How Will Social Media Help Reduce Crime in London - Essay Example

? SOCIAL MEDIA ON REDUCTION OF CRIME IN LONDON & ITS EFFECT TO DESIGN By Location Public knowledge of crime and injustice sources largely from the media channels. Crime prevention concerns itself with the attempt to reduce and dissuade crime and criminals. Away from the government efforts to curb crime in London, the media has chipped in to mitigate crime, enforce law awareness, and help highlight criminal injustices (Brownsword & Goodwin 2012, p. 178). There are different programs that would address crime in London, and address it in substantially diverse ways. Through the media, effectiveness of cutting down crime rate to manageable rate is possible and it not only influences the measures that can work out for proper crime management but also it influences the architectural design involved in fighting crime. There are reasons why the local crime rate in London has been on the rise. These factors include unemployment, struggling with difficult background, psychological disorders, and decrease of social capital. In the case of unemployment, many middle-aged youths would remain idle (Muncie 2004, p.110). Due to this reason, their energies end up being directed to the wrong side of involvement like robbery, street gagging, and turn into arsonists as well (Weiner 2013, p. 88). The media can help to highlight the plight of these people by shedding some light to the government as this can help in yielding a follow up. If any positive response comes by to meet the highlighted plight of unemployment, this can as well help to cool down crime participation since many of the wrong doers would involve themselves in an activity (Ceccato 2012, p. 72). This same case with someone faces and still struggles with difficult backgrounds. With no signs of fortune crossing by, someone may engage in crime activity to make his ends meet. If the social media can come in place to air always such grieving circumstances, there would definitely be some awareness. This might prompt the relevant agencies to advance in order to find solutions to such personnel’s in such background. Psychological disorders and decrease of social capital substitute trigger the birth of social crimes. All these, once publicized in advance, and relevant measure taken in good will, the crime rate would stifle down as well (Ceccato 2012, p. 90). This shows that the social can largely take a bigger proportion in reducing crime rates in the centrally located towns of London. This means that social media apply even in measures like a neighborhood watch, punishment, police patrol and CCTV cameras that might come into use in order to tame down the crime rate. As much as the media would help to reduce the rate of crime rate in London, this incorporation faces some challenges. For example, with the media pictographic mapping of crime rate already showing the zones of high crime rate, what happens on the paper, reported on television through graphics may not be the real capturing of the intensity of the crime at that place (Wykes 2001, p. 124). In most of the cases, disregarding of the media and crime happens without their knowledge denies them the opportunity to uncover the real issues. This may come as an overt challenge in involving media to reduce the crime rate. Lack of modern gadgets by police in terms of technology denies them the capability to deal with imminent threats of crime within London zones (Brownsword & Goodwin 2012, p. 102). Take for example, a bandit who runs loose after committing a crime and frequently checks on twitter or Facebook and no one of the police investigators are aware of his technological odysseys. This lack of knowledge on existing social media outlets one can use might not help in reducing crime in London. The same would apply if the law enforcement officers would make use of the social media networks (Ceccato 2012, p. 87). This would greatly provide follow-ins of criminals and clear statistics on the intensity of crime within London. In this metropolitan city of London, the media has helped in mapping the different rates of crime zones of the entire region. Through the printed manuals in newspapers and overtly showing in televisions, the areas of high and low crime rate lay bare. For example, through these printouts, areas such as Lambeth and Lewishman appear as the least peaceful. In this connection, the necessary combating measures and particularly the most effective ones ought to get their way to those regions. In the same media print, it is clear which other areas are most peaceful and the crime rate is almost zero. As an architectural designer this comes as the new realm in designing not only the geographical mapping of London but also bisecting it according to crime rate intensity. In this connection, the design art would have to incorporate the new dimension and stretches of land in reference to the crime. In addition, the art of designing would have to borrow heavily on perfection (Akhgar & Yates 2011, p. 79). This is to ensure that no area has been labeled as worst while in its entirety its good neither would it be befitting to claim an area as good while in real sense it is choking in its high rate of crime. The aftermath of the original designed crime rate map of London would have to have a media hand in order to disseminate the same to the public. The arsenal of using social media means to tame crime can prove to be effective using available social sites to connect with crime news update (Jewkes 2004, p. 106). Instead of a police officer getting involved in the movie-made drama of arresting crime suspect-hands up in the air, guns all out, doors kicked wide open or suspect chasing, the authorities can save all that drama and get involved in ample time scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Google updates and feeds to nap a crime suspect. This should not be termed as idle policing because police all over many countries are using the internet social media sites to their advantage. This highlights that social networks are proving to the perfect crime solving partners (Akhgar & Yates 2011, p. 86). It would be important to realize that we live in a time when there is rampant over sharing and perpetrators often leave an online bread trail making it to follow and tame crime increase in London. For example, the use of Facebook remains the most fertile sites where criminals visit for updates. If the police department would recognize and tap into its potential, crime rate in London would drastically reduce. In this case, the center of social media at the International Association of Chiefs of Police in London has enacted forward thinking police department police departments that venture into social networks as early as during the days of Myspace (Zagalo, Morgado & Boa-Ventura 2012, p. 78). This has yielded an exponential increase a huge growth in terms of law enforcement agencies by use of social media. In this respect, wise use of social media can help reduce the crime rate in a much bigger way in the environs of London. Tightening of social media technologies in London might prove the antidote of taming crime. With the rise of high-tech crimes, the police department has no alternative other than up its game (Akhgar & Yates 2011, p. 87). This is because not every suspect makes it to avail his criminal activity on the internet. This has prompted the police and private investigators use sophisticated means to trawl social networks. For example, the purposeful enactment of Connected Cops, a website that focuses on how police use social media has in turn made an info-graphic using BrightEvet’s data on how police use Twitter. In this latest version, there is over 772 official Twitter handles and it covers eight different countries. This is helping to tame crime in London (Brownsword & Goodwin 2012, p. 82). Officer’s use of social media like twitter is growing savvier. For example, the attack on British soldiers in London last March, a police unit by the name Open Source Intelligence Unit made use of software to comb Twitter in order to analyze how people responded into to it. This is a social medium, which tried to gauge the public mood (Zagalo, Morgado & Boa-Ventura 2012, p. 120). This would also track the use of hatred words, as the way they followed on Olympics hence they would increase their presence in such areas prone to inconsistency. This has made social media sites be reliable for outsourcing vital updates, warnings, and news on the crime rate in diverse parts of London. The use of social media in reducing crime in London has affected the way architectural designers in various ways. This is because personnel’s have had to change their methods in order to design out crimes. The idea of how architecture influences behavior is a central issue in architecture designer. The kind of structures people design influences a lot on the human character and their actions. People design buildings and then later the architectural structures define them and often regulate the course of peoples’ life. In taming crime in London, the design architects have to live with the notion that the way people live their lives is directly propositional to the environments designed for them. The designer architects would have to retain in mind that all the buildings imply at least some culture of social activity. This may relatively emanate out of their intended function and the random encounters they generate. For example, in designing the future of London, the arrangement of the partitions, rooms, doors, windows, and hallways would largely serve to influence how communication goes on and affect the social interaction (Akhgar & Yates 2011, p. 98). This is all in the hands of the designer architect since he can make sure his plans create contact points and lanes of access, in which people would be able to come together. In order to reduce crime rate, it is up for architect designers to designer in a way that they promise new environment, which would respectively change the behaviors and attitudes of the inhabitants (Wykes 2001, p. 138). This is because their input can create high-level inspirational areas instead of crime breeding zones, as well as creating the potential for involvement, interaction, and knowledge sharing areas. Design architecture can serve as a tool for regulatory force to influence and control people’s behavior in many cities like London. In curbing the rate of crime, designers’ use of architect to change the economic and the demographic make-up of zones and areas ranges in different dimensions (Pickering & Mcculloch 2012, p. 66). This may vary from policies of shopping centers and the business improvement District. Through this, the social class shifts. In impoverished areas, the designers may come up with massive developments architect designs and programs in order to revitalize the areas. Therefore, it would be an item of agenda for designer architects to create an environment where design and planned architect systematically becomes an instrument to tame crime. The planning thus follows planning decisions, criteria of economic sustainability, ecology, or efficiency of services (Pickering & Mcculloch 2012, p. 94). Research has shown that the move to reduce crime influences much the works architects come up with their duties. Proper design and effective use of the built environment may ultimately lead to a reduction in both the opportunity for crime and even the people’s fear of crime. Therefore, design architect would have to come up with designs and thorough constructions that model the birth and creation of safer neighborhood and communities in London cities and streets (Akhgar & Yates 2011, p. 91). The design architecture is not the same anymore for the necessary alteration have to be in place in order to reduce the crime rate. There is an overt design architect procedure which would have to in place to cut down the crime rate. In construction of house designers would have to delineate private property i.e. driveway, walkway, from the public places like streets (Akhgar & Yates 2011, p. 104). This can come through alternate paving stone color and changes in grade. They would have also to provide for unobstructed view of the surrounding area in the designs of the houses in many London neighborhoods. They would oversee that their designs do not come with landscaping which has previously helped conceal offenders. The designs should also provide for common spaces to encourage tenants’ interaction (Pickering & Mcculloch 2012, p. 106). This would bring some sense of safety among residents. The new houses to be constructed should have their entrances equipped with an intercom system. With this system in place, many residential areas, neighborhood, and estates in the London environs would be safe zones less of crime and criminality. In conclusion, as much media input is helping to reduce crime rate in London, the personnel’s in design architect have come in to create defensible covers through restructuring of communities, cities, streets and neighborhoods in order to allow peace to take over in place of crime as earlier times (Jewkes 2004, p. 260). Social media and design architect therefore design environments, which influence people’s mannerism in positive ways in modern London cities. Bibliography Akhgar, B & Yates, S 2011, Intelligence management knowledge driven frameworks for combating terrorism and organized crime. London, Springer. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=798830. Brownsword, R & Goodwin, M 2012, Law and the technologies of the twenty-first century: text and materials. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 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