Environmental Crime Prevention

Environmental crime prevention is more commonly known as “crime prevention through environmental design” (CPTED). It is an approach to problem solving that places a heavy emphasis on modifying conditions of the community environment that may increase offending opportunities in a given area. CPTED approaches advocate that the proper design of a place can serve not only to reduce fear and encourage prosocial usage of an area but also to reduce both the opportunity and the incidence of criminal or antisocial behavior. CPTED assumes that offenders will generally weigh the pros and cons when considering whether to commit a crime. This assumption comes from “rational choice” and “routine activities” theories and was informed heavily by the development of environmental criminology. These theories and others surrounding geography and crime, together with pioneering work in the fields of urban planning and land use, all consider the physical environment's role in the maintenance or reduction of crime and disorder. Therefore, early and current advocates continue to propose that the design of an area can reduce fear and criminality by adhering to basic notions of territoriality, surveillance, and access control.

The ideas behind CPTED are commonly traced back to work done in the 1960s and 1970s. In the early 1960s, Jane Jacobs noted that urban design [Page 143]and community interaction could be pivotal in ensuring that informal social controls worked to reduce urban disorder. Her research emphasized the built environment's role in strengthening a sense of “community” and allowing residents and users the chance to interact and establish a more vibrant street life. Formalizing the tenets of CPTED, C. Ray Jeffrey focused on the importance of the physical environment when it came to ways of both explaining and preventing crime. Building on Jacobs's ideas, Jeffrey focused intently on social behaviorism when examining the complex relationship between psychological factors of both antisocial and prosocial users and the environments they occupy. Soon thereafter, Oscar Newman conducted his examination of design and space when conceptualizing the notion of “defensible space.” Focusing intently on architectural and site design rather than high-level urban planning, Newman's work expanded on the concepts of territoriality, design-based surveillance, and “image and milieu.”

Under the tenets of defensible space, the proper design for living environments as they relate to disorder and safety needs to incorporate strategies inherent in territoriality, natural surveillance, image, and milieu. Modern conceptions of CPTED have taken these original strategies and focused on variations on three common themes: territoriality, natural surveillance, and access control. These themes focus on how the environment provides opportunities for unwanted behaviors such as crime. Through the analysis of how these design features may be supporting this undesirable behavior, strategies can be enacted to reduce these opportunities by changing aspects of building or community design, site layout, accessibility, and ways that users populate the space.

Criminal behavior can be mitigated through the use of environmental design strategies, including using proper lighting and surveillance, selectively placing entrances and exits, and using fences and landscaping to define public, semi-public, and private spaces.

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When examining territoriality, CPTED approaches focus on defining ownership of an area, be it a public or a private space, such as a commercial establishment or a residential building. Design features seek to provide formal and informal cues as to who has ownership over the space and how other users are expected either to use the space or to avoid infringing on it. This may be accomplished in subtle ways, by using such techniques as landscaping, fencing, and pathway construction, or in more overt ways, for example via the use of signage or gating.

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