A recent Designing Out Crime Association (DOCA) meeting ranged over sustainability. Or to put it another way: how green are you?
Prof Lorraine Gamman, DOCA vice-chairman, kicked off by arguing that designing against crime tries to be socially responsive. It’s not just about designing out the criminals; what effect do ‘target-hardening’ designs, and materials, have on law-abiding people? If a child is not permitted to go into a shopping centre wearing a hooded top (a rule famously introduced by Bluewater in Kent), you can understand why, but, Lorraine Gamman asked, what does that do to the child, and society? If an answer to graffiti on a wall is to paint the wall white, and keep re-painting it, why not grow grass or plants over the graffiti? As featured last issue, the Home Office is putting £1.6m into design-led ideas to prevent crime, and Prof Gamman is among academics leading research. Another, Prof Ken Pease of the University of Huddersfield, an authority on ‘crime science’, was at the meeting. As Prof Gamman asked, people have higher salaries, but are they less happy, partly because of fear of crime? Or broader anxiety about risk?
Ideas flew around. What of graffiti. Do some people regard Banksy (www.banksy.co.uk) as street art or mere graffiti? Do architects regard designing out crime people as paranoids who want to fence everything in? Are developers of regenerated cities only interested in profit and not interested in (maybe quite simple and cheap) ways of preventing crime, unless the government tells developers to include crime prevention in buildings and open spaces? Is there a general lower respect for public space – more litter, spitting and chewing gum left on the floor?
Some specifics to do with housing came from Huddersfield University criminologist Leanne Monchuk, in a talk titled ‘how green is my padlock?’. ACPO CPI commissioned her, and colleagues Dr Rachel Armitage and Prof Pease to look at sustainable housing developments. (As background: sustainability is one of those buzzwords. Briefly, it seeks buildings and public spaces that people want to stay in, and that need minimum repair and maintenance. So if flats or a housing estate are badly designed so that cars or sheds get broken into, people will feel like moving out – which is bad for the environment, because it means more CO2 emissions, more of a carbon footprint, to use the jargon. If your bicycle gets stolen, will you feel less likely to cycle again – again, adding to transport pollution?!)
A code for sustainable homes was launched in 2007. It has nine categories: one, titled management, includes security. The more credits a developer can get ticked off, the higher a house or housing development is rated. A developer gets a credit for consulting a police architectural liaison officer (ALO); but a developer doesn’t have to. You can get up to two credits for doing good security things, but the same amount of credits for installing a water butt to catch rain-water and a composting bin. So, it was feared, a developer might choose the easy, eco-points. Leanne Monchuk gave the example of flats in the north of England, which had ‘green’ things, such as solar panels on the roof. Other features were not so security-friendly: Kitchen and bedroom windows, being north-facing, were small and not easy to look out of (to offer ‘natural surveillance’, another way of saying keeping an eye out). The back of the properties had poles that thieves were using to climb to upper stories, to break into kitchens. And while greenery may look good and may score eco-points, if it gets over-grown it could make people fearful after dark. Leanne Monchuk queried if there was too much thinking in these cases about green credentials: is a site truly sustainable if people feel too scared to go out after dark? (Yes, if large living room windows face the horse-shoe shaped public space, that might be good for natural surveillance, but not if people wanting privacy shut their curtains!?) Sustainability and security can work together, but may require architects and crime prevention people to speak at an early enough stage. Are the ACPO Secure by Design scheme and the eco-agenda conflicting? So it was asked. If architects demand triple-glazing to keep heat in, can manufacturers of secure windows and frames adapt? If a single woman has a passage outside her bedroom window, and she dares not open her window for air in summer, for fear of intruders, might she use air-conditioning instead – defeating the green agenda?! From the floor came an example of sheds with locks that ‘everyone will be able to undo’. It may score eco-points, but will lead to theft of bicycles. Or: local authority planners may demand a wooden fence as more ‘sustainable’, even though it will be damaged more easily than metal railings, which also let you look through and do better natural surveillance.
Joining the talk, Prof Pease spoke of the ‘enormous’ carbon cost of crime – such as, the cost of replacing stolen goods. Security should be higher up the ‘food chain’ of sustainability, he suggested.
During the tea break, Professional Security heard from some of those attending about CCTV. Mapping of what cameras are around, as done by Cheshire and other police forces’ community support officers, has the aim of making a database so that police know what cameras are in the vicinity if a crime crops up. But: what if the database isn’t kept up? After a year you have an inaccurate database, it was suggested. Town centre CCTV systems of 30 to 40 cameras may do the best job because operators know each camera; but will that be taken into account if it pays to centralise control rooms? Some council CCTV schemes have been moth-balled, it is claimed, because central and local government have never come to terms with the need for year by year cash for operator pay and for system maintenance, besides the big one-off spend on equipment.
Richard Barron spoke next. A former Action Against Business Crime regional manager, he is now director, community safety, housing and town centres for the enivronmental campaign group Encams. The body works with councils and others against graffiti, fly-tipping and fly-posting, as people feel that such things create a lower quality of life, which can be bad for a town’s business and reputation. "There are links between crime and grime," he argued.
Emma Dewberry of the Open University agreed with Ken Pease: security is part of sustainability, but so far has not been explored. She warned against installing so much security that you instill fear, and make ‘failed spaces’. Now, DOCA and its members work on the basis of CPTED: crime prevention through environmental design. For instance, lighting creates places and ‘pathways of certainty’. That manages people’s fear of the dark. But, too much light may be inappropriate – not green (it uses lots of energy, and angers nearby residents, and may disturb wildlife) and not even safe (it may aid criminals, too).
Crime prevention people, like people in the sustainability field, it seems, have the same problem: how to prove to decision-makers the point of being sustainable, which includes making places safe – or rather perceived as safe – so that people feel like living, working and shopping in them. Technology alone, Emma Dewberry suggested, is not enough. People’s behaviour has to change, such as their feelings of personal responsibility and trust, and taking ownership of issues. As she went on to admit, there aren’t easy answers. (And, Professional Security heard, mirroring a fall in the number of police fraud specialists, at least outside London, there’s been – for whatever reason – a fall in numbers of crime prevention officers and ALOs.)
Professional Security spoke to DOCA chairman Dr Tim Pascoe about the reason for a DOCA day devoted to sustainability. "If you have a poor insecure environment, people are going to move out of that home, if they can, or withdraw behind their front door if they can’t." DOCA has always been about getting the message across to non-specialists, such as architects, facilities managers, and security product manufacturers, so that they are not constantly re-inventing the wheel. And, as Tim Pascoe stressed, it’s a sound, research evidence-based message. For instance, internal design of retail stores can affect shoplifting. Also required is to ask people what they want. The last speaker of the day, Adam Thorpe of the Bikeoff research project (www.bikeoff.org) impressed with the range and detail of research. For example, if you place cycle stands for cyclists (and Adam Thorpe went into the types of stands), and you want to put up signs to warn cycle users to park securely, Adam Thorpe suggested that you ‘whisper’ with a sticker placed where cyclists will see it when bending down to lock their cycle, rather than ‘shout’ with a big wall sign. In an interesting version of the ‘broken windows’ theory (briefly, that broken windows, while seemingly a small problem, may encourage more crime, and a district goes downhill), Adam Thorpe suggested that if a bicycle is abandoned at a cycle rack, the racks around it are less used. So remove unwanted cycles (clean), and encourage people not to park their cycles anywhere (‘fly-parking’) but rather to lock their machines with higher-quality locks (safe), and you encourage cycle use (green).
While Tim Pascoe did make the point that DOCA and CPTED is about applying research evidence, rather than opinion, the day did suggest that while sustainability and better security can lean on each other for support, both have a way to go. Only a handful of places in England are truly designed for sustainability. And what is better: park rangers, parents and others informally or otherwise putting off dog walkers from fouling parks, and deterring crime; or a fence to keep dogs out? And if one or the other works, what creates a healthier society? Not for the first time, the DOCA meeting showed off people seeking good outcomes – a lower, or low crime society – and doing quite wide-ranging work, drawing in more than crime and security people. Bikeoff for instance included a cycle theft seminar with Transport for London; a film festival; and an exhibition, ‘Putting the Brakes on Bike Theft’ first at the Barbican then until January 31 at the New London Architecture Centre, 26 Store Street. And on the Bikeoff website is something called Bikeoff TV – using Google Maps, you can view bike stands, and seek user views, as to whether they are sited securely, and so on. Might this be of wider use as a consultation tool?
Some background: In the w ords of a website dedicated to ‘cleaner safer greener’, it’s about ‘creating quality spaces in which people want to live and can be proud – and which others will respect’. Where does security come in? In town centres, alcohol-related disorder and anti-social behaviour will make people feel less safer. If people fly-tip their waste, Christmas trees, even, it will make places look untidy, people will feel less at ease (less safe) about the surroundings, and it’d be greener to recycle the trees.
Visit www.cleanersafergreener.gov.uk and www.designagainstcrime.com
