Reducing Crime Despite the enormous volume of criminological writing and debate which has taken place throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, the resulting theories which have emerged have tended to each focus too heavily on one particular aspect of crime and its control and as such, have proved to be incomplete approaches to our understanding of crime and its reduction; the focus of these being on the victim or on the offender, on the social reaction to crime or on the criminal behaviour itself [Young, 1995, p 102], but never sufficiently all inclusive. As a result, the criminal justice system, in reliance on this partial criminology, has introduced penal measures which have proved completely ineffective in reducing crime. I shall demonstrate my argument with a discussion of post World War II criminology and penology, and provide practical examples of how partial criminology has lead to a failure in crime reduction [by 'partial criminology', I refer to criminological theories which have focussed and relied too heavily on one particular aspect of crime and have as a result, failed to help its reduction]. I shall then conclude this essay by discussing some of the more recent criminological approaches which have emerged in the latter decades of the twentieth century, and discuss how these writings and debate might have paved the way for a brighter future in terms of effective crime control. From the latter part of the 1950's to the early 70's, the study of deviance and crime by criminologists entered an intensive period of development. The dominant criminological paradigm to emerge in this post World War II period became known as 'social democratic positivism'. The central principle of this approach was a belief that the increases in crime and anti-social behaviour which had been witnessed in this period were due to the demise of social conditions, social