ABSTRACT
Crime facilitators help offenders commit crimes or acts of disorder. There are three types of facilitators:
Physical facilitators are things that augment offenders' capabilities or help to overcome prevention measures. Lorries extend offenders' capacity to move stolen goods, telephones allow people to make obscene phone calls, and firearms help overcome resistance to robberies. Some physical facilitators are tools, but others are part of the physical environment. Barry Poyner and Barry Webb describe how the arrangement of stalls in a Birmingham retail market, for example, facilitated thefts from women's handbags.
Social facilitators stimulate crime or disorder by enhancing rewards from crime, legitimating excuses to offend, or by encouraging offending. Groups of young men, for example, can provide the social atmosphere that encourages rowdy behaviour at sporting events.
Chemical facilitators increase offenders' abilities to ignore risks or moral prohibitions. Some offenders, for example, drink heavily or use drugs before a crime in order to decrease their nervousness.
Each type of facilitator acts against particular forms of situational crime prevention (Steps 33-37), as shown in the table. Physical facilitators help offenders overcome preventive measures that increase risk or effort. They can also act as provocations to deviancy. Social facilitators can increase the perceived reward or the acceptable excuses for committing a crime, and they can provoke crime or disorder through encouragement. Chemical facilitators allow offenders to ignore the risk and effort involved in committing a crime. And they allow offenders to make unacceptable excuses.