d’évaluation d’un programme d’extension de caméras de surveillance dans une grande commune française : Montpellier. Volontairement détaché des questionnements autour de la préservation des libertés individuelles, le travail réalisé se concentre sur l’identification et l’emploi d’une formule permettant l’examen de la vidéosurveillance et sur la justification des résultats obtenus sur un terrain spécifique. Pour cela, la recherche de terrain, conduite entre 2012 et 2015 dans le cadre d’une convention industrielle de formation par la recherche (CIFRE), a donc consisté à mettre en pratique une importante collecte de données encadrée par un protocole rigoureux.Ce travail interroge aussi la place de l’évaluation des politiques publiques de sécurité en France, en proposant une approche originale ouverte aux doctrines internationales. Conscient de l’opposition des méthodes expérimentales et réalistes, cette thèse suggère une voie de conciliation de ces deux écoles. Elle propose pour cela un protocole respectant les standards de la Campbell Collaboration mis en parallèle d’une interprétation des données guidée par la doctrine réaliste de l’évaluation.Après avoir établi la rigueur de la méthode déployée, cette recherche présente des conclusions argumentées quant à la contribution de la vidéosurveillance à la sécurité publique d’un territoire. Les résultats de l’évaluation s’attardent principalement à démontrer la pertinence du positionnement légal de la vidéosurveillance comme un dispositif de prévention situationnelle de la délinquance.Au final, après avoir exposé la validité interne et externe des résultats obtenus, la thèse interroge le paradoxe de la diffusion d’un outil qui paraît insensible à sa remise en cause pragmatique. Car malgré des résultats fiables quant à une contribution finalement négligeable de la vidéosurveillance à la sécurisation d’espaces publics, il semble que la croissance de cet outil repose sur une pernicieuse synergie de rationalités hétérogènes que la présente thèse tâche de décrire. / The growth of CCTV deployment in France since the 90’s has shown interesting developments. . In the beginning, this result of technological progress is in violent opposition to ideological positions that see cameras only as a symbol. After some a period of time, due to a legitimation campaign that this thesis describes, surveillance cameras were emancipated from there liberticidal vision and were for a long time used in local and national security policy. Meanwhile, after more than two decades of their widespread use by local governments, there was never in France any reliable demonstration of the effectiveness of CCTV against crime in public areas. Therefore, present research interrogates this irrational promotion of CCTV while presenting results and implications of an empirical study on French local policy developing public surveillance webs in Montpellier.First of all, a description of national and local contexts will justify the usefulness and opportunity of CCTV policy assessment. This part of the thesis points to the lack of crime prevention policy evaluation in France and the lack of investigation into the methods that are available.Thereafter, the keystone of this thesis is the description of an empirical experiment conducted in Montpellier between 2012 and 2015 in a tripartite convention associating local government, a research centre and a PhD student. Voluntarily detached from the discussions surrounding the protection of individual rights, the author focuses on how CCTV results can be observed and measured, and what were these results in a particular research field.Relying on the first scientific assessment of a public CCTV program in France, this thesis explains the method, the difficulty and the results of impact measurements and assessment. The data collected provides reliable findings on the contributions of a CCTV system against problems of crime in France.This work also clarifies the situation of evaluation practices on crime prevention programs in France. Aware of some shortcomings in this field, the author draws on North American and British methods to support his approach. Influenced both by the rigor of Campbell collaboration standards and the relevance of the realist approach, the author proposes a method to combine these two opposing doctrines of evaluation.Finally, after examining the internal and external validity of the evaluation results, this thesis reveals that CCTV development seems insensitive to its pragmatic questioning. Despite reliable results demonstrating a marginal contribution of CCTV cameras against crime in public areas, the success of this tool seems to rely on a pernicious mechanics that the present thesis attempts to describe