Burglary
Safer Cities And Domestic Burglary
| This document is published for archival/historical reasons. It will not be updated. |
Home Office Research Study 164 (1996) by P. Ekblom, H. Law & M. Sutton
This report provides a technical account of the data collected, the methods developed and the analysis conducted in evaluating the impact of phase 1 of the Safer Cities Programme. The results of the evaluation are also reported.
Phase 1 of the Safer Cities Programme set up just over 500 schemes to prevent domestic burglary. Most upgraded physical security, though some mounted community - oriented initiatives as well. The schemes usually centred on local neighbour hoods or estates. The results of a major evaluation of nearly 300 of the schemes are reported here.
Key points
Overall, the schemes reduced burglary and were cost-effective .Simply implementing action in a police beat reduced local risks by nearly 10 per cent.
Physical security measures against burglary seemed to work independently.
But community - oriented activities (e.g., to increase awareness and promote crime prevention) needed reinforcement with action against other types of crime, or against crime in general. Taken as a whole, the burglary schemes worked better in this wider context.
The overall cost of each burglary prevented was about £300 in very high-crime areas. It was about £900 when risks were at the lower end of the scale. The average financial cost of a burglary to the state and the victim was about £1,100. Grossed up, a very approximate estimate for the total benefit from Safer Cities burglary action was 56,000 burglaries prevented at a saving of about £31 million – not far short of the cost of the entire Programme.
Reduction in burglary risk was greater where there was more intense burglary action but to achieve these bigger falls cost disproportionately more. ‘Marginal cost’ estimates per extra prevented burglary ranged from about £1,100 in the highest risk areas to about £3,300 in the lower - risk ones. In monetary terms extra expenditure was justified only in high risk areas but there are other considerations.
Low-intensity action seemed to displace some burglaries to nearby areas, and to cause burglars to switch to other property crime within the actual scheme area. But when action was of moderate intensity or more, neither problem occurred. In fact, adjacent areas also benefitted from some reduction in burglary, and other crime decreased in scheme areas.
Although only a few people were aware of preventive action in their area, if they were aware, and the action was intensive, they worried less about burglary. If they were aware but it was low level action, they were actually more worried than before.
People's perceptions of their area’s quality improved only where action was most intensive.
Getting a copy
Safer Cities and Domestic Burglary (PDF format) is available here.
Last update: Tuesday, August 26, 2008