English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

The post-conflict Trojan horse4. Security: Multiple means for a single endFor police, crime control is the preliminary purpose but the means to thisdo and must vary. Herein this section, we go on discussing the issues likecrime concentration, crime variation and crime reduction as the multipleways of analysing criminal pattern and characteristics. Different temporaland spatial dimensions need to be assessed in doing so. They have to beexcavated, scrutinised and evaluated from different angles.4.1 Crime concentrationDuring the 1920s and 1930s, much of the attention of criminologists wasfocused on the ‘criminogenic city’. It opined that a city setting is itselfprone to crimes. However, by this day, scholars have moved away fromsuch analyses. There are also other reasons that fuel criminal deeds inthe cities (Crutchfield and Kubrin 2009). Crimes concentrate in such ‘hotspots’ where the times and places favour the large numbers of offenders toexploit criminal opportunities. Such situations are referred to frequently incriminology as ‘crime attractors’, triggering in highly motivated criminalsfrom across the city-centres. Others are ‘crime generators’: places wherecrimes take place as a by-product of huge quantity of people passingthrough these locales on legitimate business (Brantingham 2009). Theymay be fairs, crowded shopping centres or even the crowded publicvehicles too. Crime concentrates because of ‘hot spots’, ‘crime attractors’and ‘crime generators’.Understanding crime depends on the way of understanding crimepatterns. It also depends on understanding the range of living patternsin high density cities (like Kathmandu) and in the less dense urban areas(like suburban places throughout Nepal). The nature of urban crimeis shaped by many factors including both the physical form of the cityand its economic diversity. Crime concentrates in such a time when andwhere homes are empty and vulnerable. 7 In the case of Kathmandu valley,long festival holidays like Dashain and Tihar are prone to criminal events.Basnet (2009) depicts that the number of crimes are increasing especiallyduring such big festivals. Furthermore, the physical design of suburbancommunities, especially the pattern of their road networks, influences thetarget of offenders.Brantingham (2009) reiterates that crime tends to occur with greaterfrequency in poorer parts of richer cities and in poorer neighbourhoods ofall cities. The occurrence of crime is shaped by a city’s daily routine, social7Based on pers. comm. with Senior Superintendent of Police Milan Basnet on 25th February 2009.214