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Ending the Culture of Street Crime

NCJ Number
208218
Journal
Prison Journal Volume: 84 Issue: 4 Dated: December 2004 Pages: 48S-68S
Editor(s)
Rosemary L. Gido
Date Published
December 2004
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article develops the theory of a culture that characteristically produces street crime, and it offers proposals for ending such a culture.
Abstract
Traditional strategies for countering and responding to street crime have focused on sending police officers to crime scenes to investigate specific crimes and make every effort to identify and arrest individual offenders, who are then processed by the criminal justice system; and if convicted, they are typically removed from the community for a time and then sent back into the community in the hope that they have changed. Clearly this strategy has not been effective. What is needed is an attack on the cultural conditions that have spawned street crime in specific communities. This can only be changed as the communities enter into partnership with governmental agencies to achieve positive cultural change. This perspective dominated the Anticrime Summit sponsored by Lifers, Inc., which is composed of men serving life terms at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Graterford (SCIG); Men United for a Better Philadelphia (MUBP); and the SCIG administration. The summit, which was held on April 17, 2003, focused on building partnerships under the premise that crime and violence can only be reduced through the collective efforts of every segment of the society, including social service agencies, victim advocates, religious representatives, legislators, academia, youth, criminal justice professionals, and transformed ex-offenders living inside prisons and in the community. In addition to profiling the themes of the summit, this article focuses on the economic and psychological factors that influence the street crime culture, the cycle that maintains this culture, and how to end the street crime culture. Attention is given to the role of the prison culture in ending the street crime culture. 2 figures, 3 notes, and 1 references