CPTED or Crime prevention through environmental design is the term which denotes the process of designing our environment in a particular way so as to minimize criminal activity. It advocates developing physical design features of a locality or building in a certain way that would eliminate criminal activities. This strategy focuses on the techniques that could reduce the security vulnerabilities of a particular region.
Origin of CPTED
The theory of CPTED was devised by C. Ray Jeffery, a well-known criminologist. Jeffry’s principles, which he published in 1971, initially were not received well. But later in 1971, Oscar Newman published a book called “Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design” and his principles met with a much better reception. Newman later fine tuned his defensible space approach by incorporating some features from the CPTED model (he credited the origin of CPTED to Jeffrey). Defensible space in collaboration with CPTED yielded much better results in crime prevention and Jeffrey made expansions to many of his approaches which he published in 1990.
Many physical design feature models today have been developed based on Jeffrey’s theory. The most popular among them is the Crowe’s model. But to gain a complete understanding on using physical design to combat criminal activities, one should go through the works of both Jeffrey and Newman.
The first practical implication of this strategy was carried out by Elizabeth Wood in the year 1960. She developed certain physical design features which could enhance the ease of surveillance and submitted her guidelines to the Chicago Housing Authority. Her ideas were not incorporated in the building designs but it did lay the foundation for CPTED.
OTREP
Kaplan along with other researchers such as Pesce and O’Kane had put forward a theory in 1978. It is called OTREP, which means crime Opportunity is a measured output of factors such as Target, Risk, Efforts and Payoff. This approach says that crime rate can be drastically reduced if the opportunity to perform the offence is too risky when compared with the output of the offence. So by manipulating the various features of an environmental design, this approach wants to increase the risk factor for the offender so that he would consider committing the crime to be too risky to attempt.
Criminal Behavior with respect to environment
This theory assumes that an offender before indulging in criminal activity creates a simulation of the area either physically or mentally. He then plans his entry, exit and the exact location where he is to perform the intended crime. He collects detailed information on the locality such as
- Chances of moving undetected
- Ease of access and escape
- Physical features of the surrounding neighborhood
- Security arrangements
- Vulnerability of targets
After collecting these details they weigh their risks and advantages and plot their crime accordingly.
Strategies advocated by CPTED
According to CPTED propagandists, such a threat could be eliminated by taking steps to incorporate physical design features using various strategies. The four popular strategies of CPTED are Natural Surveillance, Housing Design, Territorial Reinforcement and Access Control. These strategies advocate measures such as the following
- Design the house windows to overlook sidewalks
- Design the landscapes in a way that would facilitate surveillance
- Avoid multiple entry points to the house
- Have proper street lighting arrangements that would clearly show the faces of the pedestrians
- Avoid over bright lightings that would create shadows or glare
- Have curved pathways
- Avoid access to roofs outside the building
- Have thorny plants on the fences
- Have maze like entrances to restrooms on commercial buildings
Limitations
Though there are some common features in all the four strategies, certain points may contradict each other. Like Natural surveillance method advocates having a very open front yard that would facilitate surveillance, whereas the Access control model advocates having high walls and closed fences which would disturb surveillance. Also for this model to work it needs a lot of coordination between various people involved in building planning, like land owners, tenants, environmental designers, architects and the law officers. It requires participation from the whole community and it is a steep task to achieve.
Conclusively provided all the people involved co-operate, altering physical design features is one of the cost efficient and effective way to counter the threat of crime.
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