ABSTRACT
Introduction As a doctoral student at Rutgers School of Criminal Justice in the 1990s I had the honor of working as a research assistant for Ron Clarke. I was immediately taken with the deceptively simple yet tremendously powerful utility of Ron’s theories and their applications for crime prevention. Ron’s work harkened that of another great thinker and visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller, who argued persuasively to “reform the environment, not the man.” This refreshing perspective attracted the pragmatists among us, who viewed it as more expedient and cost-effective to implement and evaluate crime prevention measures centered on physical structure and management practices – areas within the control of employees, businesses, and law enforcement – rather than to contemplate what makes some people criminals. Indeed, the scholarly community and practitioners alike have observed first-hand the utility of situational crime prevention (SCP) and its flexibility in guiding effective measures to reduce a wide array of crime types in all manner of environments.
