Anatomy of Riots: A Situational Crime Prevention Approach

Abstract

The basis of Situational Crime Prevention, Routine Activity Approach, Environmental Criminology, Opportunity Theory and related perspectives is the notion of rational choice. The preventive techniques are based on the assumption that a rational offender is unlikely to act if the efforts of committing a crime are greater than the expected rewards. This paper seeks to extend the notion of rational choice from the individual to the group and suggests the application of situational prevention to a new dimension – that of large-scale disorder problems such as riots, anti-government demonstrations and confrontational religious celebrations. These disorder problems pose serious challenges since these involve vicious mobs violating prohibitory orders, attacking police personnel and indulging in wanton destruction of property and violence. We argue that even though a mob behaves irrationally and indulges in senseless acts of violence and destruction, the individuals comprising the mob are rational and guided by self-interest in their behavior. Therefore, even in riotous situations, rational choice perspective can be profitably exploited to prevent mayhem. We present several cases of handling major riots and group confrontation from different parts of India. We describe the applicability of several situational techniques to controlling disorder and preventing further escalation of violence. The generalization of Situational Crime Prevention techniques to large-scale order maintenance problems is suggested.