Designing out crime in Western Australia: a systems approach to policy development

Designing Out Crime is a system and a process for reducing both opportunities for crime and the fear of crime. These ideas, also known as crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), form part of the Western Australian (WA) Government's Community Safety and Crime Prevention Strategy. Designing Out Crime is promoted by all other Australian States, as well as by the United Nations and the governments of North America, the UK, Europe, South Africa, Singapore, New Zealand and Chile among others. Internationally, although most countries provide some policy guidance on designing out crime, it is largely piecemeal, uncoordinated, fragmented and dispersed across many policy areas, initiatives and departmental agendas. WA?s Designing Out Crime Strategy (OCP, 2007) attempts to consolidate the multi-disciplinary and multi-agency dimensions and objectives of these ideas and adopted a systems approach to analysing and tackling this problem. The Designing Out Crime Strategy seeks to embed the ideas into relevant aspects of government policy, particularly the planning process. Essentially, it attempts to encourage policy-makers and practitioners to proactively ?think crime?, in designing all ?products? ? ranging from the design of cities, neighbourhoods and streets, to buildings and the spaces within them and ultimately to the ?products? which are placed within such spaces and bought and consumed by the community

Education in Designing out Crime - A Case Study

The State's Designing Out Crime Strategy (Office of Crime Prevention, 2007) is committed to reducing opportunities for crime and the fear of crime using Designing Out Crime principles and strategies. One of its five goals is to increase / disseminate understanding of Designing Out Crime.This phenomenological case study discusses the development of Designing Out Crime education within Curtin University of Technology's Urban and Regional Planning Department and the dissemination of Designing Out Crime ideas to planning students. Insights on students' knowledge and interest in Designing Out Crime were gathered from a series of urban and regional planning field trips, lectures to students from product design, interior architecture, architecture, urban design and urban and regional planning and the supervision of numerous undergraduate planning dissertations on Designing Out Crime. Along with ongoing research into the Designing Out Crime field, insights from this research and teaching experiences are being synthesised to develop more critical teaching programs for Designing Out Crime. The knowledge is currently being formulated into a textbook, which will form the basis for a Special Projects Unit, representing an elective unit for undergraduate students in Urban and Regional Planning.Keywords: designing out crime, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), education, teaching, research, urban and regional planning

Environmental criminology and planning: A dialogue for a new perspective on safer cities

At a time of increasing global urbanisation, research consistently indicates that crime and the fear of crime are key concerns for urban populations in both developed and developing countries and communal safety is considered to be one of the key features of a high quality environment (Dempsey, 2008). Government planning policy in the UK, USA and Australia now advocates high density,mixed-use residential developments in walkable, permeable neighbourhoods, close to public transport, employment and amenities. It is argued that this approach, commonly known as New Urbanism, reduces urban sprawl, contributes to the development of more sustainable cities and also reduces crime by promoting street level activity and at the same time, 'eyes on the street' (Jacobs, 1961). However, Dempsey (2008) has recently challenged the assumption that various features of a quality built environment are actually socially beneficial.Evidence from environmental criminology challenges three of these assertions, indicating that highly permeable street configurations, mixed-use developments and high densities are commonly associated with increased levels of crime by virtue of the increased numbers of both potential offenders and potential targets made available (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1998). This evidence is not commonly utilised by New Urbanists or planners generally, and indicates that there are contradictions between some of the features assumed to contribute to a quality built environment. This paper presents the criminological evidence and discusses the key theories within environmental criminology which can enhance our understanding of crime issues within planning and encourage a more informed dialogue across the disciplines of planning and criminology

Clinical Legal Education: A Student Perspective

Fiscal restraint has forced many law schools to reconsider funding clinical education programs. Using the Dalhousie Legal Aid Service (DLAS) as an example, the educational effectiveness of clinical legal education is examined. Clinical education provides a context in which students can learn and apply the traditional law school curriculum. There is a danger, however, that clinical education will focus on technical skills without honing analytical skills such as ends-means analysis. The supervisor plays a crucial role in structuring the clinical experience into an educational one, from which students develop approaches to solving legal problems in practice. If the pitfalls are avoided, clinical education can be invaluable to the student and can enhance traditional programs. Although there are weaknesses in DLAS\u27s program, its educational value warrants its continued existence. *** La contrainte fiscale a imposé à de nombreuses facultés de droit une reconsidération de la question des fonds donnés au programme d\u27éducation clinique. En se servant de l\u27exemple de Dalhousie Legal Aid Service (DLAS), l\u27efficacité pédagogique de l\u27éducation clinique légale est examinée. L\u27éducation clinique procure aux étudiants un contexte où ils peuvent apprendre et appliquer le curriculum scolaire traditionnel en droit. Il existe, toutefois, un danger que l\u27éducation clinique se concentre sur des aptitudes techniques sans aiguiser les aptitudes analytiques telle l\u27analyse fins et moyens . Le surveillant joue un rôle crucial, à savoir, structurer l\u27expérience clinique pour qu\u27elle soit une expérience éducative, d\u27où les étudiants développent des approches à la résolution de problèmes légaux à travers la pratique. Si les pièges sont évités, l\u27éducation clinique peut fournir des avantages inestimables pour l\u27étudiant, et peut même rehausser des programmes traditionnels. Bien que le programme DLAS ait des points faibles, sa valeur pédagogique justifie sa continuation

Fostering the Self-Esteem of Children with Reading Difficulties: A Christian Approach

This paper seeks to promote a Christian approach to nurturing the self-esteem and improving the academic performance of children with reading difficulties. First, research findings concerning some of the causes and consequences of reading failure will be discussed in more detail. The next section of the paper will briefly discuss some of the implications of the secular humanist approach to improving student performance through the enhancement of self-esteem, before outlining principles for nurturing self-esteem and improving academic performance, which are consistent with a Christian worldview. This will be followed by a brief description of a research project, based on Christian principles, which was designed to improve the reading performance of poor readers at upper primary level

Job dissatisfaction and early retirement: a qualitative study of general practitioners in the Northern Deanery

Early retirement has become an important labour market trend for workers in professional occupations. General practitioners (GPs), however, are in short supply, and are being encouraged by the government to stay at work beyond the age of 60. In this study, which followed up a questionnaire survey of all general practitioners over 44 working in the Northern Deanery, 21 GPs took part in semi-structured interviews looking at their plans, reasons for, and feelings about, retirement. Interviews were taped, transcribed, and the text coded using themes from the interview schedule and those derived from the data. Findings are reported using a qualitative distinction between ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’ doctors and on this basis just over two-fifths of those interviewed were ‘unhappy’, all of whom wanted to take early retirement. The major factor influencing these plans to retire was dissatisfaction with their role and none of this group would be persuaded to change their minds by various incentives such as ‘golden handcuffs’. ‘Happy’ doctors who wanted to stay in practice had found ways of accommodating themselves to change and factors outside of work provided no incentive or ‘pull’. This was not the case for ‘happy’ doctors who wanted to leave: they wanted to pursue hobbies and other interests whilst they were young enough to do so. The paper concludes that change is a major factor producing job dissatisfaction among GPs and that future generations of doctors need to be equipped with the means to cope with it, while governments need to consider the merits of stability and continuity

Nicolas-Louis de La Caille, James Dunlop and John Herschel: An analysis of the First Three Catalogues of Southern Star Clusters and Nebulae

“If men like [John] Herschel are to spend the best years of their lives in recording for the benefit of a remote posterity the actual state of the heavens…what a galling discovery to find amongst their own contemporaries men [James Dunlop] who … from carelessness and culpable apathy hand down to posterity a mass of errors …[so] that four hundred objects out of six hundred could not be identified in any manner … with a telescope seven times more powerful than that stated to have been used!”4 The denigration of James Dunlop and his catalogue of 629 southern nebulae and clusters produced in 1826 originated with John Herschel and was continued by others of his day. Was this criticism justified? Was James Dunlop guilty of “carelessness and culpable apathy”? Were there “four hundred objects out of six hundred” which could not be identified, and if so, was there an explanation for this large shortfall? This question led to a search within Dunlop’s 1826 catalogue to rediscover, if possible, some of the missing objects and to reinstate Dunlop, if justified, as a bona fide astronomer. In doing this, Dunlop’s personal background, education and experience became relevant, as did a comparison with the catalogue of 42 southern nebulae and clusters produced by Nicolas-Louis de La Caille in 1751-2, and the 1834-8 catalogue of 1708 southern nebulae and clusters by John Herschel, who found the Dunlop catalogue so galling