Engineering a safer society

Evidence based policing continues to be an important area of discussion among police organisations across the world, and parallels are often drawn with medicine as a means to describe how a profession can be enhanced through a commitment to evidence based techniques. The use of the medical analogy in policing does not have everybody convinced, however, and there are those who argue that rather than molecules, bacteria and disease, we are dealing with the complexity of human behaviour, meaning simple cause and effect may always be difficult to establish. In this Research Focus Professors Nick Tilley and Gloria Laycock of the Jill Dando Institute at University College London extend this thinking and suggest that a better professional parallel might be drawn with engineering. Arguing that a process of evidence based trial and error might be more effective in policing than the experimental testing of narrow hypotheses, Professors Tilley and Laycock provide an important and thought provoking addition to the ongoing evidence based policing debate

Elegant security: Concept, evidence and implications

Some security devices can be ugly, inconvenient or an infringement on civil liberties. This means that security is a quality of life issue as well as one of crime prevention. Here we propose that, in addition to preventing crime and being cost effective, security should preferably be ethical and unobtrusive, aesthetically neutral or pleasing, and the easy-to-use or default option. We describe security with such characteristics as ‘elegant’. We use two case studies to explore how, as many types of crime have declined in recent decades, there was an increase in elegant and a decrease in inelegant security. We suggest that the lifecycle of some security technologies sees them evolve from inelegant to elegant, that continual improvement is required to keep ahead of offender adaptations, and that inelegant security can fall into disuse even if it prevents crime. It is hoped that this conceptual contribution might inform discussions about the appropriate form and role of security

Elegant security: Concept, evidence and implications

Some security devices can be ugly, inconvenient or an infringement on civil liberties. This means that security is a quality of life issue as well as one of crime prevention. Here we propose that, in addition to preventing crime and being cost effective, security should preferably be ethical and unobtrusive, aesthetically neutral or pleasing, and the easy-to-use or default option. We describe security with such characteristics as ‘elegant’. We use two case studies to explore how, as many types of crime have declined in recent decades, there was an increase in elegant and a decrease in inelegant security. We suggest that the lifecycle of some security technologies sees them evolve from inelegant to elegant, that continual improvement is required to keep ahead of offender adaptations, and that inelegant security can fall into disuse even if it prevents crime. It is hoped that this conceptual contribution might inform discussions about the appropriate form and role of security

Evidence-Based Policing and Crime Reduction

There have been calls for research evidence to be drawn into police practice. We examine evidence-based practice in the policing and crime reduction agenda, drawing on the experience of implementing problem-oriented policing in the UK and beyond. We suggest that that the development of such an agenda has been hampered by certain factors. Evidence is not routinely used by police officers (or partnerships) developing strategies to deal with crime problems who prefer to deliver traditional (law enforcement) responses. There is a limited knowledge base on which practitioners can draw in developing responses to crime problems, and the nature of evidence about what is effective is contested amongst academics. Whilst welcoming the moves to incorporate evidence in policing, we caution against excessive optimism about what can be achieved and make some recommendations for those engaged in developing evidence-based practice

Signature dish: triangulation from data signatures to examine the role of security in falling crime

This article describes realist evaluation research combining data signatures and theories of causal mechanism as a means of shedding light on why crime has declined in recent years. A data signature is an empirical indicator of how or why something has occurred. The use of multiple signatures – a ‘dish’ – from different angles and contexts can, if they point in the same direction, result in a form of triangulation that reduces the chance of interpretive error. The signatures identified strongly suggest that more and better security played a key role in the global 'crime drop', and in so doing, they rebut rival hypotheses