In What Ways Are Governments Trying To Reduce Crime

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In what ways are governments trying to reduce the crime rate in poor neighborhoods?

According to the Economist and many other newspapers, there a link between high crime rates and poverty. In this essay I will investigate how three different countries Sweden, USA and Australia are working to reduce their crime rates in targeted neighborhoods. In the end of the essay will write a conclusion of all my findings.

According to the Swedish national police home page the Swedish municipal's, state police and state work together to have an open dialog with the citizens in areas with low social economic standard, as this believed to be the best way to prevent crimes. In a collaboration between police and government organizations they decide which …show more content…

Unlike Sweden the Australian government doesn’t classify neighborhoods as problematic and then invest a lot of resources to decrease the crime rates in the area. The Australian government works through trying to prevent crimes in their entire nation, for instance they have the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) program. The CPTED program is a crime prevention strategy trying to re design areas to decrease the opportunity for crime. To succeed with the program, the Australian government works with maximizing the risk for offenders to get caught and maximizing the effort needed to commit a crime. Examples of how CPTED is working to decrease criminality is that they are installing street lightning on roads with high crime rates areas. According to Wright, et. al. report about the impact of street lightning on street crime, the report showed that there was a significant change in crime rates after installing street lightning both in in commercial areas and residential areas. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Australian government likewise the Swedish government see the importance in a cooperation between people, companies, social services and the state to prevent crimes. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology the Australian government also works with social crime prevention. Social crime prevention tries to eliminate the factors for teens that lead to crime such as poverty, poor health and poor educational performance. The people who work with social crime prevention have several after-school programs to try to keep the troubled teens away from the