Abstract
Crime prevention in the design of an urban setting displays unambiguous links with behavioural geography, the urban setting and development of sustainable communities, being a strategy that has been extant for over 40 years. This article examines how such strategies have been able to develop (or not) within the design of our environments and undertakes ground breaking analysis of academic input jointly with the response of professional practice. Systematic literature analysis and questionnaire responses from professionals in the field extracted a sizeable and diverse number of conflicting terms used to label Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) concepts in both academia and professional practice policies. Realising damaging transferability issues and extreme diversity in the understanding and use of CPTED frameworks between research and practice, this research exposes the risk to the sustainability and integrity of the crime prevention response by design to the human use of space. Frameworks from academic literature and professional policies were analysed evidencing the lack of a universally accepted framework and terminology set throughout.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Angel, S. (1968) Discouraging Crime through City Planning. Berkeley, CA: University of California.
Armitage, R. (2007) Sustainability versus safety: Confusion, conflict and contradiction in designing out crime. In: G. Farrell, K. Bowers, S. Johnson and M. Townsley (eds.) Imagination for Crime Prevention. Crime Prevention Studies. Vol. 21. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, pp. 81–110.
Armitage, R. and Monchuck, L. (2009) Reconciling security with sustainability: The challenge for eco-homes. Built Environment 35 (3): 308–327.
Atlas, R. (1990) Offensible space: Law and order obstruction through environmental design. Paper presented at the The Human Factors Society Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL.
Bickman, L., Maltz, M. and Lavrakas, P. (1978) The Evaluation of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design Programmes. Evanston, IL: Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
Booth, A. (1981) The built environment as a crime deterrent: A reexamination of defensible space. Criminology 18 (4): 557–570.
Chandola, T. (2001) The fear of crime and area differences in health. Health & Place 7 (2): 105–116.
Cozens, P.M. (2007) Planning, crime and urban sustainability. In: A. Kungolas, C. Brebbia and E. Beriatos (eds.) Sustainable Development and Planning III. Vol. 1, WIT transactions on ecology and the environment. Southampton, UK: WIT Press, pp. 187–196.
Cozens, P.M. (2008) Crime prevention through environmental design in Western Australia: Planning for sustainable futures. International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning 3 (3): 272–292.
Cozens, P.M. (2011) Urban planning and environmental criminology: Towards a new perspective for safer cities. Planning Practice & Research 26 (4): 481–508.
Cozens, P., Saville, G. and Hillier, D. (2005) Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED): A review and modern bibliography. Property Management 23 (5): 328–356.
Crowe, T.D. (2000) Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. 2nd edn. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Dillon, D. (1994) Fortress America: More and more of us are living behind locked gates. Planning 60 (6): 8.
Du Plessis, C. (1999) The links between crime prevention and sustainable development. Open House International 24 (1): 33–40.
Ekblom, P. (2009) Redesigning the language and concepts of crime prevention through environmental design. Reconstructing CPTED, 30 October 2010, http://reconstructcpted.wordpress.com/publications-and-other-papers/, accessed 21 September 2012.
Ekblom, P. (2011a) Guest editors introduction. European Journal of Criminal Policy Research 17 (1): 1–5.
Ekblom, P. (2011b) Deconstructing CPTED… and reconstructing it for practice, knowledge management and research. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 17 (1): 7–28.
Frohman, J.G., Hanes, L.F. and Kohn, I.R. (1977) A Special Report: Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. In Nation’s Cities by National League of Cities. Washington DC: US Department of Justice.
Great Britain. Office of Deputy Prime Minister & The Home Office (2004) Safer Places: The Planning System & Crime Prevention. London: The Stationery Office.
Gamman, L. and Thorpe, A. (2009) Less is more: What design against crime can contribute to sustainability. Built Environment 35 (3): 403–418.
Gibson, V. and Johnson, D. (2013) CPTED, but not as we know it: Investigating the conflict of frameworks and terminology in crime prevention through environmental design. Security Journal. advance online publication, 13 May, doi: 10.1057/sj.2013.19.
Green, G., Gilbertson, J.M. and Grimsley, M.F.J. (2002) Fear of crime and health in residential tower blocks: A case study in Liverpool, UK. The European Journal of Public Health 12 (101): 10–15.
Great Britain, Office of Deputy Prime Minister (2004) Safer Places: The Planning System and Crime Prevention. London: The Stationery Office.
Hillier, B. (1973) In defense of space. RIBA Journal 11: 539–544.
Hillier, B. (2004) Can streets be made safe? Urban Design International 9 (1): 31–45.
Howard, H.E. (1920) Territory in Bird Life. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Hseih, H. and Shannon, S.E. (2005) Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research 15 (9): 1277–1288.
Jackson, J. and Stafford, M. (2009) Public health and fear of crime: A prospective cohort study. British Journal of Criminology 49 (6): 832–847.
Jacobs, J. (1961) Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
Jeffery, C.R. and Zahm, D.L. (1993) Crime prevention through environmental design, opportunity theory and rational choice models. In: R.V. Clarke and M. Felson (eds.) Routine Activity and Rational Choice. Advances in Criminological Theory. Vol. 5. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Kaplan, H.M., Palkovitz, L.H. and Pesce, E.J. (1978) Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. Final Report on Residential Demonstration Minneapolis. Minnesota. Arlington, VA: Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
Kitchen, T (2009) Crime prevention, the planning system, and sustainable development: Addressing policy challenges in English practice. Built Environment 35 (3): 328–345.
Landman, K. and Liebermann, S. (2005) Planning against crime, preventing crime with people not barriers. SA Crime Quarterly 11 (March): 21–26.
Larimian, T., Zarabadi, Z. and Sadegh, A. (2013) Developing a fuzzy AHP model to evaluate environmental sustainability from the perspective of Secured by design scheme – A case study. Sustainable Cities and Society 7: 25–36.
Le Goix, R. (2005) Gated communities: Sprawl and social segregation in Southern California. Housing Studies 20 (2): 323–343.
Marzbali, M., Abdullah, A., Razak, N. and Tilaki, M. (2011) A review of the effectiveness of crime prevention by design approaches towards sustainable development. Journal of Sustainable Development 4 (1): 160–172.
Newman, O. (1972) Defensible Space: People and Design in the Violent City. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Paulsen, D.J. (2013) Crime and Planning: Building Socially Sustainable Communities. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Robinson, M.B. (1996) The theoretical development of “CPTED”: 25 years of responses to C. Ray Jeffery. In: W. Laufer and F. Adler (eds.) Advances in Criminological Theory. Vol. 8. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Smith, S. (2007) Design against crime? Beyond the rhetoric of residential crime prevention. Property Management 5 (2): 146–150.
Stafford, M., Chandola, T. and Marmot, M. (2007) Association between fear of crime and mental health and physical functioning. American Journal of Public Health 97 (11): 2076–2081.
Taylor, R. (2003) Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED): Yes, no, maybe, unkowable, and all of the above. In: R. Bechtel and A. Churchman (eds.) Handbook of Environmental Pyschology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Tijerino, R. (1998) Civil spaces: A critical perspective of defensible space. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 15 (4): 321–337.
Wood, E. (1961) Housing Design, a Social Theory. New York: Citizens’ Housing and Planning Council.
Acknowledgements
The authors express their sincere thanks for the financial support from Concept Building Services (Southern) Ltd who have generously provided funding for all aspects of this research project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Johnson, D., Gibson, V. & McCabe, M. Designing in crime prevention, designing out ambiguity: Practice issues with the CPTED knowledge framework available to professionals in the field and its potentially ambiguous nature.. Crime Prev Community Saf 16, 147–168 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2014.3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2014.3