Secure Design
Security Without the Spikes?
This practical resource pack gives some basic introductions to the issues of improving security without the need to use spikes and fences in the public realm. This handout discusses 3 techniques in designing the environment to reduce crime: Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED); Secured By Design (SBD); and problem solving.
Title: Security Without the Spikes?
Author: Operation Gate It
Date published: December 2004
Number of pages: 21
Availability: Download
full Word document 
147Kb
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
There are 4 overlapping CPTED strategies:
Natural Surveillance - A design concept to make intruders easy to see by maximizing visibility of people, parking areas and building entrances.
Territorial Reinforcement - Physical design that distinguishes private property from public spaces can discourage potential offenders without ruining the look of the environment. You can use landscape plantings, pavement designs, gateway treatments, and CPTED fences. It also creates a sense of ownership for the community.
Natural Access Control - Designing streets, footpaths and play areas, building entrances and neighbourhood gateways to deny access to crime targets. These increase the risk for offenders.
Target Hardening - Using features that prohibit entry or access: window locks, dead bolts for doors, and interior door hinges.
Secured By Design
There are 2 elements within the built environment that influence crime and anti-social behaviour:
Community interaction – the way that members of communities exercise controls over their environment and interact with one another.
Crime features – likely to cause anonymity, for example, lack of surveillance and a choice of escape routes encourage criminal and anti-social behaviour (ASB).
Anonymity
Crime is always easier to commit where offenders cannot be recognised. Organising the environment and areas of open space reduce this offender anonymity and take away their opportunities to offend. This is especially the case where public space meets private space. You need to take measures to distinguish private property from public spaces. Housing developments with excessive public space can also cause the potential for anonymity.
Alternative Escape Routes
Too many footpaths and through-roads in development help to make crime easier to commit. The opportunity to take a different route gives the offender the anonymity and safety they seek.
Lack of Surveillance
It is easier for offenders to commit crime if they cannot be seen at any stage of the criminal act. Developments where the design denies this surveillance are more likely to suffer from crime and ASB.
Crime features
It is important to understand the "Features of crime" in the place we are working. These are features within the designed environment, which simply because of what they are and where they are, can influence crime and anti-social behaviour.
Examples include:
Movement Generators – footpaths which link two places together, which help to generate anonymity.
Out of Scale Facilities – such as supermarkets intended for the larger, rather than the local community.
Honeypots – places such as fast-food takeaway restaurants that encourage people to congregate and remain longer in an area than they would otherwise do.
Hotspots – places where criminal or social misbehaviour becomes concentrated.
Fear Generators – places that cause a perception of fear and become abandoned to anti-social acts and behaviour.
Site Management
It is essential that a programmed management system is in place to maintain the physical development and its environment. For example, regular grass cutting, ground maintenance, litter and graffiti removal. Social and service needs of the residents should also be considered.
Problem Solving
SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment)
SARA effectively identifies and tackles crime problems, avoiding any waste of time and resources. The police
commonly use SARA, so an understanding of the process may help partner organisations to work with the police to tackle local problems. Its 4 stages are:
Scanning - spotting problems using knowledge, basic data and electronic maps.
This allows incidents to be grouped into "problems" that are similar, related or recurring incidents.
Analysis - using hunches and information technology to dig deeper into problems by examining the characteristics and impact of the problem in greater detail.
Analysis may involve collecting information about offenders and victims, the time of occurrence, location and other details of the physical environment, the history of the current problem, the motivations, gains and losses of involved parties, the apparent (and hidden) causes and competing interests, and the results of current responses.
Response - any action taken to try and address the problem.
The analysis phase helps to identify or isolate the element that can most easily and effectively be tackled to try to resolve a problem. Often, responses will combine actions to tackle more than one aspect of the problem identified during the analysis phase. Crime practitioners should consult with the community where possible.
Assessment - looking back to see if the solution worked and what lessons can be learned.
This must be a routine feature of any problem solving structure. Assessment is not an evaluation of the performance of those involved but what happened when a problem was tackled.
Last update: 20 December 2004