Discourse about the social prevention of crime and delinquency in Slovenia

Abstract

The contribution is an attempt at a critical analysis of the concept of social prevention of crime, a presentation of the historical background of the development of crime prevention from a criminological perspective and a sketch of existing social prevention practices in Slovenia. Strategies of social crime prevention aim at modification of the social environment in terms of reducing the crime rate, which can be achieved by solving numerous social problems, such as social inequality, low education level, poor employment opportunities, discrimination, poverty and social exclusion. Existing governmental documents that focus on the aforementioned areas serve as the basis for analysis of the current situation in the field of social prevention of crime in connection with the formulation of crime policy. The authors established that there has been a relatively small impact of social prevention ideas on crime prevention practice in Slovenia and, recently, even an increasing absence of social prevention in social practice.