A Crime Prevention Model For Rural Communities In China

Crime is an old topic in human society.From ancient times,people have been exploring how to prevent and reduce crime.With the development of modern criminology and crime prevention practice,it is gradually realized that "communities" is a key point in crime rate control.As most of the crime happens in communities,strengthening the function of crime prevention in "communities" should be very helpful to reduce crime rates.And in China,the acceleration of social transformation has been making profound changes in rural areas.Undoubtedly,the rural areas benefit from rapid economic and social development.Meanwhile,the growing frequency of crime in these areas turns out to be an urgent issue.As a solution,it is necessary to build a scientific and rational model of crime prevention in rural communities to cut crime and reduce crime rates for the harmonious and stable development of rural communities.Yucun Village-a rural village in Zhejiang province-was taken as a typical case of community crime prevention model in this empirical research.And based on the field study,a comprehensive and systematic analysis was finally made through interview and literature surveys.Yucun Village,famous as the birthplace of the "Two Mountains" Theory,has a very successful model of rural community crime prevention.By all kinds of its innovations in crime prevention,the village was happy to see less crime and a lower crime rate.The first innovation was new collective economy,which provided a significant economic guarantee for Yucun Village's success of the community crime prevention model.The collective economy also brought a stronger sense of achievement and encouraged residents to take part in community safety maintenance.The second innovation was local culture,which was sublated by Yucun Village to show its normative value.The local culture internalized the norms into residents' mind,making them more self disciplined and more conscious to keep the community harmony.The third innovation was the mediation system of residents.Yucun Village actively invited new squires and social organizations to resolve disputes between residents,which expanded the social support and solved the problems in time.The fourth innovation was community policing.On the basis of grid management,Yucun Village carried out a "Home Guard" project,in which the community police built a positive interaction with residents by leading community volunteers to collect the dynamic information of the residents' situation,organizing volunteer patrol,publicizing public safety and crime prevention,and mediating contradictions and disputes.Overall,the crime prevention model of Yucun Village was made by social capital and based on social support.That is to say,in such a model,safe rural communities with a lower crime rate are constructed by taking multiple measures simultaneously such as mobilizing residents to participate in the resident self-governance with all the community capital and resources and advancing democratic consultation and social support with a public spirit.