Author: Rachel Armitage
ISBN No: 9780 2303 56177
Review date: 06/12/2025
No of pages: 248
Publisher: Palgrave
Publisher URL:
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=540606
Year of publication: 21/10/2013
Brief:
Crime Prevention through Housing Design
price
£55
A book on crime prevention in houses is practical and welcome and offers plenty for the commercial building security manager to think about.
Crime Prevention through Housing Design by Rachel Armitage covers residential housing, but has much to offer the private security manager, for instance if a shop or business park is next door to housing. One chapter, ‘Impact of road layout’ is important for retail or commercial security managers as Armitage sets out research findings, some maybe surprising. Gated developments are not necessarily more secure (not if, for instance, shrubs hide intruders climbing over the gates or fences). What she terms ‘sinuous, true’ cul-de-sacs that have curves have the lowest crime. A ‘leaky’ cul-de-sac (my one quibble with the book is that ‘leaky’ isn’t defined) has high crime, because it leaks – people have a habit of making holes in fences or breaking fencing altogether, if it’s in the way of what Armitage calls ‘desire routes’. We’ve all seen the bent fences and well-trodden paths, into and across supermarket or business car parks or railway lines. Yes, footpaths across property may be a concern, but Armitage warns that desire routes made by locals ‘are far more crimogenic than deliberately designed-in alternatives’. “Footpaths must also be well lit, short and straight with no hiding places for potential offenders.” In other words, footpaths do not necessarily make for more crime; provided they are well designed.
As Rachel Armitage soon sets out, a well-designed development that makes it harder for criminals and the anti-social is harmed if a new neighbouring development is badly designed. And Armitage is swift to deny that crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) doesn’t affect real people; it does. Householders, the same as car parkers – just about anyone – can suffer from fear of crime; vandalism; litter; besides theft of and from cars. And property can lose value thanks to crime. A useful early chapter gives us the history: CPTED and such concepts as ‘defensible space’ date from the 1970s. It’s intriguing that while some may say that CPTED is mere common sense – such as, let people park their cars so that they can see them from windows, rather than make people park in rear courts that are dark and threatening – CPTED doesn’t just happen. People, being people, can undermine the architect and designer’s intentions. In that case, who’s wrong, the users or the designer?! For instance, what’s the point of giving householders a garage (good for security), if they use it to store junk, and park on the street?! As the sub-title ‘policy and practice’ suggests, Armitage as a researcher of housing in West Yorkshire is always alert to how the real world matters, more than theory. For instance, it’s not enough to build something, get it approved by ACPO as Secured by Design (SBD). What if it’s not well kept, and litter not picked up, or graffiti scrubbed off? In other words, CPTED is a process. People affect it, and crimes change. For instance, are cul-de-sacs (for houses, but we might also think of trading estates) attractive to burglars – in a word, crimogenic? Armitage stresses it depends on the evidence, and all designs come with risks. Sensibly Armitage accepts as do police in the field (architectural liaison officers, or ALOs for short) that CPTED is ‘about finding a middle ground’ with planners and developers. You might not get 100 per cent security designed into a housing estate; but better to get some. Significantly, Armitage suggests that a consultant applying CPTED or SBD rigidly may do so out of lack of confidence or training (it takes experience to know when to adapt the standards or compromise). Cuts in police including ALOs and the Coalition effort to cut bureaucracy in town planning may mean crime reduction in the built environment has less of a priority. Yet as Armitage points out, ‘crime has a huge carbon footprint’. And, as Armitage again is alive to, CPTED has to keep up to date with the changing nature of crime – disorder (such as the August 2011 riots?) besides the usual acquisitive crimes. Her very final point repeats that designing out crime calls on many people – such as security consultants, council planners, and architects. Anyone to do with buildings, and housing, has to move with the times. For instance: if you cannot have a view of your car in the car park, would a CCTV camera do the trick? If more people go to and from work and home by bicycle to be green, are there secure places for the cycles? One of many welcome features of this book is that Armitage, a University of Huddersfield criminologist, covers several countries besides the UK.
Crime Prevention through Housing Design, by Rachel Armitage. Published 2013 by Palgrave, hardback, 248 pages, £55. ISBN 9780 2303 56177. Visit www.palgrave.com.
The book ccan be ordered here: http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=540606
