We’re up to Step 44 – Find the owner of the problem in our walk through the book Crime Analysis For Problem Solvers. The opening paragraph of this chapter says:
Many problems arise through the failure of some institution - business, government agency, or other organization - to conduct its affairs in ways that prevent crime rather than cause it. In short, many problems occur because one or more institutions are unable or unwilling to undertake a preventive strategy, or because these institutions have intentionally established a circumstance that stimulates crimes or disorder. This creates risky facilities (Step 28) and other concentrations of crime.For many problems the police face, a large number of them could have been prevented from becoming problematic if the owner of the problem dealt with it early on.
For example, in my sleepy little burg, we occasionally have disorder problems crop up around nightclubs. Most of the time, the management of these problem clubs are so slipshod they allow minor disorder problems to fester into huge problems.
When problems develop the authors suggest you look into the answers to these three questions:
- Who owns the problem?
- Why has the owner allowed the problem to develop?
- What is required to get the owner to undertake prevention?
In the case of our nightclub problems, if we cannot gain the cooperation of the club management voluntarily, we’ll resort to pursuing punitive actions against the club owners/management to force them to improve their operations and remove the environmental conditions that allows these problems to develop.
Next time, we’ll cover Step 45 – Choose responses likely to be implemented.
