ABSTRACT
As shown in the previous chapter, situational crime prevention theory gener ally fits into the rubric of utilitarian theory. In this chapter, as a way of further examining situational crime prevention’s utilitarianism, we will com pare it to the theories of the best known utilitarian in criminology, Jeremy Bentham,1 and consider the implications of any similarities uncovered. A comparison with Bentham is justified on a number of grounds, though it brings with it a number of difficulties. First, not only is Bentham the best known utilitarian in criminology, he is
probably the most vilified. Foucault (1979) used Bentham’s design for the Panopticon as a metaphor for all that was bad about punishment and society in the past 200 years. In virtually all textbooks in psychology or criminol ogy, Bentham’s psychology is quickly dismissed as simplistic (the lightning calculus) and his social control theory regarded as unacceptable because of the ‘Big Brother’ connotations of his Panopticon. Is situational crime pre vention open to similar attacks? Second, nowhere in criminology is there a serious analysis of Bentham’s
work.2 The result is that his theories are poorly understood and often dis torted. It is necessary, therefore, to correct these distortions to prevent them from creeping into interpretations of the situational crime prevention ap proach when we identify it with Bentham’s work. Third, from the point of view of intellectual history we think it defensible
to search for the roots that situational prevention may have in a great
intellectual tradition such as that of utilitarianism. We cannot, of course, simply infer that identified similarities in the two sets of writings show that situational crime prevention was directly developed out of Bentham’s work: the history of ideas is no doubt far more complex than that.3 But if the comparison achieves nothing else, it is well worthwhile as a heuristic de vice. This is because we think that the conceptual structure of Bentham’s theory can be shown to be quite similar to recent statements of situational crime prevention.4 Finally, Bentham’s works in themselves justify their re-examination. His
amazing writings of over six million words, some still not published, cover social control, crime prevention, social engineering, semiotics, personality theory, social organization and political theory, to name but a small number of topics. He also represents the best of a great stream of utilitarian thought that began with Socrates and reached its zenith in the 18th century (see the previous chapter).5
