Best solutions most often result from a coordinated approach. Including a proactive approach taken at an early stage that incorporates Crime Prevention through Environmental Design, rather than relying on reactive measures such as CCTV, which should only be used as part of a package of measures to reduce crime.
Crime Prevention through Environmental Design CPTED is a crime reduction strategy acknowledging the layout and design of the built environment can create or reduce opportunities for criminal behavior and nuisance. This strategy seeks to create a physical environment conducive to the overall security of the community. Designing Out Crime at the feasibility and planning stage of the development is an innovation in crime reduction. Evidence suggests that safety and security features incorporated into the design and layout of the project is effective and offers many benefits to developers and occupiers.
Ideally, this service would be provided by the police, not least because they have access to recorded crime data and can provide a crime profile of the area being developed. However, this is not always possible as police resources are continually being stretched and some services are being curtailed, or cut back significantly.
In any event, there are alternative means of sourcing crime data, and crime profiling techniques are not the exclusive preserve of law enforcement. Lions Gate has two police-trained designing out crime consultants who have received training in criminology, risk management, and crime reduction strategies. They combine to bring over 20 years of experience in the field. This experience and expertise can be utilized to design out crime from proposed projects at the design stage and also re-development, regeneration and refurbishment projects.
The recommendations they provide reflect the level of risk determined by an analysis of local crime trends. These recommendations will have considered the external environment, building construction, and the internal layout of premises. We work with CAD Software and can overlay design solutions and comments directly onto to plans and elevations in either 2D or 3D. These solutions are to remove criminogenic features and design elements that would foster crime and nuisance ,and also to add community safety enhancements.
The guidelines are also used by City agencies, such as the Housing Department, as criteria in evaluating projects worthy of City funding. A minute version of this Design Out Crime videotape is targeted at community and neighborhood watch groups interested in applying these techniques in their homes and small businesses. A second, minute version of this videotape, hosted by actress Joanna Cassidy, demonstrates more detailed techniques for use in new development projects by architects, developers, real estate professionals, and urban planners.
How it Works In these tight fiscal times, cities must look beyond traditional policing methods and examine all possible ways to enhance public safety. Cities need to find creative, cost-effective ways to stop crime on the front-end and reduce the need to solve our crime problems only by adding more police officers.
Until the Design Out Crime initiative began, few City staff members and private developers gave much thought to the public safety implications of development projects. The problems are apparent around Los Angeles and most major cities; decaying public housing projects, abandoned public spaces, unsafe convenience stores, and even burglarized single-family homes. By making all City agencies, not just police departments, accountable for fighting crime, the Design Out Crime initiative also addresses the fractured nature of public safety efforts in major cities.
City staff members who review development projects — in the Planning Department, Redevelopment Agency, Recreation and Parks, Housing Department, and other key agencies — have now received training in CPTED techniques so that they can use them to improve projects. Through the dissemination of the video and the application of simple, inexpensive techniques, the initiative gives community residents and small business owners concrete steps they can take to reduce crime.
Residents in new affordable housing projects will be living in complexes that will stay safe over the long haul. Single-family homes will become more impervious to burglary and other crimes. Small businesses, such as convenience stores, will become safer for patrons and employees alike.
When the Design Out Crime techniques become prevalent throughout the City, police patrols will be enhanced in a manner that will benefit even those citizens who do not use the new projects.
Police officers will be able to patrol projects incorporating CPTED principles much more quickly, allowing them to move on to the next police call. Secondary benefits will accrue to those City employees who are trained in design strategies and tactics and can apply them in a practical sense to proposed development projects. Besides learning crime-prevention design techniques, these front-line employees are empowered to apply the CPTED principles using their own insights and creativity to improve the safety of the development project.
Multiple agencies now work cooperatively to assure that new development projects and public spaces are designed to maximize their safety. Design Out Crime has stirred new awareness of CPTED principles among the general public through the extensive press coverage it has received.
It has also reached a wide and receptive audience of design and planning professionals. City staff has partnered with professional organizations of urban planners, architects, housing officials, apartment owners, real estate management companies, and private security firms to urge their membership to incorporate these techniques in their own work.
Design professionals are now routinely proposing projects that incorporate these concepts into the plan. Because the Design Out Crime initiative has only been fully underway for about 18 months and represents a preventative approach to crime, its crime reductions may be difficult to quantify. However, since the program remains in an early phase, many of the projects reviewed under this initiative have not been completed. Future crime statistics in the area of these projects could prove useful indicators of the relative success of these efforts.
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