Conceptual ways of looking at crime

From Designing for Security: Guidance from the Art Commission of New York City, 2002. This text is not copyrighted.

Although it may seem self evident that the design of a building or site can affect how secure it is, the scientific basis for this is relatively recent. Oscar Newman first made a research-based case that environmental design could affect crime in his seminal book, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design (1973). He was the first to spell out a conceptual framework that designers and owners could use to evaluate the security consequences of site configuration and building design. In ensuing years, researchers have both questioned and amplified Newman’s findings, creating a body of work that is now called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). Some of these efforts are briefly summarized below to help agencies and designers see their new construction or alteration projects through the conceptual lenses used by those who study the relationship between crime and environmental design.

Defensible Space

Although Oscar Newman’s research was mostly concerned with public housing sites, he advocated the use of the concepts he developed in other kinds of projects. The conceptual framework he proposed consists of:

Territoriality. This means subdividing environments into zones capable of being influenced by users or managers. The idea is to encourage people to exercise a kind of proprietary “ownership” of public or semi-public space (through use, maintenance, surveillance, and quick notification to authorities when inappropriate activity is witnessed). Making evident this assumption of territoriality is supposed to demarcate zones that invite appropriate users to make use of the space and clearly indicate that inappropriate user will not be tolerated.
Surveillance. This is the “capacity of the physical design to provide surveillance opportunities.” This means residents, users, or managers of a facility are able to view public areas and to make potential perpetrators aware that areas are being watched. A building recess in a residential building that contains the entrance but which has no apartment windows looking in on it is more appealing to a mugger than a similar entrance which is faced by many apartment windows and visible from a busy street.
Avoidance of stigma. Newman argued that design that conveyed the notion that public housing was only for poor people also rendered it less safe. More broadly, he argues that it is important to decrease the perception by owners, tenants or users that they are vulnerable to crime or are physically isolated. In other words, environments should convey a sense of security. People should feel confident that if they need aid it will be promptly available.
Safe location. This point, too, was oriented specifically to the siting of housing, but more broadly conceptualized the importance of site choice and site configuration in assuring security. The design of a project could affect the security of the surrounding neighborhood, he argued, and the surrounding neighborhood affects how secure the new facility can be.

Threat Analysis

Stuart Knoop, a Washington-based security expert, who has consulted on many government projects, including anti-terrorist efforts as well as anti-crime efforts, has conceptualized an environmental-design analysis based on the nature and kind of threat that is posed to the facility or its users. (Knoop has also worked on recent anti-terrorist embassy-project design guidelines.) By understanding the nature of threats, he argues, suitable means can be devised to resist them.

Knoop argues (1992) that any design for security must include a threat analysis. The elements of the analysis include:

Identifying the types of threat
Identifying the potential perpetrator (which could include employees or users, not just people from outside)
Identifying the likely means of perpetrating
Identifying the likely targets

A detailed consideration of the kind Knoop proposes may be necessary for a court, police, or detention facility, but may not be called for in smaller projects that are not obvious targets. However, an attempt to correlate the real threats (through facility-management records or police statistics) posed by a facility’s use, location, or configuration would usefully inform the process of any project’s design.

Reducing crime opportunities

The work of R. V. Clarke has had an important impact on the security and environmental-design nexus. He focuses on reducing crime opportunities. The four ways to do this (1997), he says, are:

Increase the perceived effort of offending
Increase the perceived risk in offending
Decrease the perceived reward of offending
Remove the excuses, or opportunities, for offending (for example, lax enforcement or attitudes towards criminality)

The chief criticism of Oscar Newman’s work is that it addresses only the first item. It is clear from research that environmental design alone cannot be counted on to change crime patterns. Analysts conclude that environmental design together with suitable facilities management has the greatest environment-related crime-reduction impact. Since building costs and management costs are inevitably limited, a structured consideration of what can be accomplished through design and what can be accomplished through traditional management or anti-crime strategies--guards, police visits, patrols by staff or volunteers—should offer important insights.

“Broken Windows”

James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling (1982, 1998; Skogan, 1990) have documented the powerful role maintenance and management can have on reducing crime. (The term “broken windows,” which has now become shorthand for the concepts described below, comes from the title of an article in The Atlantic Monthly in which Wilson and Kelling first spelled out their ideas.) When vandalized or broken-into facilities are promptly repaired and secured, the offender detects a spiral of increased risk, and reduced reward in offending. As crime is reduced, confidence grows, and neighborhood residents and users begin to participate in resisting crime by reporting inappropriate behavior when they see it because they perceive that reporting will be acted on. These actions further a spiral toward greater safety.

Conversely, in the absence of maintenance, management, and policing, a downward spiral of greater vulnerability and reduced risk to the offender begins to come into play. Local residents or casual users who might once have kept an eye out for inappropriate use, or took action when they witnessed it, become demoralized or avoid the area. Criminals perceive the lowered chances for detection, the reduced risk of arrest, and the reduced consequences if they are caught, and step up their activities.

From this research comes the concept that reducing low-level crimes and expelling low-level criminals from a neighborhood has the effect of “exposing” the more serious crimes and criminals, making them more readily apprehended. The concept underlies the crime-fighting strategy that has been put into practice in New York City over the last few years and is substantially credited with dramatic reductions in crime. (While the Commission is not charged with evaluating facility maintenance, the relationship of maintenance to the design under consideration may become a topic of discussion.)

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design

As the body of research has risen on the relationship between crime and design, a new conceptual framework has come to be accepted that integrates the proven elements of Newman’s and Clarke’s analyses. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) has many facets and recommended strategies, but fundamentally it proposes that design elements should avoid or reduce crime opportunities through the following strategies:

Natural access control. By controlling access, the facility denies entry to the crime target and raises the offender’s perception of risk. Controlling entry can be accomplished by “organized” means (a guard), “mechanical” means (such as locks) or “natural” means through the way the space is defined or configured.
Natural surveillance. Design that enhances the observation of possible criminal activity can have a deterrent effect (offenders become aware of the watchers) as well as make it easier to catch offenders in the act. The means are, again, “organized” (police, staff or voluntary patrol), “mechanical” (lighting, cameras), and “natural” (windows, open vistas or lines of sight).
Territorial reinforcement. A design configuration that helps users adopt or extend a sphere of influence can deter crime. Playground users who develop a proprietary relationship to a playground may “defend” it simply by using it. (An empty playground is more appealing for, say, gang appropriation.) Parents may then more actively observe what goes on in the playground and report inappropriate use. They may even contribute to the maintenance of a facility by, for example, voluntarily restoring a park or library garden damaged by vandals.

There is hardly unanimity about the role or utility of design in preventing crime. Certainly physical factors alone can neither cause nor prevent crime. Indeed, some critics argue that there are too many physical and social variables to attribute crime reduction primarily to physical factors. R. Linden posed the following questions (1990): What specific security measures work best? By how much does increased surveillance reduce crime rates? When is territorial reinforcement of the kind proposed by Newman essential for success? Is there a threshold below which any changes have no effect and above which changes have diminishing returns?

Researcher Sally E. Merry (1981) tried to understand the conditions under which residents of an inner-city housing project act and fail to act to defend domains that she considered to be either architecturally defensible or indefensible (as Newman would define these terms). She concluded that while design can provide preconditions for effective control, it cannot create such control if the social fabric of the community is fragmented.

Others have criticized the concept of territoriality specifically, especially as it applies to the rapidly changing mosaic of cultures, incomes, and sociologies in a place like New York City. Hillier (1973) and Reppetto (1974) object to the concept of territoriality, arguing that race and socio-economic characteristics of a community are much more important to both crime and social cohesion than the manner in which the environment is designed. The implication can further be drawn that volatility in racial or income makeup within a neighborhood can make it much more difficult to develop the proprietary relationship to place that is key to the idea of territoriality. On the other hand, a dominant group can take the idea of territoriality too far, claiming a public place for a given neighborhood or ethnic group’s use. And what is a gang after all, but a group of unrelated citizens exercising “territoriality” by appropriating a public place—street corner, block, or playground?

Research has not established a definitive pathway for designers, nor definitive measures of success. But it has, by and large, validated the idea that design can affect the security of facilities. The criminal-justice community increasingly joins the consensus that physical design does play an important role in crime prevention. New research and design on the subject has recently been commissioned by HUD and the Department of Justice, so useful guidance should increasingly be available.

Home Hot Topic Articles Books Consulting About JSR
	Conceptual ways of looking at crime From Designing for Security: Guidance from the Art Commission of New York City, 2002. This text is not copyrighted. Although it may seem self evident that the design of a building or site can affect how secure it is, the scientific basis for this is relatively recent. Oscar Newman first made a research-based case that environmental design could affect crime in his seminal book, Defensible Space: Crime Prevention Through Urban Design (1973). He was the first to spell out a conceptual framework that designers and owners could use to evaluate the security consequences of site configuration and building design. In ensuing years, researchers have both questioned and amplified Newman’s findings, creating a body of work that is now called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). Some of these efforts are briefly summarized below to help agencies and designers see their new construction or alteration projects through the conceptual lenses used by those who study the relationship between crime and environmental design. Defensible Space Although Oscar Newman’s research was mostly concerned with public housing sites, he advocated the use of the concepts he developed in other kinds of projects. The conceptual framework he proposed consists of: Territoriality. This means subdividing environments into zones capable of being influenced by users or managers. The idea is to encourage people to exercise a kind of proprietary “ownership” of public or semi-public space (through use, maintenance, surveillance, and quick notification to authorities when inappropriate activity is witnessed). Making evident this assumption of territoriality is supposed to demarcate zones that invite appropriate users to make use of the space and clearly indicate that inappropriate user will not be tolerated. Surveillance. This is the “capacity of the physical design to provide surveillance opportunities.” This means residents, users, or managers of a facility are able to view public areas and to make potential perpetrators aware that areas are being watched. A building recess in a residential building that contains the entrance but which has no apartment windows looking in on it is more appealing to a mugger than a similar entrance which is faced by many apartment windows and visible from a busy street. Avoidance of stigma. Newman argued that design that conveyed the notion that public housing was only for poor people also rendered it less safe. More broadly, he argues that it is important to decrease the perception by owners, tenants or users that they are vulnerable to crime or are physically isolated. In other words, environments should convey a sense of security. People should feel confident that if they need aid it will be promptly available. Safe location. This point, too, was oriented specifically to the siting of housing, but more broadly conceptualized the importance of site choice and site configuration in assuring security. The design of a project could affect the security of the surrounding neighborhood, he argued, and the surrounding neighborhood affects how secure the new facility can be. Threat Analysis Stuart Knoop, a Washington-based security expert, who has consulted on many government projects, including anti-terrorist efforts as well as anti-crime efforts, has conceptualized an environmental-design analysis based on the nature and kind of threat that is posed to the facility or its users. (Knoop has also worked on recent anti-terrorist embassy-project design guidelines.) By understanding the nature of threats, he argues, suitable means can be devised to resist them. Knoop argues (1992) that any design for security must include a threat analysis. The elements of the analysis include: Identifying the types of threat Identifying the potential perpetrator (which could include employees or users, not just people from outside) Identifying the likely means of perpetrating Identifying the likely targets A detailed consideration of the kind Knoop proposes may be necessary for a court, police, or detention facility, but may not be called for in smaller projects that are not obvious targets. However, an attempt to correlate the real threats (through facility-management records or police statistics) posed by a facility’s use, location, or configuration would usefully inform the process of any project’s design. Reducing crime opportunities The work of R. V. Clarke has had an important impact on the security and environmental-design nexus. He focuses on reducing crime opportunities. The four ways to do this (1997), he says, are: Increase the perceived effort of offending Increase the perceived risk in offending Decrease the perceived reward of offending Remove the excuses, or opportunities, for offending (for example, lax enforcement or attitudes towards criminality) The chief criticism of Oscar Newman’s work is that it addresses only the first item. It is clear from research that environmental design alone cannot be counted on to change crime patterns. Analysts conclude that environmental design together with suitable facilities management has the greatest environment-related crime-reduction impact. Since building costs and management costs are inevitably limited, a structured consideration of what can be accomplished through design and what can be accomplished through traditional management or anti-crime strategies--guards, police visits, patrols by staff or volunteers—should offer important insights. “Broken Windows” James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling (1982, 1998; Skogan, 1990) have documented the powerful role maintenance and management can have on reducing crime. (The term “broken windows,” which has now become shorthand for the concepts described below, comes from the title of an article in The Atlantic Monthly in which Wilson and Kelling first spelled out their ideas.) When vandalized or broken-into facilities are promptly repaired and secured, the offender detects a spiral of increased risk, and reduced reward in offending. As crime is reduced, confidence grows, and neighborhood residents and users begin to participate in resisting crime by reporting inappropriate behavior when they see it because they perceive that reporting will be acted on. These actions further a spiral toward greater safety. Conversely, in the absence of maintenance, management, and policing, a downward spiral of greater vulnerability and reduced risk to the offender begins to come into play. Local residents or casual users who might once have kept an eye out for inappropriate use, or took action when they witnessed it, become demoralized or avoid the area. Criminals perceive the lowered chances for detection, the reduced risk of arrest, and the reduced consequences if they are caught, and step up their activities. From this research comes the concept that reducing low-level crimes and expelling low-level criminals from a neighborhood has the effect of “exposing” the more serious crimes and criminals, making them more readily apprehended. The concept underlies the crime-fighting strategy that has been put into practice in New York City over the last few years and is substantially credited with dramatic reductions in crime. (While the Commission is not charged with evaluating facility maintenance, the relationship of maintenance to the design under consideration may become a topic of discussion.) Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design As the body of research has risen on the relationship between crime and design, a new conceptual framework has come to be accepted that integrates the proven elements of Newman’s and Clarke’s analyses. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) has many facets and recommended strategies, but fundamentally it proposes that design elements should avoid or reduce crime opportunities through the following strategies: Natural access control. By controlling access, the facility denies entry to the crime target and raises the offender’s perception of risk. Controlling entry can be accomplished by “organized” means (a guard), “mechanical” means (such as locks) or “natural” means through the way the space is defined or configured. Natural surveillance. Design that enhances the observation of possible criminal activity can have a deterrent effect (offenders become aware of the watchers) as well as make it easier to catch offenders in the act. The means are, again, “organized” (police, staff or voluntary patrol), “mechanical” (lighting, cameras), and “natural” (windows, open vistas or lines of sight). Territorial reinforcement. A design configuration that helps users adopt or extend a sphere of influence can deter crime. Playground users who develop a proprietary relationship to a playground may “defend” it simply by using it. (An empty playground is more appealing for, say, gang appropriation.) Parents may then more actively observe what goes on in the playground and report inappropriate use. They may even contribute to the maintenance of a facility by, for example, voluntarily restoring a park or library garden damaged by vandals. There is hardly unanimity about the role or utility of design in preventing crime. Certainly physical factors alone can neither cause nor prevent crime. Indeed, some critics argue that there are too many physical and social variables to attribute crime reduction primarily to physical factors. R. Linden posed the following questions (1990): What specific security measures work best? By how much does increased surveillance reduce crime rates? When is territorial reinforcement of the kind proposed by Newman essential for success? Is there a threshold below which any changes have no effect and above which changes have diminishing returns? Researcher Sally E. Merry (1981) tried to understand the conditions under which residents of an inner-city housing project act and fail to act to defend domains that she considered to be either architecturally defensible or indefensible (as Newman would define these terms). She concluded that while design can provide preconditions for effective control, it cannot create such control if the social fabric of the community is fragmented. Others have criticized the concept of territoriality specifically, especially as it applies to the rapidly changing mosaic of cultures, incomes, and sociologies in a place like New York City. Hillier (1973) and Reppetto (1974) object to the concept of territoriality, arguing that race and socio-economic characteristics of a community are much more important to both crime and social cohesion than the manner in which the environment is designed. The implication can further be drawn that volatility in racial or income makeup within a neighborhood can make it much more difficult to develop the proprietary relationship to place that is key to the idea of territoriality. On the other hand, a dominant group can take the idea of territoriality too far, claiming a public place for a given neighborhood or ethnic group’s use. And what is a gang after all, but a group of unrelated citizens exercising “territoriality” by appropriating a public place—street corner, block, or playground? Research has not established a definitive pathway for designers, nor definitive measures of success. But it has, by and large, validated the idea that design can affect the security of facilities. The criminal-justice community increasingly joins the consensus that physical design does play an important role in crime prevention. New research and design on the subject has recently been commissioned by HUD and the Department of Justice, so useful guidance should increasingly be available.
© copyright 2006 James S. Russell \| terms