Dispersal Zones

[tarannau]

Was the headline for that article "No shit Sherlock?"

 

[clandestino]

I know! I thought posters on here might like the chance to say "Told you so!"

 

[Giles]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20071018/tuk-uk-britain-displacement-fa6b408_2.html

"Dispersal powers, brought in to tackle antisocial behaviour, merely act as "sticking plasters", shifting the problem to other areas and in some cases increasing crime levels, a report said on Thursday."

People always point to the displacement effect of any anti-crime measure as if this somehow negates its usefulness.

This is wrong.

If I lived in an area where there was lots of antisocial behaviour going on all the time, and some measure made it go away, then that is good from my point of view.

If I put a burglar alarm box on the front of my house, I reduce the risk of it being broken in to.

Presumably a would-be burglar will see it and his attentions will be "displaced" to another house with no visible alarm.

Is getting a burglar alarm pointless therefore because "all it does is displace the crime to somewhere else"?

Giles..

 

[detective-boy]

People always point to the displacement effect of any anti-crime measure as if this somehow negates its usefulness.

This is wrong.

Not always.

If all a measure does is simply to displace crime then it is meaningless overall - for every resident made happy cos it's gone another one is pissed off because it has arrived and so there is no net gain.

Many crime prevention measures, like your burglar alarm, however, make crime more difficult per se and, whilst they may well have some displacement effect, they also have a net gain in that some burglaries will simply be prevented (not very many if its just one burglar alarm, but if lots of people get them burglary will fall generally as it is simply not as easy and a significant amount of crime is entirely opportunistic).

As for displacement of something like a street drugs market, the trick is to put in the enforcement measures over an area wide enough to kill the trade - for instance, if you drive drug dealers out of Coldharbour Lane but do nothing about the side streets they will simply move there as they are still near their customer base ... but if the measures are applied for half a mile in all directions? Or a mile? The key is, if possible (and it isn't always) to seperate potential sellers from their potential buyer base.