ABSTRACT
Contemporary place-based crime prevention planning owes debts to both traditional punishment and target hardening conceptions described above, and – despite the protestations of some criminologists (Jeffrey, 1977) – to the social ecologists as well. Punishment, though debatable as to effect, makes the core assumption that potential offenders make rational choices; target hardening extends that logic by suggesting that increasing the efforts required to reach a reward will deter offenders, who are presumed to be rational. Although they dominated the crime prevention debate for years, social ecologists helped stir interest during the 1960s and 1970s in geographical themes relative to socio-pathologies and spin-off theories that stressed spatial variables, and ultimately the physical environment in which crime occurs.
