Teorinės nusikalstamumo prevencijos problemos

Abstract

The article deals with the crime problems, that have been important to Lithuania during the last decade, i.e. throughout the transitional period and beyond it, when the market economy had been restored, and the democratic system had been more or less developed.
The article also discusses and evaluates the changes in the registered and latent crimes. Due to the lack of the evaluation of the kind, there was no proper preparation for combating organized crime in Lithuania. On the basis of it, the organised crime, inherited from the Soviet empire, expressed itself rather agressively during the first five years. After the restoration of independence, and with a sudden increase of numbers in registered crime, essentially only the traditions of violent prevention, inhereted from the authoritarian state existed, even though the country was already underway of creating a democratic state and society. The violent prevention of crime is a special crime prevention (primary, secondary, third etc.) that is carried out by the law enforcement institutions. However, the violent prevention of crime makes up relatively small part of the general prevention. It is not crimonologically grounded to leave all responsibility for the quality and volume of crime prevention solely to the law enforcement institutions. In the countries of West and North Europe, the crisis of the violent prevention of crime had been observed for many years already. For this reason, the countries for the last two decades have implemented practical prevention of crime by applying different methods and means, but trying to reduce imprisonment as the least effective and the most expensive way of crime prevention.
The article analyses the problems of crime prevention in a complex way, by opposing the experience of crime prevention in Lithuania to the situation and achievements in other European countries. The relation between theoretical crime development in Lithuania with the tendencies and evaluation of crime prevention, as well as the prevention possibilities at the law enforcement institutions and non-governmental organizations is reviewed.
The article discusses the strategic idea suggested by the authors to increase the application of pro-active crime prevention by involving separate members of society, citizen unions, public institutions, but without granting the privilleged status to the above-mentioned, which would violate the constitutional principal of citizen equality. Unfortunately, the supporters of the police, public employees, and citizens, performing the public duty have the privilleged status according to the existing legislation (this, by the way, has remained as a relic of the authoritarian state, since public institutions under the authoritarian regime was a part of the public violence system) and tries to use violence against the fellow citizens.