Controlling embezzlement in Kuwait through situational crime prevention

Abstract

The literature on the causes of corruption has been preoccupied with the corrupt individual or the socio-political and economic contexts in which corruption occurs. This has resulted in macro-level counter-corruption approaches that focus on the root causes of corruption. In the last few decades, however, new Western criminological theories and approaches have been developing. Environmental criminology – and its family of theories – is one example of theories that provide a different perspective on crime prevention by focusing on the crime rather than the criminal. In this context, situational crime prevention (as part of environmental criminology) brings in micro-level preventive techniques, such as the immediate manipulation of the criminogenic situations, rather than focusing on the distant causes of crime. The Western literature on criminology abounds in successful experiences of the ability of situational crime prevention to prevent several types of crime, including white-collar crime. In the Arab world, nevertheless, there is a dearth of studies, if any, that apply situational crime prevention in terms of crime prevention. This paper furthers another area of research where it has been argued that criminology in the Arab world is still dominated by modern criminology theories where the individual criminal is the centre of attention. As a result, environmental criminology has notably been absent in the Arab criminological discourse. Taking Kuwait as an example of an Arab country, and embezzlement as a unit of analysis, this paper argues that situational crime prevention is also a promising crime prevention approach in the Arab world.