Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED): Universal Saviour or Complex Network of Conflicting and Changing Factors?

Individuals, companies and governments are constantly seeking one universal security risk management model that can be applied across all contexts, cultures, countries and assets.

That is, one infallible approach to security risk management (for public and private entities) that is easy to compare, audit, apply and distribute responsibility across general management disciplines to protect, defend, deter, respond and mitigate security risks.

Hence standards, legislation and other groupthink references dominate entry-level security and risk mangement strategies, with little appetite for variance, understanding or critique. As a result, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) has gathered an almost religious/cult following of devotees that assert CPTED as a universal truth/saviour for individuals, companies and governments.

Moreover, many Western practitioners are encouraging, if not imposing other cultures, communities and practitioners to implement CPTED on communities, organisations and staff.

Some have gone as far as to legislate CPTED's use, negating critique, challenge or local contextualisation. As a result, standards spawn a growing list of auditors and CPTED copycats or devotees.

All the while, lacking any specific evidence, context, consideration or variance as to what contributes to crime or that which is reasonably considered security/risk management as opposed to just more guns, guards and gates mentalities.

While not entirely without merit or pockets of utility, CPTED narratives routinely require unpacking the specifics and variances that diverse communities, contexts, assets, and public/private security actors create.

This article is a brief consideration of the 'other' factors associated within CPTED and touches upon the complex network of routinely conflicting and changing factors within the broad heading and approach to Crime Prevention....Through Environmental Design.

All too often?security?practitioners?think they understand the "game" and all the "rules" when in fact they're not even playing the same "game" which can explain the failure of so many grand "strategies".

One particular US practitioner noted resistance, complexity and failure in attempting to measure and control local crime by using CPTED in South Korea. He lamented:

"We began work with a CPTED-based analytical framework....congruent with?Western attitudes. We soon found those assumptions to be?naive."?(Schnieder, 2014)

While rarely reflexive and publicly noted, it is not an isolated observation or shortfall within security and risk management circles. Especially where values, language, localisation, real world crime and the application of security risk management or mitigation is concerned.

Asian and Western values are often polar?opposites?by comparison (Burns, R, 1998)

Sociologies, psychologies, criminologists, economists and a swathe of science disciplines caution (in addition to screaming out warnings) against making broad assumptions and universal categorisations of cultures, behaviours, laws, crime and security risk management. Paradoxically, judged and affected communities are increasingly conducting their own research and stating their own contradictory views.

"Americans do not have the depth of understanding of Japanese?culture?to?judge?which is true and which is false" (Chu, 2000)

This is where Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design requires critical analysis and broader understanding for both the betterment of the concept but also the protection of communities in the pursuit of flawed protection of assets and prevention of crime initiatives.

Firstly, let's unpack the specific terms comprised within the headline tag of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.

CPTED presents as a simple, juicy solution to political, community, law enforcement and security pundits and policy.

However...

Crime

Crime is not a fixed term in time or geography. Meaning that crime changes constantly along with significant variance from place to place with laws and tolerance susceptible to variance. Notwithstanding, acts and events classified as crime only accumulate said status after official prosecution and declaration as to what encompasses 'crime' at any give time in history... long after intervention and management options are practical or realistic.

This alone raises significant questions and challenges for the utility and practicality of CPTED within a specified domain... especially across jurisdictions, geography, time and cultures.

Dependent variables include, but not limited to.... laws, equality, politics, statistical and empirical consistencies, rigour, dark figures, transparency, human bias/errors and what constitutes or is agreed upon as acceptable, especially when it comes to private and public security.

In short, we don't all mean or understand the same thing when we talk about crime. Moreover, this individual and collective comprehension or preference changes dynamically across time and geographies.

Prevention

Prevention of what, from what, to what specific terms and units of measure?

How do you measure something that never happened from a threat that never occurred or a source that remains invisible to you and your measurements?

If you can't see it our count it...is it really prevention or did it move somewhere else, affect others or is blind to your method of surveillance, reporting and counting?

How do you know your specific interventions, strategy and tactics resulted in said prevention?

In short, in order for CPTED to be truly the source of prevention and saviour from crime...it must be attributable and measured before, during an after for impact and accountability. As a result, measurement of something that didn't happen (or just didn't happen while you were watching or counting) remains a constant challenge that science hasn't fully solved, which raises question as to how CPTED may have succeed where so many others have failed in other fields.

Through

Environmental Design, not security and risk management?

Wizardry, magic or alchemy?

In reality, 'through' remains a mixed bag of things, tactics, funding, strategy, reaction, politics and adversarial phenomena that is unlikely or is rarely attributed to Environmental Design (or CPTED) alone. Negating the purity or validity of most claims.

Environmental

Which specific environment/s and to what degree of visibility or influence?

How exactly is this done? Any sufficiently constrained experiment or 'environment' may seem to yield change and response. However, broader consideration, repeatability and transferability remain real-world confounders, limitations and realities for all small-scale experiments... including CPTED.

Design

Perhaps the broadest of all 4 terms as design in practice is far more passive than implied and usually results in management, change, force, discipline, control, power and influence which all fall outside of reasonable interpretations of design.

Who exactly is the agent, actor or principle? Are all people and circumstances considered criminogenic in advance therefore requiring universal control of the populace and freedoms?

Security for who, at what time, under what terms and at what cost?

Conclusion

Crime prevention through environmental design could mean anything, including success or failure, if adequately distorted and reconstructed by stakeholders that gain or loose by such initiatives.

CPTED in practice and reality may just be another version of the alphabet soup or growing acronyms that promise so much when it comes to crime prevention or security risk management across public and private sectors.

Security risk management, including crime prevention was noted as one big 'game' earlier in the text. However, game theory in this context, just as it is with terrorism, is the fallacy or falsehood that good/bad actors, sentinels and protectors are all playing the same game. They aren't.

As such...

This means that given a game,?game theory?will tell you how the game should be played as opposed how it will actually be played. However, given the problems of determining an opponent’s rationale and intentions, a good solution might given by game theory but it could be for the?wrong game in the first place.?(Ezell et al., 2010)

All matters relating to complex happenings, especially crime, security and/or risk management should be considered in depth and routinely revised and unpack for relevance, efficacy and errors. CPTED is no exception. Especially if the original construct and reference has significantly changed to suit personal, vocational and political narratives of the day.

In sum, the concept of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) is a lofty, moral pursuit of protection, security and safety of local communities from threats, harm and loss. However, the concept and practice of CPTED is so broad as to make direct attribution impractical or unlikely, with very limited exceptions under controlled conditions. In other words, there are no doubt select elements within the complex, networked challenge of crime prevention that occasionally touches on CPTED elements at various times but CPTED is not a universal panacea nor saviour for either crime prevention nor security risk management at a local, regional or global level.

"it is important that grassroots prevention practitioners guard against becoming CPTED zealots, and remain aware of its pitfalls and limitations" - (Sutton, et al., 2014)

Tony Ridley, MSc CSyP MSyI M.ISRM

Security, Risk & Management Sciences

References:

Chu, C.?The Asian Mind Game: Unlocking the hidden agenda of the Asian business culture: A Westerner's survival manual?(2000) Australia: Griffin Press, p. 199

Ezell, B., Bennett, S.,?von?Winterfeldt, D.,?Sokolowski, J., and Collins, A. (2010) ‘Probabilistic Risk Analysis and Terrorism Risk’?Risk Analysis?30(4) pp. 575-589

Burns, R. (1998)?Doing business in Asia: A cultural Perspective, Australia: Addison, Wesley & Longman ,p. 24

Schneider, R. (2104) 'Environmental studies and the influence of culture: Security consulting experiences in Korea, Japan and Malaysia', in Gill, M. (ed)?The Security Handbook, 2nd edn, Palgrave McMillan, p.p.40-64.

Sutton, A., Cherney, A. and White, R. (2014) Crime Prevention: Principles, Perspectives and Practices, 2nd ed, Cambridge University Press,

UKEssays. November 2018.?Sun Tzu The Game Of Go And Strategy. [online]. Available from: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/sun-tzu-the-game-of-go-and-strategy-history-essay.php?vref=1 [Accessed 20 June 2019].