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

Improving pedestrian access way planning using designing out crime

Pedestrian Access Ways (PAWs) have presented a significant and unresolved challenge to transport planners in local and State government. The result has been piecemeal local government and State government approaches that have frequently resulted in tensions between civic constituencies, high levels of administrative cost, adverse publicity, reduced transport functionality and compromises to the policy intentions of a range of government agencies. In part, this has been due to a gap between the intrinsic complexity of PAW eco-systems and the oversimplification of this complexity in ways that ignores issues of multiple uses, purposes, user interests, user groups, functionality, ownership, control and agency and the ways these vary across the day, week, seasons, years and planning fashions. In short, local interests and incomplete understanding the situation have limited the development of best practice in management of PAWs, have generated unnecessary problems, and in particular have prevented an integrated government approach. This paper presents findings of recent research on the management of PAWs to reduce crime. This required identifying and addressing unresolved and overlooked issues. Outcomes included: a morphology of PAWs and PAW functioning; the identification of information for understanding the functioning of individual PAWs; the discovery of the misapplication of Designing Out Crime techniques to PAWs; the identification of misunderstandings leading to flawed policy actions; the exposure of ways that adverse PAW outcomes are manufactured by planning policies and decisions; proposals for an improved approach to managing PAWs to reduce crime via Designing Out Crime techniques; and, the development of PAW Guidelines as a supplement to the State Designing Out Crime Planning Guidelines for use by local government. The research was funded by the Office of Crime Prevention (OCP) and undertaken by the authors as members of the cross-university Design Out Crime research group

A Virtual Reality Approach to Personal Safety and the Design of Built Environment Facilities

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust Research Institute at the University of Glamorgan is conducting research that focuses on personal safety issues as they relate to the design and maintenance of built environment facilities. The project, funded by Valley Lines (a network of 66 railway stations in South Wales) seeks to investigate the perception and reality of personal safety (against crime and nuisance, as opposed to health and safety) on these stations and their immediate access routes and environments. Customer satisfaction surveys have consistently reported that although recorded incidents of crime and nuisance are relatively low, rail users perceive their risk to be significantly higher and therefore discourages people from using the trains. The project uses interactive virtual reality (VR) scenes as the environmental stimuli for investigating perceptions. VR ‘walkthroughs’ of a sample of stations have been shown to focus groups representing samples of users and potential users. The standardisation of the ‘personal journey’ to, from and through the station represented by this approach and its ‘dynamic’ (rather than static) and interactive nature, make it a realistic avenue for evaluating how people decode the railway environment in personal safety terms. A pilot study for three stations was very encouraging and illuminating. The respondents provided a rich source of data, concerning their personal safety concerns in and around the station environment and the findings broadly support Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) theory. It also highlights the crucial importance of user perceptions in the design and management of built environment facilities. This methodology will also be employed to investigate perceptions of personal safety within the University campus environment, its immediate environment and access routes. Within this community, fear of crime has been shown to exist in locations where, according to recorded statistics, crime is low. Therefore, the objective is to develop applied solutions to improve personal safety on the campus. Finally a package of recommended solutions and a generic model shall be developed that can analyse problems and generate solutions to any campus University

The Shape of Things to Come: New Urbanism, the Grid and the Cul-De-Sac

There is much debate in the UK, North America and Australia within both crime prevention and planning concerning New Urbanism and the design of suburban housing layouts. New Urbanism promotes high-density, mixed-use residential developments in "walkable" neighbourhoods close to public transport, employment and amenities. One significant factor is New Urbanism's support for permeability and the preference of the grid street layout over the cul-de-sac (Morrow-Jones et al., 2004). The authors present the evidence as it relates to the grid and the cul-de-sac across a range of inter-disciplinary issues such as crime, walkability, social interaction, travel behaviour, traffic safety, cost and sustainability and housing preferences.This paper provides a brief history of the grid and cul-de-sac, discusses their respective strengths and weaknesses and concludes that any "one-size-fits-all" approach is myopic and simplistic. It calls for a more holistic approach to understanding the localised and contextual dimension to suburban street layouts and how they may affect human behaviour. The paper highlights key areas for future research and calls for more inter-disciplinary debate and cooperation, particularly between environmental criminologists, planners and town centre managers

Designing Crime Precipitators in Northbridge after dark: Urban Governance in Slumber

Entertainment districts play a significant role in the post-industrial place-making for the night-time economies of many Western cities, and they are significant contributors to these economies. However, many cities are experiencing increased levels of crime in their alcohol-oriented entertainment districts. This paper explores crime in Northbridge entertainment district in Perth, Western Australia and highlights how the legacy of governance can operate counter-intuitively, to foster crime precipitators (Wortley, 2008), which can increase opportunities for crime. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) are briefly discussed and the authors argued that SCP is a more appropriate strategy to use in the dynamic and complex environmental setting of Northbridge. Based on several years of scientific observation, land-use surveys and pedestrian surveys, the authors provide a critical narrative of Northbridge and crime precipitators after dark. This narrative is expressed from the perspective of environmental criminology and SCP. This exploratory study concludes that Northbridge is in part, a legacy of previous single-issue governance, which has inadvertently created crime precipitators, which exacerbate the problems of crime in the entertainment district after dark. The need for further research is identified and the adoption of a more strategic, multi-issue and multi-agency approach is recommended

Designing out crime in Western Australia: a case study

Purpose of this paper: To present developments in designing out crime policy in Western Australia (WA) as a case study example, discussing the innovative Designing Out Crime Strategy, a systematic attempt at embedding such ideas within government policy.Design / methodologies / approach: Report on the systems approach adopted by the WA government, which draws together three key themes of designing out crime, namely; the design of the built environment, the ongoing management of the built environment and the use of product design to reduce opportunities for crime. The systems perspective is underpinned by an evidence-based approach across these three areas.Findings: Many existing international approaches to designing out crime are arguably limited, piecemeal and largely uncoordinated. This Strategy represents a comprehensive and holistic policy commitment to designing out crime. Research limitations / implications: The effectiveness of this Strategy is as yet unknown, but it arguably represents a comprehensive approach to embedding designing out crime within public policy frameworks. The future will ultimately judge the success or failure of this policy and key performance indicators are presented as part of the Strategy.Practical implications: It will be challenging to monitor the progress of this vision and whether adequate resources are made available to appropriate agencies to deliver the desired outcomes from the various actions identified within the Strategy. What is original / value of paper: No national or state jurisdiction has attempted to develop designing out crime policy in such a comprehensive manner and WA's Designing Out Crime Strategy arguably represents a truly proactive policy framework and a comprehensive vision and plan for action to reduce opportunities for crime in the design, planning, development and maintenance of the built form and in the design of products