Design Against Crime: Crime Proofing Everyday Products 9781588269409

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Design Against Crime

Crime Prevention Studies Volume 27 Ronald V. Clarke, series editor

DESIGN A GAINST CRIME Crime Proofing Everyday Products edited by

Paul Ekblom

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2012 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2012 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Design against crime : crime proofing everyday products / Paul Ekblom, editor. p. cm. — (Crime prevention studies ; v. 27) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-813-6 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Theft—Prevention. 2. Business enterprises—Security measures. 3. Security systems. 4. Crime prevention. I. Ekblom, Paul. HV6648.D47 2012 364.4'9—dc23 2011040091 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures Foreword, Ken Pease Acknowledgments

vii ix xi

1 Introduction Paul Ekblom

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2 The Security Function Framework Paul Ekblom

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3 Embedding Crime Prevention Within Design Andrew B. Wootton and Caroline L. Davey

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4 Making a Brave Transition from Research to Reality Rachel Armitage

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5 A Market Approach to Crime Prevention Graeme R. Newman

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6 Designing Against Bicycle Theft Adam Thorpe, Shane D. Johnson, and Aiden Sidebottom

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7 Designing a Counterterrorism Trash Bin Rohan Lulham, Olga Camacho Duarte, Kees Dorst, and Lucy Kaldor

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CONTENTS

8 Packaging Against Counterfeiting Lorenzo Segato

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9 Reducing Handbag Theft Paul Ekblom, Kate Bowers, Lorraine Gamman, Aiden Sidebottom, Chris Thomas, Adam Thorpe, and Marcus Willcocks

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10 Supermarket Carts to Reduce Handbag Theft Aiden Sidebottom, Peter Guillaume, and Tony Archer

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11 Slowing Thefts of Fast-Moving Goods Martin Gill and Ronald V. Clarke

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12 Conclusion Paul Ekblom

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List of Acronyms and Abbreviations Bibliography The Contributors Index Books in This Series About the Book

245 249 269 273 291 293

Tables and Figures

Tables 3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1

8.1 10.1 10.2 10.3 11.1

Project Management Process Geographical Spread of Interview Participants Sectors That Participants Represented Producing a Scoring System for Vulnerability Factors Producing a Scoring System for Security Factors Positive and Negative Externalities and Social Costs and Benefits Simplified Direct Regulatory Model for Credit Card Fraud Reduction Simplified Cap-and-Trade Model for Credit Card Fraud Reduction Ratio of Differences in Locking Practices for the Prototype Bicycle Parking Stands Compared to the Control Sheffield Stands Principal Packaging Solutions and Technologies Against Counterfeiting Handbag Theft in Supermarkets, Rates per 1,000 Warwickshire Residents Victim-Reported Handbag Theft Description What Drew Your Attention to the Trolley Safe? AT CUT PRICES: Characteristics That Make FMCG Attractive to Thieves

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42 74 75 75 76 92 96 97

124 156 207 208 221 235

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TABLES AND FIGURES

Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 10.1

10.2

10.3 10.4 10.5

10.6 10.7

Four Main Activity Areas of the Design Life Cycle That Make Up the Framework The DAC Evaluation Framework Example of a Page from the DAC Evaluation Framework Publication The Prototype Bicycle Parking Stands Fraction of Time Bicycle Parking Stands Were Observed as Unused Locking Practices for Sheffield Stands vs. the Prototype Bicycle Parking Stands as a Single Group Locking Practices for Sheffield Stands and Each Prototype Bicycle Parking Stand Sketch of an Early Version of a CT Bin CT Bin on a Sydney Railway Platform Final Version of the Grippa Clip The Chelsea Clip Poster Advertising the Grippa Clip Card Hanger for the Grippa Clip The Grippa Clip with the Handbag Logo Monthly Distribution of Recorded Handbag Theft Incidents Across Warwickshire Supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008 Distribution of Recorded Handbag Theft Incidents Across 27 Warwickshire Supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008 Handbag Theft Victimization by Age Group Across 27 Warwickshire Supermarkets A Trolley Safe Fitted to a Shallow Trolley Recorded Handbag Thefts from Trolleys at the Treatment and Control Sites Before and After Intervention, November 2006–January 2009 Customer Comments on the Trolley Safes Observations on Trolley Safe Usage Over Time, October 2008–January 2009

47 47 58 119 121 122 123 132 138 168 176 189 190 191

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Foreword Ken Pease

THE MIASMA THEORY OF DISEASES SUCH AS MALARIA AND

cholera held that the diseases were caused by bad air. Malaria was named, accordingly, from the Italian mala aria (bad air). Filippo Pacini performed autopsies on the victims of the Asiatic cholera pandemic of 1846–1863. He discovered a comma-shaped bacterium that he called a Vibrio. He published a paper in 1854 entitled “Microscopical Observations and Pathological Deductions on Cholera” in which he described the organism and its relation to the disease (Bentivoglio and Pacini 1995). In England, John Snow showed that cholera was waterborne (see Snow 1955). Yet, at a major international conference some 20 years after the observations of Pacini and Snow, and 16 years after Snow’s death, representatives of 21 governments concluded unanimously that ambient air was the principal vehicle of the generative agent of cholera. Only with Robert Koch’s rediscovery in 1884 (a year after Pacini’s death) of the bacterium observed by Pacini did professional opinion change, culminating in Koch’s Nobel Prize in 1905 (Howard-Jones 1984). What is the relevance of medical science of a century and a half ago to the book you have in your hand? It is the power of confirmation bias, whereby extant beliefs are resistant to change in the face of evidence. It is now over three decades since the UK Home Office report Crime as Opportunity (Mayhew et al. 1976) appeared, five years longer than the lapse between Pacini’s discovery and its acceptance via the work of Koch. The discipline of criminology has not yet begun to behave collectively as if the design of goods and services to reduce opportunities for crime is central to its control. Indeed, the approach continues to invite ridicule from some sectors (see, e.g., Hayward 2007). This is so ix

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despite the fact that sensible individuals (and companies) do act to protect themselves and despite recent evidence that the general decline in crime in Western Europe and North America is in no small measure a consequence of improved product security (see, e.g., Farrell et al. 2011). So what has been missing? There has been a plethora of demonstrations that reducing opportunity reduces crime. It is clear that the reduction of crime is seldom if ever total, and the opposite (diffusion of benefits) a frequent by-product of place-limited crime reduction initiatives (Bowers et al. 2011). Paul Ekblom and his colleagues have long recognized that the evidence must be made to fit its context—a context including the design process and the mindset of designers and users. Their concern is how to describe both the rationale that underlies the activity of design against crime and the immediate output of that process in the shape of the working prototypes and production models of design. Their goal is the integration of design research and practice and crime science into an interdiscipline. While all other chapters of this book strive toward such an integration, a remarkable exception is that Graeme Newman’s contribution in Chapter 5 takes a step further back toward the incentivization of design against crime. He uses cap-and-trade systems for emissions control as a model for crime reduction efforts. While a victim-blaming criticism of this approach can be foreseen (cheaters are to blame so why should credit card companies be seen as culpable, the argument will go), the chapter is at worst heuristic and at best a workable model necessary for the realization of the crime science design hybrid that Ekblom envisages. Newman’s view is particularly important in that many of the other chapters clarify the implementation problems that accompany crime reduction in the absence of an overarching system of incentives to reduce it. Even with every incentive in place and with government committed to consistent rather than spasmodic support, without the growing expertise and increasing synthesis of the ideas and disciplines recorded in this book, we risk being left with the ineffectual, the unimaginative, the unsightly, the expensive, the inconvenient, and possibly the fear inducing as product-based solutions to crime problems.

Acknowledgments

FIRST, I THANK THE CONTRIBUTORS, SOME OF WHOM HAVE HAD

to be particularly patient with the editorial process! Ron Clarke gave me the opportunity to compile this book, as well as advice and encouragement at every step. My colleagues at the Design Against Crime Research Centre were helpful with ideas and feedback and, of course, contributed to various chapters. Chloe Griffith assisted with figures and tables. Ken Pease offered consistent encouragement in addition to writing the Foreword. I am also grateful to the reviewers of individual chapters and of the book as a whole. Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design made time available to me for writing; and beyond that, if Lorraine Gamman had not invited me into the world of design and designers via that institution, I would never have been in a position to edit and contribute to this book. Thanks also to Andrew Berzanskis, Lesli Athanasoulis, and the team at Lynne Rienner Publishers. And finally, thanks to my wife, Marilyn, for much encouragement and generous donations of domestic time. —P. E.

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Design Against Crime

1 Introduction Paul Ekblom

IN 2005 RON CLARKE AND GRAEME NEWMAN EDITED VOLUME

18 in this series, Designing Out Crime from Products and Systems. That volume reported on the fruits of a wave of mainly research-based activity, much of which had occurred under enlightened initiatives of the UK government, associated with the national Crime Reduction Programme (1998–2003) and particularly encouraged and supported by Ken Pease (see, e.g., 2001). Sadly, that enlightenment was short lived, as Pease notes in the Foreword, and a fallow period followed. Design against crime (DAC) in the built environment, as opposed to that of products, continued to progress. However, recently it has severely faltered in the United Kingdom with a wave of retirements of expert police design advisers, some of which were enforced departures due to severe cuts in public funding. Within the design world, which had been engaged by DAC activity, the drying up of funds led to a petering out of institutional interest. Within UK government research, interest largely ceased (and that meant, among other things, a temporary enforced end to my involvement with the field). The precipitating factor was a moral panic about street crime, the warning signs of which the government had ignored from its own statisticians. The response, cooked up in the COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room) room at 10 Downing Street where all such national and political emergencies are handled, centered on a massive boost to police overtime.1 This sucked funds away from other activities, including the final stage of the design against crime initiative—namely, take the message to industry. Among projects starved of funds were an interest in crime-free laptops, and crime-free mobile phones—theft of which was the main source of the 1

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panic. Brits not only do irony better than our US cousins, but we need to because we often foolishly generate the reasons for that irony. Yet the seeds had been sown within academia. Nourished partly by a funding stream from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, partly by European Union funding on crime proofing of products (see Chapter 4), and partly by sheer enthusiasm of individuals, work continued. Research centers and groups dedicated to what is variously called design against crime, designing out crime, and design out crime have sprung up. These include the Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC), Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts, London; and the Design Against Crime Solution Centre, University of Salford and Greater Manchester Police. Joining these British groups are the Designing Out Crime Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney; and the Design Out Crime Research Centre, Curtin University, Perth. More generic crime science centers also have made major contributions to the field, in particular, the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science (JDI), University College London; and the Applied Criminology Centre, Huddersfield University. In 2007, the UK government again awoke to support the product design approach through the setting up of the Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime,2 which over 3 years generated a series of products and case studies.3 The power of tangible, practical products to tell their own story and to convince people, even politicians, of the validity of the design against crime approach, cannot be stressed enough (indeed two such products grace the cover of Volume 18). Hands-on physical design (and graphic illustration) of simple ideas (Gamman and Pascoe 2004) trump abstract research studies in climate setting (Ekblom 2011a) for crime prevention and design against crime. But in some cases design is its own enemy because the best designs look so easy and simple rather than ingenious, intricate, and emitting a sweat of obvious hard work. As Chapter 9 reveals, this is illusory: even the most elementary and self-evident of ideas requires an enormous amount of research, and design and trial effort, to get it fit for its purpose and with a hope of becoming marketable in the real world. But hard-nosed evaluation evidence based on practical, realized interventions remains a vital follow-through to convince government, industry, buyers, and users. This volume contains both statements of evaluation principle and practice (Chapter 3), good examples of such evaluations with real products (Chapters 6 and 10), and indications of

INTRODUCTION

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the difficulties encountered in attempting them. Chapter 9 was in part a salvage exercise from the wreckage of an ambitious planned research, design, and evaluate project of table clips to prevent handbag theft in bars. This went wrong because, during the course of the project, the host bar company (along with many others) encountered the financial crisis of 2008 and terminated its involvement in the evaluation, after some 2,000 clips had been manufactured and some 14 test bars and 13 control bars had been carefully selected and observations undertaken. Whatever the precise reasons for that action (see Ekblom in press), it is clear that the system of incentivization for design against crime remains inadequate, as Pease emphasizes in the Foreword. The UK Home Office’s in-house economists undertook an excellent study of incentivization of crime reduction behavior in the civil world in general, with a case study of design against crime.4 But while the intellect was willing, the finance and political will were weak and, apart from a passing interest in the “polluter pays” approach to making companies responsible for the crime externalities of their products that led to various significant changes in cell phone service design, attention to the approach once again diminished; this time perhaps as part of a general fading out of interest in crime prevention.5 To maintain an enlightened and sustained interest in crime prevention and design, governments need among other things to establish a climate and a system of incentives and consumer expectation hostile to criminogenic products, supportive of criminocclusive ones. Clarke and Newman have long pursued this line (see, e.g., 2005b), whether through conventional pursuit of policy or pressure applied through its own agency as a major procurer of goods and services. In Chapter 5, Graeme R. Newman presents a highly significant model based on carbon cap and trade from the climate change field, another instance where free markets fail to deliver collective good unless they are deliberately tweaked. A regime of proofing and regulation is another necessary part of the picture and Rachel Armitage (Chapter 4) describes an attempt to develop the basis of this with domestic and personal electronic products like mobile phones. But this is challenging, as the chapter reveals; so far, the only successful model is arguably that of motor vehicles. Inherent rather than government-manufactured self-interest can sometimes motivate companies to adopt designs of products that are secure or securing (in the terminology of Chapter 2). Securing products incorporate a protective function within a design that serves other, more dominant purposes. In this vein Chapter 8 focuses on packaging, which

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apart from its many other purposes may prevent counterfeiting. Good to know if you have a headache or if you fly on a plane where vital parts have been replaced by spares during the course of its working life. Design itself is changing. Notorious to outsiders for spawning new fashion and radical, sweeping manifestos, design has become variously user centered, participatory (codesign), socially responsible, and inclusive. Teaching and learning is part of this and, despite earlier suspicions, students seem to engage enthusiastically with the crime topic.6 Designrelated PhDs are currently in progress. Inclusivity is illustrated in Chapter 10, which addresses security needs of older shoppers, but is also relevant when designers seek to ensure that their locks, antitamper caps, and so forth do not form an annoying or even insuperable obstacle for weak or arthritic fingers. Intensive stakeholder analysis and careful addressing of diverse requirements and constraints are illustrated in Chapter 7 (counterterrorism) and Chapter 9 (handbag theft). At the Design Against Crime Research Centre, Adam Thorpe is developing a broader context for addressing crime and much more; namely, socially responsive design that “takes as its primary driver social issues, its main consideration social impact, and its main objective social change.”7 Design against crime methodology is also under development and features in several chapters, ranging from explicit design against crime rationales and specifications (Chapters 2, 3, 7, and 9), to proofing and testing (Chapter 4) and evaluation (Chapters 3, 6, 10), and the continued evolution of guidance materials, for example from the UK Design Council, the Design Against Crime Research Centre, and now even the POP (problem-oriented policing) guide series.8 Chapter 7 critically explores links between processes within crime prevention such as SARA (scanning, analysis, response, assessment) and CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design), and design processes. Chapter 11 continues to mine the seminal Hot Products risk factors approach introduced by Clarke (1999), now a major pillar of design against crime (leading for example, to the work described in Chapter 4) and indeed maintains the tradition of spectacular acronyms (AT CUT PRICES) in addressing special issues raised by fast-moving consumer items. Design against crime is very much a practical, doing, making, testing, and improving activity. But as Schön (1995) maintains, practice should be reflective. That reflectiveness should moreover be collective. Capturing, articulating, and refining knowledge of design against crime (as in this volume as a whole and in Chapter 2 in particular) is not an exercise in stamp collecting. It plays an important role in building inno-

INTRODUCTION

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vative capacity among designers for designing against crime (Arts and Humanities Research Council 2008). Such capacity is a strategic necessity for several reasons. First, both crime prevention and design each cover extremely diverse problems and solutions. Crime and related problems range widely from theft of luggage at airports to graffiti to violent assault; and crime prevention from physical methods involving locks and bolts to social ones involving guardianship, to combinations of both such as youth shelters where young people may safely hang out without conflicting with other users of public space. Design addresses products, places, information, procedures, and systems and extends into social innovation; it draws on graphical, material, industrial, and communication skills and connects with entrepreneurship and marketing. Such diversity makes for the excitement and the challenge of the design against crime field but, by the same token, can lead toward confusion for practitioners and researchers of either discipline. Second, crime prevention has to be customized to context to succeed (Pawson and Tilley 1997; Ekblom 2002, 2005a), meaning that the design effort does not just have to be made once (e.g., designing a universal alley gate to block burglars’ access to the rear of homes), but adjusted or re-created many times over. It is therefore far more efficient to empower designers of all kinds and in all circumstances to undertake this work well than to maintain a centralized, scarce elite that keeps the expertise to itself. Indeed, there are significant benefits to so-called open innovation (Chesbrough 2003; Thorpe et al. 2009), though not so open that it empowers criminals. Third, we live in a Heraclitean world of flux where new technology, social change, and offenders who are adaptive and innovative themselves render our store of what-works knowledge a wasting asset (Ekblom 1997, 1999, 2005a, 2011a). Developing innovative capacity to design against crime and then transferring it to designers in general is part of the core mission of the Design Against Crime Research Centre.9 Finally, a focus on capacity is especially important as a means of countering the tendency, in my experience, for crime prevention practitioners to equate design with designed end products to be operationally deployed rather than with the design process in which they should be participating with their unique perspectives and problem-specific knowledge. In this, I have personally made a rather interesting journey since I entered the design against crime world, from getting designers to “think thief” (Ekblom 1995, 1997) to getting more conventional

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crime prevention practitioners in the police and elsewhere to “draw on design” (e.g., Ekblom 2011a, 2011b) in all their research, thinking, planning, development, and improvement of interventions. Design against crime is increasingly a subject of interest in conventional criminological circles although, as Pease says in the Foreword, not always in a positive manner. But one positive indicator is the inclusion of a chapter on the subject, not just in the (slightly incestuous, it must be said) world of situational crime prevention and problem-oriented policing, but in a handbook of mainstream criminology (e.g., Ekblom 2012). The most fundamental issue raised, perhaps is whether design against crime is evolving from a multidisciplinary field where crime scientists and criminologists and designers work alongside one another, intermittently sharing ideas and exchanging perspectives, toward a state of true interdisciplinarity where a new and integrated way of looking at research, theory, and practice emerges. I revisit this in Chapter 12. Finally, it is worth recalling the main points that Clarke and Newman made in their editors’ introduction of the 2005 volume on products and crime (pp. 2–6), with amendments to reflect the current state of play, where different, 6 years later: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Products play an important part in crime Modifying criminogenic products can be highly effective Most products have been modified for commercial reasons Manufacturers have been reluctant to change products in the public interest 5. Design professionals have an unexploited role in product change [that is beginning to be exploited] 6. Governments have rarely taken [intermittently take] the initiative in promoting product change 7. Governments must [still] develop research and development capacities in order to take a more active role in modifying criminogenic products [although exceptions include the State of New South Wales in funding the Designing Out Crime Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney].

Notes 1. Although other interventions were developed and studied; see Tilley et al. (2004).

INTRODUCTION

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2. See UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/ security/design-out-crime/The-Alliance/ (accessed May 28, 2011). 3. See UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/ security/design-out-crime/ (accessed May 28, 2011). 4. The National Archives, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ 20110220105210/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/changing-behaviour.html (accessed May 28, 2011). 5. See Ekblom (2008c); and European Forum on Urban Security, www .efus.eu/en/policies/national/united-kingdom/public/2021 (accessed May 22, 2011). 6. See, for example, Design Against Crime website, www.designagainst crime.com/project/students/ (accessed May 22, 2011). 7. From the Design Against Crime website, www.designagainstcrime.com/ methodology-resources/socially-responsive-design/ (accessed May 22, 2011). 8. See, respectively, UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/ourwork/challenges/security/design-out-crime/Design-out-crime-guide/ and www .designagainstcrime.com/about-us/contact-us/#; and COPS Guides No. 52 on Bicycle Theft and No. 60 on Personal Property in Cafes and Bars, www.pop center.org/problems/ (all accessed May 22, 2011). 9. See Design Against Crime website, www.designagainstcrime.com/ about-us/aims-philosophy/ (accessed May 28, 2011).

2 The Security Function Framework Paul Ekblom

MANY KINDS OF OBJECTS, SYSTEMS, COMMUNICATIONS, SER-

vices, or places are nowadays the fruits of deliberate professional design as opposed to being merely put together by engineers or builders. Increasingly, design against crime is part of that process. The central interest in this chapter is on the security function of products of all kinds. More specifically, how to describe both the rationale that underlies the activity of design against crime, and the immediate output of that process, in the shape of the working prototypes and production models of design. I present a structured approach, the security function framework (SFF), developed on the basis of both criminological and design experience. Chapter 9 presents a case study illustrating the framework in detailed use. But there are wider aims for the framework. Through systematic and rigorous articulation, it aspires to facilitate the merger of research and practice of design and crime science into an interdiscipline.

Introduction Background The interest in security function has several origins. One was occasioned by a marginal involvement in Project MARC (mechanism for assessing the risk of crime). Building on original work by Clarke and Newman (2005a), MARC explored crime-proofing designs of domestic products like cameras and mobile phones (Armitage and Pease 2007; 9

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Armitage, Chapter 4 of this volume). The ultimate aim was to develop a procedure, which specified the level of security to incorporate within the design of a product, that was proportionate to the risk of crime it was exposed to in normal working life. The authors noted limitations in the language through which a product’s security could be expressed or assessed. Ekblom and Sidebottom (2008) built on this to develop a glossary of security terms designed to provide clear, consistent tools for thinking and communication. Although Project MARC involved security and industry experts handling real products, it was essentially a desk exercise. Past and contemporary work within the Design Against Crime Research Centre1 has drawn designers and crime scientists (from both Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design and the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science) together into the process of designing and evaluating real products (Thorpe et al. 2009). Earlier DACRC efforts— including the Karrysafe handbag range2 and the Stop Thief Chair3 to protect against handbag theft—fed useful retrospective experience into this developing domain. Two projects were especially relevant to the issue of security function. Bikeoff (www.bikeoff.org) was about designing bicycle parking stands and wider facilities to be secure against bicycle theft; for example, by altering the shape of the stands to nudge (Thaler and Sunstein 2008) users to lock their bicycle by both wheels and the frame, a configuration shown by research to be more secure (see Chapter 6 in this volume). Grippa (www.grippaclip.com) addressed the prevention of the theft of customers’ handbags in bars through the design of special anchoring clips to fit under the tables. This project evolved from tests in individual bars (C. Smith, Bowers, and Johnson 2005) into a major attempt to take the clips to production level and then formally to evaluate their impact on crime in a group of such bars. The latter could not be completed due to withdrawal of the host company during the financial crisis of 2008–2009. But much was learned about the design against crime process in practice, the human factor issues in design, and evaluation methodology (e.g. Bowers, Sidebottom, and Ekblom 2009). Grippa clips are currently under test elsewhere.4 Both projects seemed to involve elementary, low-tech interventions acting in obvious ways. However, things proved more complex and indeed required high-performance design to turn the concepts into potentially effective and practical propositions that were both working and workable. The demanding nature of the design requirement is shown in Chapter 9, which presents the Grippa as a case study. Suffice

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it to say for now that defining the security function of these products became significant for the design task itself; for capturing tacit practice knowledge (Tilley 2006; Ekblom 2011a) among the team, rendering it explicit and transferable; and for the challenging task of combining the concepts and practice of crime science and design (Ekblom 2008a). Capturing, articulating, and refining such knowledge is no exercise in stamp collecting. It is vital for building innovative capacity among designers for designing against crime, as described in Chapter 1. One channel for capacity building is education. My experience of working with design students began with acting as judge in various crime-oriented briefs for the Student Design Awards of the UK Royal Society of Arts.5 Here, the challenge was to enter a room displaying some 60 sets of posters illustrating the students’ design submissions and attempt in each case to rapidly grasp exactly what crime problem was being tackled, how it was supposed to work in preventing crime, and how its construction and materials supported this. In other words, we were expected to discern the rationale of the design and then assess the rationale, process, and proposal. In successive years, increasingly energetic efforts to emphasize the requirement for a clear rationale, both in the guidance to students and in sessions briefing their tutors, unfortunately had only limited impact. Subsequent experience in teaching studio projects in undergraduate and master’s courses (where students working as individuals or small teams create designs, say, against shoplifting or bicycle theft)6 has revealed a similar picture. During these projects, the students present their work to tutors, practitioners (e.g., police design advisers or retail security staff), and each other in critique sessions. Here, they receive interim feedback and guidance before finalizing their work, delivering the final presentation, and undergoing assessment. A few students latch on to the concept of a clear rationale for their proposals, rising to the challenge from the earliest thinking and creating stages of design. A few others may think and create entirely intuitively, but review and articulate their rationale retrospectively. But with many others, this approach seems alien to the way they perform design thinking (although perhaps less so with those training in engineering design). Often enough to be of concern, the rationale presented at the interim or final stages is poorly thought through and poorly communicated. In the real world, this would present several problems. The end product may or may not be consistent with research evidence of what works. Although brilliant intuitive designers may deliver outstanding solutions without benefit of articulation, the process would inevitably

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be hit and miss and such designers may be in short supply or too expensive to hire. For the rest of the designer population, the lack of a clear rationale could confuse their thinking. Arguably, this could constrain the quality of their individual products and inhibit the articulation of reflective practice necessary both for the individual career development of designers and the collective development of the DAC discipline. It would also inhibit designers’ communication with customers or design decisionmakers (those who commission or choose to manufacture and market the design). This has important consequences because what is communicated is not simply to support a buy-sell transaction where the client takes or leaves what is offered. A significant part of the design process is to help clients clarify exactly what they want of the product— perhaps even revise the nature of the problem that they had originally believed they wanted to tackle.7 Rationale and articulation of action is also problematic among professional crime prevention practitioners in police, local government, or private security (e.g., Tilley 2006). (Elsewhere [Ekblom 2011a] I have developed a framework, the 5Is—intelligence, intervention, implementation, involvement, impact—to remedy this.) But getting designers against crime and crime prevention practitioners and researchers to communicate across disciplines and practice domains efficiently and consistently, rather than relying on scarce and sporadic individual brilliance and insight, requires development of a design language and framework meaningful to all parties. There may, however, be a trade-off. On the one hand is the desire to make systematic, rigorous, crime science–informed design thinking and communication more routine and predictable; on the other, allowing unfettered scope for native creativity and genius. However, the genius is fickle and the trade-off may be illusory. Even the most inventive designers give their best when creatively resolving conflicting requirements and coping with the many constraints and challenges that the physical and social worlds impose on them (Ekblom 2011b). Supplying both student and practicing designers with a fairly elementary and universal language and frameworks for articulating the security function of the products under development may help focus their thinking and provide a reference point outside of their immediate deliberations. And it enables efficient knowledge transfer and capacity building among designers, vital for out-innovating adaptive offenders (Ekblom 2011b). To achieve these benefits, however, the generic format of the rationale itself must be fit for the purpose and, hence, carefully designed in its turn.

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Aim of This Chapter In this chapter, I seek to begin this process-design effort, setting out an initial attempt at a framework to describe in depth the security function of a designed product or system. I draw on the experience, in DACRC, of designing various products with such a function. A wider purpose of the framework is to support the strategic developments set out in the introduction to this book (Chapter 1). This centers on two things. First is to develop and build the capacity of designers and others to undertake effective crime prevention design, and to use the products of that design. Second is to foster the emergence of a truly interdisciplinary field of study and practice in design and crime science by developing shared concepts and terminology covering research, theory, implementation, and evaluation. In the next section, I set out a specification for the framework that serves as an exposition of its intellectual origins, and a definition of security function, besides being a necessary stage in the design of the framework itself. I then describe the framework as developed and, finally, offer conclusions. As noted earlier, the case study of the Grippa clip is in Chapter 9.

Specification: A Fit-for-Purpose Framework? Before setting out the security function framework, I present its own rationale or specification, noting what it is for and how it aspires to fitness for those purposes, and, in so doing, I note its intellectual foundations. As with all design exercises, purpose comes first. Purpose Before, during, and after the product development stage, designers must be able to describe their proposed or realized solution. The basic purposes of the framework and the means of achieving those purposes are as follows: • To guide the commissioning and the process of design of crimeresistant products (in the widest sense). This must be done in a way that enables creativity while simultaneously constraining designers to reality (Cropley 2010); articulates and reflects the tacit (Ekblom 2011a; Tilley

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2006); and fits with sensemaking,8 the process by which people give meaning to experience. Here, the ideas must connect to processes and concepts that designers understand, but also to those who commission the designs (whether as manufacturers of hot products [Clarke 1999] such as mobile phones, urban planners, or conventional crime prevention professionals in police or local government). For users, too, the increasing practice of codesign (Burns et al. 2006) makes this even more important. • To articulate the rationale of the designed product so as to allow efficient and generative transfer of knowledge and understanding to the creation of new products. This might involve adaptation of products to entirely different contexts or high-level transfer of principles to entirely different problems. Context dependence is a key factor for intelligent replication of what works in crime prevention (e.g., the scientific realist approach of Pawson and Tilley 1997; Ekblom 2002, 2008a). The understanding that what truly transfers in crime prevention is theoretically oriented principles of practice rather than detailed cookbook copying of specific fully realized methods is also conveyed by Eck (2002) and Ekblom (2011a), though I call more particularly for a parallel use of the discourses of method and principle. The point about high-level principles also connects to the approach to invention known as TRIZ— from the Russian, theory of inventive principles (Altshuller 1999; Ekblom 2011b). This is based on the revelation that a mere 40 such principles underlie all inventions. • To supply a reference frame for assessment of the quality and performance of individual designs during the development process and when the designs are deployed in the field, and to connect with past solutions to other problems whose elements may transfer to the case in hand. • To build designers’ innovative capacity in the crime field. See Chapter 1. • To feed, and test, the cumulative high-level abstraction of knowledge that is theory, by using language and concepts that readily relate to such theory. This may seem abstracted from the practical world of making things. But designers must respect the laws and exploit the theories of physics, materials, and so forth, perhaps at a sophisticated engineering level. Why should they not also respect and exploit the laws and theories of crime science, provided these are valid and well expressed? And recall Kurt Lewin’s oft-quoted aphorism that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory” (Marrow 1969, ix). • To illustrate the complexity and the challenge of the design against crime task, and inspire students and working designers to become involved.

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Fitness SFF pursues these purposes through systematic and rigorous articulation of the purposes9 of the design of the product, how it fits into the ecology of security, how it works, and how it is technically and practically realized. SFF is not intended to do the creative job of the designer in connecting understanding and solution; rather, its purpose is to structure the design space and articulate the design task. Designers must be able to consider the problem in more detached and abstract terms. It is easy to become mired in the detailed specifics of abuse and normal use. Likewise, SFF should articulate design in a universal way to maximize design freedom in designs and redesigns of products themselves. The ability to create should not be constrained by the ways available to reflect and talk about that act of creation, whether in a single designer’s sketchbook or with fellow members of a design team, clients, and users or codesigners. Supporting such design freedom gives the greatest scope and professional challenge to designers to maximize all the benefits and resolve the conflicts and trade-offs within the crime prevention task and adapt to diverse contexts of use. Inevitably, too, the capacity to describe a security function closely connects with the capacity to prescribe it—statements of “what is planned, and what was done” intimately relate to those of “what should be done, and how to do it,” perhaps referring to constructional or performance standards (Ekblom 2008b). (The latter, of course, confer greater design freedom. But the former may exist in regulations to be complied with, for example, where safety issues are encountered.) They will use the same language and concepts. What Is the Security Function of a Product? Having set the scene for the SFF, we can begin its exposition with a definition. The terms involved have so many different meanings and interpretations in the various disciplines in which they are employed (and, in many cases, their usage is vague) that merely adding to this diversity and vagueness without attempting to consolidate is not helpful. Security function, then, is taken to mean the properties of a product that, interacting through causal mechanisms with entities, agents, and systems within its environment, serve the purpose of reducing the risk of crime and increasing security and community safety. The properties in question may be deliberately conferred, amplified, or directed through the

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design, materials, and construction of the product or its physical and human operating environment. Much is squeezed into this definition, and some of the terminology needs further clarification. We can unpack its elements, in turn, in a consistent and comprehensive “definition in depth” (Ekblom 2011a, 115). Product. A product is taken here in its broadest sense of anything pro-

duced by design and manufacture, be it a portable object, place, communication, or information. A system may be designed as a whole and within which one or more individual products may be designed to operate in an integrated manner that also often involves human agents. Design. Design implies a purposive, reflective, sustained, structured,

focused, and iterative process of creating, testing, and improving some product. This usually takes into consideration multiple drivers (e.g., security plus safety, sustainability, and inclusivity) and functions (e.g., a car primarily serving as transportation, but secondarily as security against theft, vandalism, or misuse for crime). The deliberate nature of design contrasts with security incidentally conferred, for example, by the weight or bulk of a product. However, design may capitalize on that property (e.g., by adding a high-friction base to a heavy TV set so that it is even harder to drag away); hence, the inclusion of amplified or directed in the definition. Function and purpose. Performing some function is about working

for a purpose. Working refers to actions and their underlying causal mechanisms as described below. Purpose is obvious and inherent in the design task; in this case, it refers to crime prevention, security, or community safety and a range of other drivers or requirements that may be of greater or lesser priority than crime. At this point, I am considering the purpose as intended by the designer on behalf of the client or the legitimate user; however, other perspectives emerge shortly. Functionality can refer to the whole of a product (this lock prevents burglary); or, alternatively, to some distinct feature (strengthening ribs are included in the cashbox to resist forcible entry by thieves) or component (a tamper-evident lid is added to the tablet container to prevent deliberate contamination). Crime. Experience has shown that, for the benefit of designers, it is both helpful and important to dig down beyond the concept of crime

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prevention to define crime itself—both in general and (see further below) regarding particular types of crime such as theft. Crime in general can be defined as the subset of conflicts between individuals over ownership of property, integrity of person, or acceptability of behavior proscribed by criminal law, which thereby places the offender in conflict with the state and its institutions. Risk. Risk is about the uncertainty of future adverse events. It means

the (categorical) possibility of some class of criminal event (e.g., theft), the (quantitative) probability of such an event occurring in a given time period, and the harm emanating from the event at the time or subsequently. As shown below, the risk can be to the product or from it; the product can protect itself and other things or people against risk; or there also may be the risk of failure of the security function in these respects. For purposes of design and beyond, the crime involvement of the product—the kinds of risk surrounding it—can be described in broad terms using the misdeeds and security framework (Ekblom 2005b) set out below. Crime prevention. Crime prevention is, simply enough, reducing the risk of criminal events by intervening in their causes. Alternatively, to adopt a more agent-centered discourse (Ekblom 2007, 2011b), it reduces the risk of criminal events by disrupting offenders’ plans and frustrating their goals. As defined, risk in turn decomposes into possibility, probability, and harm. Traditionally, prevention has focused on probability, but there is increasing interest in more explicitly incorporating harm reduction. Harm also features in security and community safety. DAC can direct its efforts toward eliminating possibilities, reducing probability, or reducing and mitigating harm. Security. Security can be defined as deliberate action to reduce the risk of criminal events, taken before, during, or after the event. The latter, temporal dimension draws on the Haddon matrix described in a counterterrorism context by Clarke and Newman (2006); it also takes in the postevent dimension of the crime life cycle framework (see Chapter 3 in this volume). It can be further refined as follows using design examples:

• Primary security—action eliminates the possibility of a criminal event (e.g., using system design to replace the annual payment of a vehicle tax, which many drivers manage to evade, by increased fuel tax,

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which they cannot); or if this cannot be done, action reduces its probability (e.g., making it harder to break into cars). • Secondary security—if an event does happen, action limits harm to all parties and property as it unfolds (e.g., stopping the ongoing damage and continued loss of revenue from a vandalized vending machine by automatic lockdown and rapidly alerting the repair team). • Tertiary security—action limits propagation of harm that may occur postevent (e.g., by preventing further offenses such as identity theft following the theft of a credit card). • Mitigation attempts to repair the harm that has already been done (e.g., a backup system for the data lost with a stolen phone) but, from a design perspective, this will be advance preparation for mitigation (as with the backup example). • Together, the capacity to deliver secondary and tertiary security and mitigation amounts to resilience. Community safety. Community safety (e.g., Ekblom 2011a) is a far broader concept than crime prevention: an aspect of quality of life centering on risk reduction and harm mitigation, but emphasizing the positive benefits these can bring. It covers

• Freedom from or reassurance about a range of real and perceived risks relating to crime, antisocial behavior, drug abuse, and terrorism. • Ability to cope with the consequences of those incidents victims nevertheless experience. • Help to cope if unable to do so alone. • Confidence in the police, criminal justice system, and other agencies to stop or remedy problems. • Trust within and across cultural and ethnic boundaries. Being in this state to a sufficient degree enables individuals, families, and communities to • • • • • •

Pursue necessities of cultural, social, and economic life. Receive adequate services. Exercise skills. Enjoy well-being. Engage in community life and develop or maintain social cohesion. Create wealth in the widest sense.

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Design in support of this state of safety, and of its benefits, is obviously far wider in scope than design against risks of specific classes of criminal events. It will embrace, for example, emotional design (Norman 2004), design for happiness (Layard 2005), and individual and collective efficacy and empowerment (Leadbeater 2008). On the other hand, secure design that is overfortified, anxiety engendering, and inconvenient (Durodié 2002; Gamman and Thorpe 2007) obviously fails these wider requirements whether or not it objectively reduces the risk of criminal events. Causal mechanisms and properties. Causal mechanisms refer both to

how criminal events are caused and how the product works to lead to desired outcomes; in this case, how the design of the product, interacting with environment, users, abusers, and others, helps to prevent the crime. Basic examples from situational crime prevention include increasing the effort or risk for the offender and reducing the reward or provocation. Causation invariably involves exchanges of energy, matter, or information so mechanisms are interactional; in practice, this means that they always have to be understood in terms of particular context (Pawson and Tilley 1997; Ekblom 2005a, 2008a). Without certain necessary contextual conditions being met, a mechanism causing successful crime prevention cannot be triggered—in the same way that a match will not light a fire in the absence of fuel, or the presence of rain or wind. Causal mechanisms and the purpose they support go together to comprise function. Put another way, a function could be termed a mechanism with purpose or the more vernacular working with purpose. The characteristics of the product that contribute to making these mechanisms possible are its causal properties.10 These include physical or informational fundamentals such as mass, hardness, reflectivity, rigidity, or flexibility and appearance. Individually or in combination these properties carry causation such as a product’s susceptibility, or alternatively its resistance, to breaking. They may also include more subtle properties such as those that enable them to discriminate between user and abuser, preventer and offender, which may be mediated by mechanical means (e.g., a conventional lock and key) or informational ones (e.g., a password facility). Properties in the sense described above largely come under a technical discourse. But they can also be described in functional terms from the agency perspective of some user or offender (see below). By this, I mean the ways in which the product can be used or misused, treated

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appropriately or mistreated in line with some purpose—concealability, visibility, and so on (here they link with Clarke’s [1999] hot products). Functional properties generally derive from combinations of physical properties. For example, concealability may come from size, shape, smoothness, and even rigidity, determining how easily some product may be slipped unnoticed into the pocket of someone stealing it or indeed by someone hiding it from thieves. The properties are conferred by the materials and construction of the product. For example, a secure container may have edges reinforced by hardened steel, or bolts may have distinguishable features of construction and appearance such as sloping heads to prevent a thief’s tools from getting a grip. The properties may emerge from the relationship between the product and its environment—to take a simple and literal example, the ability to anchor a laptop comes from its incorporation of a designed-in anchor point (structural) firmly embedded in the resistant frame (material or structural), connected via a tough cable (material or structural) to an anchor point in the environment such as the leg of a heavy table (material or structural). The product may have properties that are dynamic (e.g., the safe or carrying case that sprays its contents with dye when breached) and even smart ones (e.g., the computer that makes a judgment and reports itself stolen via the Internet). Entities, agents, and systems. Entities are things, ranging from portable items that could be targets of crime or tools or weapons for crime, to the physical environment and any enclosures such as fenced compounds, buildings, rooms, or even safes. Of course, the product will not interact only with that environment, but with people present in it (or otherwise able to influence it remotely) acting as users and perhaps as offenders, crime preventers, and crime promoters. It is helpful to view people from twin perspectives—as caused agents (Ekblom 2007, 2011a). Their motivation, emotion, and performance may be caused (e.g., provoked into vandalism by an officious notice, stressed into an assault by overcrowding on the train, and distracted by heat and noise into spilling beer in a bar). Alternatively, people may themselves cause things to happen; in most cases, intentionally, involving goals, plans, and decisions. Mechanisms working through people can be described in both ways—causally and intentionally. The latter ties in with the requirement, mentioned above, to consider purpose and function from the often divergent perspectives of offender and preventer. From the design perspective, the latter role will

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normally be equivalent to the user, although users can also steal or damage things in some circumstances. Together, the entities and the human agents taking on these roles make up the immediate circumstances of criminal events. They can be described in terms of the conjunction of criminal opportunity (CCO) (Ekblom 2010, 2011a). This integrates a range of situational and offender-oriented theories of crime in a single framework. CCO serves as both a map of the causes of crime (more strictly put, of the interacting ingredients of the immediate causal mechanisms of criminal events) and, overlaid on this, a map of preventive principles for intervening in those causes. How a product works to confer security may best be understood when viewing it as part of a wider system—the secure operation of a bicycle stand, for example, can be considered only as an interaction between bicycle, stand, user, and environment (e.g., the ground in which it is anchored). This extends into the cyberdimension, which I discuss in the conclusion.

The Security Function Framework The SFF aims rigorously and systematically to articulate the rationale— the purpose and realization—of the security properties and features designed into some product, broadly defined to include objects, places, procedures, information, and systems. The SFF in Brief There are four ways of describing a product, with each having its own discourse (Ekblom 2011b): 1. Purpose—what the designed product is for, including both security and other drivers or requirements. 2. Niche—how the security function within a given product relates to other products, people, and places in the human, informational, and material ecosystem. 3. Mechanism—how the product’s security function works in terms of cause and effect in material and human terms. 4. Technicality—how the causal properties of the product are realized through materials, structure, and features of the design

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(construction), how the design is produced (manufacture), and how the design operates in practice (operation). I cover these descriptions in detail as follows. Purpose. Describing purpose covers several distinct aspects: (1) What

is the designed product for? This is its principal purpose, which may or may not be one of security; (2) What, if any, subsidiary purpose(s) does it have? When the principal purpose does not relate to security, the security purpose may be a subsidiary one. We could take this further by considering each aspect of risk separately: Is the purpose to eliminate the possibility of certain kinds of criminal event, or reduce the probability, or reduce the harm? We should specify where the product is intended to be used and, finally, the noncrime-related drivers11 that it must also satisfy: (3) the other desire requirements it must meet to be beneficial to the immediate users and manufacturers, such as economy and aesthetics; and (4) the hygiene or social responsibility requirements that it must meet, referring to other societal values that the product should not interfere with or should positively boost, such as social inclusion. Whether crime prevention is the principal or subsidiary purpose of the product, the crime risks it addresses can be described using the misdeeds and security framework (Ekblom 2005b). This describes how products feature as object, subject, tool, or setting for particular kinds of criminal behavior. Products can be designed to prevent their being: • • • • • •

Misappropriated (stolen for themselves, or their parts or materials). Mistreated (damaged, destroyed). Mishandled (sold when stolen, or smuggled). Misbegotten12 (counterfeited, copied). Misused (as a tool or weapon). Misbehaved with (e.g., a place to gather and act antisocially, or something to bash and make noise). • Mishap (accidental damage, not criminally caused, but which may reduce resistance to crime). Security niche. The concept of security niche characterizes how the security function within a given product relates to other security-related products, people, and places in the human ecosystem. Consider some product, such as a handbag or laptop carrier, at risk of being misappropriated or mistreated. Security can be conferred in several ways, singly or in combination (cf. Ekblom 2005a).

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The handbag could be safe; that is, not in itself needing explicit security because it is used only in secure environments that are protected by enclosures or people acting as crime preventers such as guardians or place managers (Clarke and Eck 2003). In practice, complete safety occurs only rarely. A handbag that was, by contrast, exposed to significant risk could be protected by separate security products or securing products. A security product’s principal purpose is protecting some other target, person, or property against crime; an example could be a lanyard that triggers an audible alarm if the handbag is snatched. Securing products have a subsidiary security purpose additional to their principal purpose (e.g., the Stop Thief Chair is primarily for sitting on, but a pair of notches cut in the front of the seat enables a handbag to be securely fastened beneath the owner’s knees in a café or pub). Deploying the above approaches makes for a secured product that is protected by external means. But the product itself could be designed to be a secure one that protects itself by the incorporation of security or securing components. These may either be retrofitted or factory fitted, where product and component are designed or selected to fit one another intimately such as the tamper-evident lid on food containers. In the case of the handbag, a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip could be inserted to protect against shoplifting and, since this could also help with stock control and supply chain monitoring, the RFID chip itself would be a securing product. Another way that the design protects itself is by deliberate security adaptations (Ekblom and Sidebottom 2008) to its inherent causal properties, realized through constructional features or materials. These adaptations either work by themselves (e.g., antislash wire mesh incorporated within the fabric to resist mistreatment) or in conjunction with human action such as guardianship (e.g., where the opening flap of a handbag is fastened by Velcro, which alerts the owner by movement and noise when it is opened). Both of these features and more are incorporated within the Karrysafe range designed by Adam Thorpe.13 Security communications, whether text and images (e.g., on beware handbag thieves posters), semiotics (e.g., the appearance of robustness of a target; Whitehead et al. 2008), or signals (such as audio, visual, and electronic alarms or blinking armed-status lights not normally seen on handbags, of course, but otherwise relevant), carry a range of information to diverse audiences: deterrent or discouraging messages to the thief, mobilizing messages to owners or managers, and so forth. Note that safe or secure communications systems (i.e., those protected or

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inherently resistant to interception, theft, or tampering) are an instance of secure products. We thus have several distinct niches: safe product, secure product (inherent or via components), security product, security component, security communication, and securing product. All these exist within a “risk environment” (Ekblom and Sidebottom 2008, 66). The environment itself may be a dedicated secure enclosure (e.g., a safe or a locked and guarded strong room) or a securing one (e.g., a house). Securing and security products could either be associated with the environment as a whole (e.g., closed-circuit television [CCTV]) or with some specifically protected target in whichever environment it happens to be stolen (e.g., a lanyard that triggers an alarm if the target is pulled). Other items in the ecology of security, to be introduced in the case study (Chapter 9), include securing enclosures and securing practices. A final ecological issue is that the same product can occupy multiple niches and have several ecological relationships much as a frog can eat a fly, but itself get eaten by a snake (cf. Felson 2006). In security terms, this is captured in a distinction noted in Ekblom (2008b) between a product as object of crime—an asset—and the same product in function. The handbag can be stolen for its own value as well as for the contents it contains and protects, or fails to protect. Mechanism. Purpose must ultimately link to more practical aspects of

design. But it is best not to leap straight from high-level purpose to the technical description described below. Rather, smarter understanding (plus more efficient knowledge transfer to other design tasks and clearer, more informative evaluation) requires an intermediate consideration of the causal mechanisms—how the design intervention works by interrupting, diverting, or weakening those causes. I introduced mechanisms and related them to the causal properties of the product and its context in the definition in depth above. Usually, we can identify several parallel mechanisms that may underlie a preventive effect (e.g., physical blocking of crime in parallel to subjective discouragement of offenders by anticipation of excessive effort). An understanding of immediate causal mechanisms of crime and its prevention is the road to analyzing risk and reducing it through design. More generally, it is fundamental to replicating the core principles of successful crime prevention in ways that are intelligently and perhaps innovatively customized to new contexts (Pawson and Tilley 1997; Ekblom 2002, 2005a, 2011a).

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I argued above that offenders can be seen as both caused and as active, goal-directed, planning, and decisionmaking agents—caused agents for short. On the active side, a useful parallel discourse to straight causal mechanisms is that of scripts (Cornish 1994; Freilich and Chermak 2009). For example, the offender must seek a crime target (say a handbag), see and select the target, approach without arousing suspicion, steal the bag, and escape preferably unnoticed before converting or enjoying the value of the loot and perhaps covering tracks. Script perspectives can usefully be combined with knowledge of offenders’ perpetrator techniques (modus operandi) and their resources (Ekblom and Tilley 2000; Gill 2005). Ekblom (2011b) extends this in design terms to the concept of script clashes where the offender’s script engages with the user’s or preventer’s script in such issues as surveillance versus concealment, challenge versus excuse, or pursuit versus escape. These are, in effect, the pivots on which designers and other professional crime preventers must tip the design of products, environments, and procedures to favor the good party. As offenders and preventers get to know and anticipate one another’s scripts and the mutual script clashes, the scripts may coevolve toward greater elaboration of countermove and counter-countermove (cf. Ekblom 1997). As Gamman et al. (in preparation) point out, instrumental scripts are not the whole story as far as understanding and influencing the dynamics of crime situations. A range of personal and interpersonal motivational and emotional processes are intertwined with, or substitute for, such scripts and script clashes in determining behavior and the outcomes of social interactions. (See also Ekblom’s [2007] “richer offender” concept, and Wortley’s [2008] situational “precipitators of crime.”) Design interventions can seek to manipulate these mechanisms. Technicality. Technical descriptions state how the causal properties of the product, which contribute to the mechanisms of prevention described above, are realized through construction, manufacture, and operation. Construction is about materials and distinguishable structural features of the design. Manufacture is obviously about how it is made (with wider implications about cost, degree of customization to context that is possible with mass production, programmability, etc.). Operation is about how it acts in tangible terms with human action (or under control of artificial intelligence) such as keys turned, credit cards swiped, or actuators releasing locks. Not much more can be said about technicality at a general level—it is all in the detail, as the case study (Chapter 9) illustrates.

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SFF overview. In sum, an abbreviated four-level description of a secu-

rity function could look something like this, using the Stop Thief Chair as an example: (1, purpose) The Stop Thief Chair is designed with a principal purpose to serve as a fully functional and appropriately styled chair and a subsidiary purpose, without in any way jeopardizing the principal purpose, to reduce the risk of theft of customers’ handbags in places like bars and restaurants. (2, security niche) It is thus a securing product. (3, mechanism) It works by supplying physical anchorage of the target handbag that is differentially easier to release by the handbag owner; by mobilizing usage of the security function of the chair, and the surveillance and reaction that it favors by the owner and others acting as preventers; and by deterrence through increasing the offender’s perception of risk of being detected and caught in the act. All of these mechanisms are supported by (4, technicality), the incorporation of a twin notch feature cut or moulded in the leading edge of the seat part of the chair, over which the handbag handle is placed by the owner, the handbag then being anchored due to its handle being enclosed between the seat and the back of the owner’s knees, and protected within the owner’s personal defensible space. This reads like a description of a patent, although patents are usually accompanied by technical drawings: a visual shortcoming in the situational crime prevention (SCP) sphere well noted by Gamman and Pascoe (2004). As K. J. Bowers (personal communication, 27 May 2011) notes, maybe a quick way of assessing the particular value of a given product is to see what is left after taking one SFF statement away from another—this will highlight its uniqueness. She also observes that SFF might have a role in cumulative evidence reviews by identifying when ostensibly dissimilar interventions operate through the same causal mechanisms conducive on the same conditions. The complete description of the design of products with a security function must, of course, go well beyond this consideration. How the design satisfies other purposes and requirements, perhaps resolving trade-offs between security and desire factors such as convenience, safety, economy, and style, are all key to the wider design process. SFF adjunct factors. Several other important and generic aspects of security can be described besides the basic four levels set out above.

Scope, or an individual product’s life cycle—the crime risks attending a product do not only happen when that product is in use. Theft of

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specialist materials stored for construction, theft during the supply chain, and theft, misuse, or misbehavior in the afterlife (e.g., re-use of syringes, illegal dumping of waste) can all occur. Contradictions and synergies—in generic terms, the designer’s major task in preventing crime is to identify and resolve the contradictions in the design requirement, whether these are strategic, relating to fundamentals of the crime problem (making a personal music player attractive to users while unattractive to thieves), or tactical, which may relate to “troublesome tradeoffs” (Ekblom 2005a, 215) with other drivers or values (e.g., energy efficiency or social inclusion) or within crime prevention itself (e.g., when barriers keep intruders out, but shield them from view should they manage to get in). The TRIZ framework of inventive principles, already described, also identifies some 39 “contradiction principles” (Domb 1998) such as weight and strength whose clashes with one another have to be resolved by designers and engineers. Within DAC, strategic contradictions of purpose relate to the inherent conflict within the nature of crime (“I own this product and will use it—the thief wants it for very similar reasons”). A more tactical, technical contradiction could occur when, for example, a product must be simultaneously lightweight (for user friendliness), but robust (for crime resistance). Because they lie at the heart of the design task, contradictions must be well articulated. Contradictions apart, the designer must also seek to exploit complementary or synergistic functions within crime prevention (e.g., if counterterrorism tactics at a retail center also reduce opportunity for theft or disorder) or more widely (e.g., if burglarproofing of a building can use the same sensors and network as thermal efficiency controls). Failure modes—an important task in the design process is stress testing; that is, trying to envisage, and flush out in practical trials, all the different ways in which the designs (of security or whatever else) can have adverse effects or fail in their purpose. Things can go wrong with designs when they leave the workshop and are exposed to the vicissitudes of the real world. This is true even where self-protective security functions are incorporated. The failure of security functions, whether due to deliberate action by criminals, to accident, or to wear and tear, is especially significant if this is unclear to users; for example, if the lock in the locker room looks secure and still operates, but the internal components are worn and can easily be opened with a paperclip. Failure could cause additional harm, for example, if physical damage caused injury from sharp edges or electric shock (Ekblom 2008b). Damage

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may also affect the security function indirectly—the damaged product could still deliver security, but might appear unsightly to the place manager or pose an injury risk and hence get decommissioned. For all of these reasons, fail-safe and tamper indication may be necessary functions to incorporate in the design. More generally, SFF can be used systematically to investigate and describe what went wrong in a trial as well as what went right. Adaptability and evolution of security design—the pursuit of crime and context specificity encounters practical limits. The design of portable and movable products especially faces a strategic choice between making them highly adapted to single contexts versus versatile to a range of contexts, but not quite so well adapted to any individual one. This jack-of-all-trades, but master of none dilemma is pervasive— driven not just by possibilities of security, but constraints of marketing and manufacture. Security functionality may transmute from one niche to another (Ekblom 1995). What begins as an independent security product may evolve into a security component and may end up as a designed-in feature or property. For example, a freestanding security tag may become a specialized factory-fitted component; that is, a special identification function entirely embedded in the software. More general kinds of evolutionary trend within product design are described again in the TRIZ framework (Altshuller 1999; Ekblom 2011b). Finally, a security design may incorporate various iterations of coevolution with offenders (Ekblom 1997, 2005a)—move, countermove, counter-countermove (such as an antipick shield around the key slot of a bicycle lock). It is important for designers to think about, and to describe, these layers clearly (Ekblom 2005b). Mechanisms involving preventers: the mobilization dimension— security mechanisms may work on the causes of crime in a direct way by physically blocking access or removal, say, or lowering the intrinsic value of the loot to the offender. They may also work indirectly, via involvement of people, by mobilizing them as crime preventers to guard the objects. We have seen this with the Stop Thief Chair, where users are intended to hitch their handbag beneath their knees. Here, humans have become a designed-in part of a simple security system, both physically and cognitively. Direct blocking is an instance of situation shaping—the entire intervention is in place in advance before the criminal attempt happens. This has the advantage, if it works, of heading off the attempt before there is

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any damage or confrontation—like a preventive principle applied by insects with warning coloration (Ekblom 1997, 1999; Felson 2006). Preventers may contribute to this, for example, by installing or utilizing a security product. Alternatively, shaping the situation may enable a subsequent, human, real-time intervention (e.g., when detecting a burglar in flagrante delicto). There are cases where the need for human preventers is explicitly designed out on grounds of convenience and reliability—who wants to have to remember to safely retract their antenna on leaving their vehicle when it can now be embedded in the window glass? But in many cases, the adaptability of human preventers and their capacity to take further action as needed is an important element in a security function. This is especially so when the nature of the preventer’s further action may not be fully predictable to the offender and conversely. Where human preventers are involved, the causal mechanisms by which security works are many. At the simple end of the scale, an alarm might merely draw the attention of a preventer acting as guardian of a target (e.g., a movement alarm in a laptop). The resultant angry challenge might disrupt the offender’s action or influence the offender’s anticipation of this danger (i.e., perceived risk), which may be enough to deter the attempt. In the middle of the scale, the preventer might be mobilized to take some specific action such as locking their door— supplying a physical block—or turning on security lighting. Again, taking a bicycle stand as example, one might envisage the deliberate design of a functional system of bicycle stand, bicycle lock, bicycle, and a user expected to operate the lock and employ the stand in a predictable and secure way. (In fact, the CaMden bicycle stand, as described in Chapter 6 of this volume, is expressly designed to direct the user to lock securely; namely, locking both wheels and the frame to the stand. Insecure locking, by a single D-lock or cable connecting the cross-bar of the bicycle to the middle of the stand, is rendered difficult by the M shape, and the user is nudged (Thaler and Sunstein 2008) into secure practice. At the complicated end of the scale, preventers have the open-ended potential, on their own initiative, to activate the entire range of preventive mechanisms, including mobilizing some other agent (like the police) to take action of their own. We therefore have several possible permutations of the security function. At minimum, it directly protects the target of crime from various misdeeds (misappropriation, misuse, etc.). Alternatively, it mobilizes other people to act as preventers in the immediate crime situation,

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and they in turn use the product to help them guard their property, undertake surveillance, or employ another preventive task. Next, I discuss in more detail the process of mobilization itself and how design might influence this; see also Ekblom (in press). How people are mobilized to act as crime preventers is a major practice domain of crime prevention in general and therefore important to capture concisely within SFF.14 Designers must work within this context. Besides influencing the behavior of offenders, they must influence that of the other agents—preventers and promoters—who in turn either directly influence the offenders by their own interventions in the immediate crime situation or indirectly at times and places causally upstream. Classical SCP supplies, in its customary way, a simple heuristic approach to understanding preventer roles. A second, outer, layer is built around the crime triangle15 to indicate that professional preventive practitioners should consider the guardians of targets, managers of places, and handlers of offenders (people who may act as their controlling conscience). A more rich and open-ended framework for both understanding and guiding mobilization of preventers (and also demobilization of promoters) is CLAIMED (Ekblom 2011a). This, in fact, emerged from a distillation of the research on design against crime commissioned for the UK Crime Reduction Programme (Design Council 2000; Learmont 2005), and it soon transpired that it applied across crime prevention as a whole. But here it returns to its origins. Mobilization comprises several distinct tasks: • Clarify crime prevention tasks and roles that other individuals or organizations must do for the design to be successfully installed and operated. • Locate appropriate agents in and around the crime situation capable of taking effective responsibility, using the kind of analysis of their civil roles, interests, and capacities suggested above, then determine what may be constraining or motivating preventers and enabling or motivating promoters. Then identify methods that • Alert. • Inform them about the crime issue and their part in it as preventers or promoters.

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• Motivate them to take responsibility for prevention or ceasing promotion. • Empower them (with resources, e.g., know-how, security kit, authority). • Direct them (e.g., with regulations, standards, physical constraints). Applying this framework to design, these tasks can be applied in the early stages of the process16 where researching and developing an understanding of the causes of crime and the causal roles of various agents is important as well as in the later stages of focusing, creating, and developing solutions where design can influence not just the main operation of the evolving product but the wider domain of human factors. Describing the security function requires one or more CLAIMED statements if the preventive intervention works indirectly through influencing people. There are many ways that the designer can mobilize people to become (better) preventers, to cease being promoters, or to flip from careless promoter to careful preventer. With computers, alerting by itself can be achieved through various lights, sounds, or pop-up windows to remind people of the risk and what they should do to counter it. Motivation can be achieved, for example, by reward—even by fun. When garbage is thrown into the world’s deepest trash bin,17 it delivers a long, screaming bomb-dropping noise followed by a thud apparently far below. This is claimed to increase the proper deposition of trash. Direction can be achieved through incorporation of physical or electronic constraints to ensure correct installation and operation of design, as with the CaMden bicycle stand mentioned above. However, users as well as offenders may not always utilize a design as intended. Communications design is obviously central to mobilization, drawing on everything from the graphics and text of posters to the semiotics of robust appearance of mobile phones (Whitehead et al. 2008). It can alert and inform people about crime risks; make them wise to perpetrator techniques (e.g., certain Internet scams or the fixing of credit card scanners or traps on automated teller machines [ATMs]); inspire them through fear, duty, or awareness of regulations to take on the preventive role; and empower them by telling them how to operate the security function on their product. (A particular design challenge is to ensure that these and the messages to preventers or promoters do not mutually interfere.)

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However well a product performs its security function once in place and activated, it is no good whatsoever if it remains unmanufactured or unmarketed, unsold, uninstalled, and unused. Examples abound of burdensome security being bypassed such as the child lock on a video player (Design Council 2000) where service engineers simply gave out the bypass technique to the hordes of customers who had lost the PIN code, or the anecdotal entry phone system disabled by residents by propping the door open with a fire extinguisher. As with most crime prevention, there is an implementation chain leading ultimately to the realization of the designed intervention and the hoped-for activation of its preventive mechanisms. This may involve a succession of performances by many agents, whether individuals or organizations, undertaking many tasks. For example, a mobile phone once designed must be marketed, stored, distributed, sold, purchased, and the security functions such as password protection activated by the user. (Stages such as wholesale distribution and retail will also have their own crime problems to address, perhaps with the aid of design of the product itself.) On disposal, the phone obviously should not regurgitate the former owner’s data nor (if not visibly broken) should it be possible to resell it by passing it off as working. Ideally it should not be discarded as ordinary trash, but recycled as electrical or electronic waste. The designer must anticipate and influence each of these performances to make the product attractive over its entire life cycle and distribution cycle: security functions must not jeopardize the many other requirements for safe and efficient transport, sales, installation, and aftersale services. Seen from this angle, security itself has its own desire requirements forming a halo around the main crime prevention one. Variations in description of security—different levels of SFF may be emphasized for different purposes. The description, emerging and evolving as a living document, could help to guide the development of the design as it serves to reflect, clarify, and communicate the unfolding research, thinking, iterative production, and testing process. Writing the description would normally start out by specifying purpose (though designers should normally question this); niche, mechanism, and technical description could then be incorporated as these emerged. A product design specification18 would be no neat linear progression—probably a messy back and forth, with leaps of creative intuition alternating with more analytical thinking in which ideas were consolidated, tested, and revised or abandoned. A full four-level description would be needed in reporting on the finalized design, demonstrating how it met its stated requirements.

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Whether an abbreviated statement of the kind presented for the Stop Thief Chair will suffice, or a fuller one as in Chapter 9, would depend on circumstances. Where the aim is to guide designers to create their own designs, the description would obviously need to stop short of telling them exactly and exhaustively what to do. If not they would no longer be creative designers, but manufacturers! How short would depend on circumstances. If designers were being advised on how to adapt their own chairs, for example, a mainly technical specification could be given about the depth and separation of the notches. (In fact, in the early stages of the Stop Thief Chair project, a physical template was produced to guide, not designers, but carpenters and others in cutting their own notches—a case of building operational capacity.) If they were offered more generic guidance on how to design chairs to protect handbags, they might be advised on purpose and likely mechanisms (a functional specification) to activate, plus some account of the design conflicts they were likely to have to address such as safety and other hygiene requirements. They would be given maximum design freedom if they were briefed using purposive requirements alone—make your chair reduce theft of handbags from people seated in bars, or even just reduce handbag theft in bars. Finally, standards could use these descriptions in various ways. Technical standards could specify, for example, the types of materials or the separation of the twin notches. Performance standards for security could relate purely to the purpose (e.g., a chair that reduces the risk of theft by a certain amount). Alternatively they could be functional, relating to both purpose and mechanism (e.g., a chair that reduces risk of theft by securely locking the handbag in conjunction with the user’s knees).

Conclusion The practice of design against crime is still developing and its concepts are still evolving. Not all of those involved in the field may agree with the specific proposals that I have suggested—maybe some designers will not even agree with the need for a common language and framework. But at least this is a start in what should be a reflective, collective, and constructive debate and progressive accumulation of ideas in the field as well as the possible development of an interdiscipline. For those who do wish to pursue the current approach, the obvious next steps are to test out SFF on a range of design tasks and to see how

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far the framework can be used by other people, crime scientists or designers, in other contexts. The first testing in detail is described in Chapter 9, where SFF is applied to the design of the antitheft Grippa clip. This is a retrospective exercise, although the ideas for SFF were coevolving with the Grippa design process and attempts to articulate it. Another, rather different one is described in Meyer and Ekblom (2012), an attempt to prospectively use SFF to specify design requirements for an explosion-resistant railway car. The ultimate test is in building innovative capacity—to see whether designers (and crime prevention practitioners acting in a design-like way) can make use of the framework to routinely generate more and better designs and to efficiently share practical and theoretical knowledge between each other. The present exercise, which has centered on material products, is not the end of the story. SFF needs to address systems in which products are embedded. Design of security within cyberspace in particular requires concepts and terminology that support the exacting, rigorous logical requirements and comprehensive detail of software programming. This is not an esoteric corner of product design. As noted previously (Ekblom 2005a), the trend toward pervasive or ubiquitous computing means that progressively more things—household goods, furniture, even clothing—will contain chips variously handling identification, sensory, and communication functions serving a range of main purposes.19 (In this, the system dimension grows ever stronger and the distinction between products, places, and systems progressively diminishes.) The security function of products, including the vital property of discrimination between legitimate and illegitimate use and user, will increasingly be realized wholly or partially via such processors, sensors, and actuators, acting alone or communicating via the Internet or Bluetooth. The scope for embedding a security function into products relatively painlessly and economically widens enormously if all that has to be added is a software application. The scope for keeping up with adaptive criminals and changing contexts is greater with programmable updates and upgrades distributed over the Internet. But the scope for getting it wrong—failing to deliver security and perhaps even making things significantly worse—is equally wide. Looking further afield, from a transdisciplinary perspective, the user and the abuser are not the only parties involved in dealing with some product. The designer has intentions for how and where the product should be used. An approach worth exploring is the domain of “persuasive technology” and more broadly “design with intent” (see Lock-

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ton, Harrison, and Stanton 2008, 274). Akrich (1992), drawing on examples of intermediate technology designed (though not well) for use in less-developed countries, describes the complex interrelationship between the use of the product envisaged and assumed by the designer, what really happens on the ground, and how that environment becomes changed by the introduction of the product. The designer’s visions of use, and of the world that usage is to take place in, become inscribed in the product, but the user may not always follow that script. Latour (1992, 151) describes how people can “act at a distance” through the technologies they create and implement and how, from the user’s perspective, technology can appear to determine or compel certain actions (in particular, technology plays an important role in mediating human relationships). None of these writers directly envisages the kinds of product-related misdeeds described here, but their more generic formulations are highly relevant and enriching and offer insights worth mining in future. Concluding on a more prosaic note, I recently revisited the origins of SFF in articulating the rationale of a design. A return to judging at the Royal Society of Arts revealed that all Student Design Award entries are now required to be accompanied by a 500-word essay describing the student’s solution, the process by which they reached it, and the benefits they believe it would create. This was helpful to the judges and, one suspects, to the students and their tutors during the design process. But about one-fifth of entries did not supply the essay. So there is still some way to go.

Notes The author thanks Lorraine Gamman, Adam Thorpe, Marcus Willcocks, and colleagues at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design; and Kate Bowers and Aiden Sidebottom at UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science. He also thanks Sunniva Meyer, Institute of Transport Economics, Oslo. An earlier version of Chapters 2 and 9 combined was presented at the 2010 Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis (ECCA) seminar, Brisbane, Australia. 1. www.designagainstcrime.com (accessed March 3, 2011). 2. www.inthebag.org.uk/?page_id=479 (accessed March 3, 2011). 3. www.stopthiefchair.com (accessed March 3, 2011). 4. UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/ Security/Design-out-crime/Case-studies1/Stop-Thief-Chair-and-Grippa-Clips (accessed March 3, 2011).

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5. Royal Society of Arts, www.thersa.org/projects/design/student-designawards (accessed March 3, 2011). 6. www.designagainstcrime.com/project/students (accessed March 3, 2011). 7. See a wider discussion of DAC methodology from a design perspective, www.grippaclip.com/wp-content/uploads/dac_methodology_130209.pdf and www.designagainstcrime.com/methodology-resources/design-methodology/#listand-description (accessed March 3, 2011). 8. Tacit knowledge (see Tilley 2006, after Polanyi 1958) refers to that which is implicit and unspoken, and thus difficult to communicate. A useful definition of sensemaking is “a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively” (Klein, Moon, and Hoffman 2006, 71). See also Kolko (2010); and the original approach to sensemaking by Dervlin, http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making (accessed March 3, 2011). 9. I have switched the referent of purpose here, from the purpose of the framework to the purpose of the designed product described through the framework. 10. In Ekblom and Sidebottom (2008), the term features is used to convey this meaning, but here features are meant to be any distinguishable structural element. 11. From the perspective of, say, health policy and practice, crime becomes “another driver.” 12. Thanks to Ken Pease for “misbegotten.” 13. www.inthebag.org.uk/?page_id=479 (accessed January 6, 2011). 14. Using the terminology of the 5Is framework (Ekblom 2011a), professional crime preventers seek to involve others in implementing the intervention. Mobilization is one action within involvement, which also includes partnership and climate setting. 15. www.popcenter.org (accessed January 6, 2011). 16. See, for example, www.designagainstcrime.com/methodology-resources/ design-methodology/#list-and-description (accessed January 6, 2011). 17. www.rpmgo.com/volkswagens-newest-fun-theory-video-reveals-theworlds-deepest-rubbish-bin (accessed January 6, 2011). 18. This is a statement of what a still-to-be-designed product is intended to do. Its aim is to ensure that the subsequent design of a product meets the needs of the user. See further accounts in Chapter 3 in this volume and at http:// deseng.ryerson.ca/xiki/Learning/Main:Product_design_specification_diagram and www.ider.herts.ac.uk/school/courseware/design/pds/example.html (accessed June 4, 2011). 19. See, for example, “Cisco predicts Internet device boom,” www.bbc.co .uk/news/technology-13613536 (accessed January 6, 2011).

3 Embedding Crime Prevention Within Design Andrew B. Wootton and Caroline L. Davey

THE DESIGN AGAINST CRIME INITIATIVE, ORIGINALLY LAUNCHED

in 1999, was initiated by the UK Home Office, Design Council, and Department of Trade and Industry. DAC emphasizes the contribution of architecture, product, interior, graphic, and other design disciplines to crime prevention. It seeks to broaden the thinking and practice of all design professionals to address crime issues, illustrating good practice in crime prevention with examples from both the private and public sectors (Davey, Cooper, and Press 2002; Davey et al. 2003; Design Council 2003; Pease 2001). DAC holds that designers have an important role to play in crime prevention and that they have particular skills of value. Pease (2001), a UK criminologist, observes that “designers are trained to anticipate many things: the needs and desires of users, environmental impacts, ergonomics and so on. It is they who are best placed to anticipate the crime consequences of products and services, and to gain the upper hand in the technological race against crime” (27). The DAC literature argues that designers must consider the potential for their designs to be misused or abused. So they need to consider not only the user, but also the potential abuser or misuser. To achieve this, designers need to learn to “think thief”—to anticipate potential offenders’ actions; understand the tools, knowledge, and skills they employ; and incorporate attack testing into the design process (Town, Davey, and Wootton 2003; Design Council 2003; Ekblom and Tilley 2000). The aim is to out-think the thief and develop design solutions that short-circuit potential offenders’ behavior. Importantly, however,

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this must be achieved without reducing the design’s value to legitimate users, increasing fear of crime, creating social problems, or causing the seriousness of the crime to escalate. Of course, it’s not just about thinking thief, but about considering all types of criminal activity (Town, Davey, and Wootton 2004; Design Council 2003; Ekblom and Tilley 2000). The Design Policy Partnership, UK Design Council, and Home Office have published guides and case studies that demonstrate to designers that their design solutions can be both user friendly and secure (Davey, Cooper, and Press 2002; Design Council 2003; Pease 2001). In addition, the joint Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Office publication Safer Places (2004) describes ways in which the design and planning of the built environment can prevent crime and fear of crime and, thereby, contribute to the creation of safe and sustainable communities. But how can we evaluate the efforts of design professionals when design operates within different national contexts and covers a broad range of disciplines from product and graphic design, to landscape design, to architecture and planning? In this chapter, we present the Design Against Crime Evaluation Framework created to support and evaluate crime prevention within design (Wootton and Davey 2005). We begin by identifying some of the limitations of traditional approaches to evaluation used within criminology and go on to explain the thinking behind the DAC Framework—a method of evaluation based on the new product development (NPD) literature that seeks to embed evaluation within design development.

Traditional Evaluations Scientific Evaluations Criminologists—predominantly from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands—have written a great deal about the evaluation of interventions to reduce or prevent crime. Among criminologists, rigorous scientific approaches involving experimental, random controlled trials are considered the gold standard of evaluating crime prevention programs (Eck 2002). Researchers adopting a scientific approach typically establish a control area or group for comparison and isolate or control variables. The evaluations measure

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changes in crime figures over time, usually relying on recorded crime figures held by the police. Such evaluations are generally summative in that researchers wait until the project has finished before revealing the results.1 Sample sizes need to be sufficiently large to permit differences to achieve conventional levels of statistical significance. The evaluators act independently of those involved in the crime prevention initiative and, thus, the results of the study are considered objective (i.e., free from personal or political bias). The methodological requirements and the cost of the scientific approach mean that researchers tend to focus on the evaluation of repeated interventions such as national crime prevention initiatives supported by government policy (Lösel 2004). The types of interventions that have been evaluated using the scientific method include: • Schemes to turn young people perceived as being at risk of offending away from crime (e.g., boot camps in the United States). • Initiatives to rehabilitate offenders (e.g., sex offender programs). • Design interventions to reduce opportunities for crime such as CCTV in the UK (Armitage 2002), lighting (Pease 1999), and the UK police accreditation scheme called Secured By Design (Armitage 2000). Scientific evaluations of standard design interventions, such as Secured By Design (Armitage 2000), have confirmed the value of incorporating security into building development and thus have helped support its application in the UK and elsewhere. Furthermore, by monitoring crime levels in surrounding areas, evaluations of design interventions can identify whether displacement has occurred; that is, criminal behavior has continued, but has been transferred to a different location or carried out in a different way as a result of preventative measures (Felson and Clarke 1998; Hesseling 1994). This research has been invaluable for challenging the assumption that crime is simply displaced and for countering the argument that “nothing works.” Furthermore, cost-benefit analyses can be used to determine whether design interventions justify the costs incurred in implementation (Brand and Price 2000; Dubourg, Hamed, and Thorns 2005; Welsh and Farrington 1999). The scientific approach to evaluation can usefully be applied to national crime prevention initiatives, but it does raise a number of issues for the evaluator.

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At what point should crime rates be measured? It might be assumed that crime prevention initiatives would demonstrate a greater effect initially and then gradually decline in terms of their effectiveness. It is worth noting, however, that some initiatives start to work prior to implementation and some designs or interventions prove criminogenic over the longer term (Eck 2002). How are causal factors identified? Evaluations describe the different components of crime prevention programs and often attempt to isolate the factors that have caused changes in offending behavior (Lösel 2004). However, this can be difficult to achieve in practice, as crime prevention methods usually work most effectively when used in combination with other measures (Clarke 1995) and causal factors are not always clear-cut in real situations. Are the findings transferable to other situations and contexts? Evaluations attempt to ensure that an intervention is applied in a standard way and that the context is similar across different interventions. However, design interventions should generally be tailored to the context, and the way in which they are implemented can influence effectiveness. For example, consultation with users may be an important factor for some types of invention (Eck 2002; Lösel 2004; Taylor 2002). Even in relation to national crime prevention initiatives, achieving the gold standard can be difficult and evaluations are often beset by methodological shortcomings. Armitage’s (2002) review of CCTV evaluation studies, for example, found that a high proportion failed to establish a comparable area for monitoring changing levels of crime and identifying displacement (or diffusion of benefits) or failed to take satisfactory before and after measures (Armitage 2002). Scientific forms of evaluation are suited to situations where crime occurs in sufficient volume to achieve statistical significance. It cannot be applied to crime prevention initiatives aimed at reducing crimes that occur only rarely, such as terrorist attacks, as statistically significant results cannot be obtained (Wootton and Davey 2005). Scientific evaluations are considered essential because the government is committed to evidence-based policy and the findings should inform decisions about future investment in crime prevention. In practice, policymakers may ignore the findings of evaluations if they do not support current policy. Boot camps continue to be used in the United

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States, for instance, despite having been proved ineffective by evaluations (Lösel 2004). Specific Evaluations Crime prevention not only involves national programs that are repeated, but also many small-scale, place-based interventions. Such interventions address crime and related problems specific to their situation, are tailored to the context, and may be discontinued once the problems have been alleviated. They are difficult to evaluate using the scientific approach due to small sample sizes and lack of resources for research. They require a form of evaluation that does not have to be conducted by outside agencies, but can be implemented alongside a crime prevention project and can identify whether a problem has been alleviated. Such evaluations are generally formative in that the researchers or evaluators provide findings to practitioners during the course of the project.2 Rather than being conducted by independent researchers, the evaluation may be undertaken by stakeholders involved in the crime prevention project such as the police, local authorities, and community groups (Eck 2002). Specific evaluations involve establishing a baseline demonstrating the extent of the problem prior to the intervention. The baseline measures are used to establish whether the crime problem being addressed has declined. An intervention often acts on a specific geographic location, type of area, or time of day and this should be reflected in the choice of baseline measures (Home Office 2004, 2009). Simple preintervention and short time series evaluations can then be conducted that take into account alternative explanations for the changes (i.e., rival hypotheses) such as short-term crime trends and seasonal variations (Eck 2002). The costs (inputs) and benefits (outputs) of the intervention can also be calculated and may include savings in man-hours, crimes prevented, and income generated (Home Office 2004, 2009). In its original guidance, the UK Home Office (2004, 2009) recommends using evaluation as a tool to assist in the management and control of crime prevention projects. The evaluation should be integrated into the project management process. Ten steps are outlined within a project management process (see Table 3.1). According to the authors, these were identified from a study of different police-led projects (p. 22).

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Table 3.1

Project Management Process

Process

Step

Identifying the problem and defining the project

1. Define the nature and extent of the problem 2. Set clear objectives for the initiative 3. Define operational tactics and strategies 4. Identify resources to carry out the initiative 5. Set up the evaluation process 6. Preproject evaluation 7. Make decision (i.e., proceed, modify, or abandon) 8. Implement the initiative 9. Ongoing monitoring 10. Final postproject evaluation

Ensuring the project work and getting the go-ahead

Implementing the project

Source: The 10 steps were identified by Geoff Berry and Mike Carter on behalf of the Home Office and presented in the form of a model within its guidance. “Passport to Evaluation” (London: Home Office, 2004), p. 22.

Evaluation can be used for different purposes depending on when it is conducted during the project. For example, it can measure project impact by assessing the project’s achievements at the end of the project. It can assess whether the processes used in a project are working properly—sometimes called a process evaluation. By continually monitoring the work of the project, evaluation can be used to assess whether work is being completed at the right times and milestones are being achieved (Home Office 2009). Criteria against which crime prevention interventions are measured should reflect the needs of the organization and may therefore cover a range of outcomes such as crime levels, maintenance costs, usage of facilities, user satisfaction, positive publicity, and income generation (Home Office 2009). Impact in terms of crime reduction has been evaluated in relation to several initiatives and interventions: crime prevention partnerships involving the community (Rosenbaum 2002); problem-oriented policing (Eck 2002); and situational crime prevention solutions. Specific evaluations are clearly important for local authorities and police forces that are deciding whether to commit resources to partnerships and crime prevention approaches. However, designs that comply with the principles of DAC cannot, we believe, be usefully evaluated using forms of evaluation developed for targeted crime prevention interventions. This is because DAC focuses on the quality of the design project’s execution, recognizing that crime prevention is just one priority among many that design decisionmakers must consider. In most

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cases, it is important that crime prevention features should not reduce the value of the product, environment, or place to the potential user— otherwise, a design will not be successful and the value of any crime prevention features will be lost. Successful products are bought and used by many people, often worldwide. Therefore integrating crime prevention within such widely used designs offers the greatest potential benefit (Wootton and Davey 2005). A majority of designers do not focus on developing designs for situations where crime and related social issues are a problem. However, if crime is not effectively considered in the design of a product, environment, or place, the design may inadvertently increase users’ vulnerability to crime or may itself be targeted by potential offenders (Wootton and Davey 2003). Increased levels of crime in the UK have been observed in relation to several new products such as the mobile phone and portable satellite navigation (sat-nav) devices. The Design Against Crime Solution Centre therefore developed the DAC Evaluation Framework (Wootton and Davey 2005), which builds on new product success factors and integrates crime prevention within design development processes and practices.

The Design Against Crime Evaluation Framework Evidence Base: New Product Development The DAC Evaluation Framework (Wootton and Davey 2005) draws on research undertaken on success factors in new product development. Since the 1960s, more than 2,000 NPD projects have been studied— about two-thirds of which were successful and one-third were failures. The new product development literature has identified factors in the process of design development that increase the likelihood of success. By examining the activities undertaken within many design development efforts, commonalities can be drawn from those that are successful and those that are not. This predictive approach aids improvement efforts. The main factors in design development that are associated with success are (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1987): • A systematic, well-executed development process. • Well-executed front-end activities. This means doing homework well and understanding both constraints and requirements.

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• Having the voice of the customer built in. • Having a well-defined product specification before moving to production. • Using cross-functional teams that are well resourced. Crossfunctional teams bring together a group of people with different functional expertise to work toward a common goal and often comprise designers, commercial functions, and manufacturing and product or service support.3 • Having a well-planned, properly resourced launch onto the market or handover to the client. The former might involve positioning the product, timing the launch to maximize sales, and publicity and advertising. Embedding Design Against Crime Within Design Development The DAC Evaluation Framework is built on the understanding that integrating DAC within key success factors is more likely to result in successful design-led crime prevention. Design solutions that are more likely to be successful and work have a greater chance of becoming part of everyday experience. Therefore, embedding DAC thinking within factors that improve the success of design solutions is more likely to have a positive impact. To illustrate this concept, consider the mousetrap. A technically perfect mousetrap design will not impact on the mouse population if it is not a success in the market. Other requirements and considerations beyond simply the technical ability to trap mice will have to be taken into account. In contrast, a less technically perfect design that becomes a market success is more likely to have an effect on the mouse population, even if individually it does the job less well. Less than perfect (from a crime prevention point of view) design interventions, when linked with commercial success, have the potential for wider impact. The DAC Framework provides designers, manufacturers, and developers with detailed guidance on how to integrate crime prevention within activities undertaken during the development cycle. It covers the entire design life cycle, including postdevelopment activities of maintenance, monitoring, and business learning. It focuses on key NPD success factors—the attributes, activities, and approaches highlighted by the NPD literature as increasing the chances of a development being

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successful. These are the activities that good development organizations should be seeking to implement for commercial reasons anyway. By integrating crime prevention within these activities, the framework seeks to embed DAC within development organizations by “slipping it in their food” so to speak (Wootton and Davey 2005, 3). The DAC Evaluation Framework aims to enable researchers and crime prevention experts to conduct rigorous evaluations of design solutions, providing an interview pro forma and report structure for this purpose. Using the interview pro forma, the evaluator investigates whether crime and antisocial behavior were addressed within the key activities that comprise the development process. The evaluation framework has been designed so that it can be applied to any type of design development project. However, not all development projects are the same and so some development project types will not include all activities in the framework model. This is a problem only if it appears to undermine the project’s ability to address crime and antisocial behavior effectively. By examining how crime and antisocial behavior are addressed within the development process (i.e., adopting a process approach), the evaluation framework can be applied to different national contexts and design disciplines from product and graphic design, to landscape design, to architecture and planning (Wootton and Davey 2005). Development and Validation of the Evaluation Framework The DAC Evaluation Framework has been developed by the Design Against Crime Solution Centre at the University of Salford in collaboration with organizations across Europe. The University of Salford conducted background research (including literature reviews, interviews, and site visits), which highlighted the need to develop an evaluation framework that enabled designers to address crime issues throughout the design development process. This involved examining how crime prevention should be considered across a range of design project activities from the setting of project objectives, through detailed design development, to implementation and maintenance. Wider business activities were also considered; for example, that organizations should learn from the development process and incorporate this in future design projects. Based on this research, a draft evaluation framework was developed.

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To ensure that the evaluation framework would be appropriate to different design projects and different European contexts, it was tested in 10 design projects in the UK, the Netherlands, Greece, Austria, and Poland. The feedback from the evaluators’ interviews with design teams and report writing activities were used to test and validate the framework as well as to develop instruments tailored to the needs of design professionals and crime prevention experts (Wootton and Davey 2005). Supporting Design Against Crime Thinking The DAC Evaluation Framework document contains the evaluation framework and the associated instruments for design professionals and those involved in design development projects. The evaluation framework is aimed at designers, developers, and manufacturers interested in considering crime prevention within their development projects (Wootton and Davey 2005). It can be downloaded from the University of Salford Institutional Repository.4 The document also contains the interview pro forma for evaluators, which is used when evaluating a design development project. The findings from such interviews are then summarized in an evaluation report. The evaluation material is included to enable those involved in developing design solutions to view the criteria by which they would be measured should their design development project undergo a DAC evaluation. It is important to note, however, that evaluation material provided in this publication is included only to illustrate the scope of an evaluation—valid evaluations cannot be undertaken without appropriate training (Wootton and Davey 2005). In the training, evaluators learn about the approach adopted; the literature underpinning the evaluation framework; the process of evaluation; and the method of analyzing, scoring, and recording the information collected. The DAC Evaluation Framework has been developed to support manufacturers, developers, design professionals, and their related stakeholders in addressing crime and antisocial behavior within the design development process. Research has shown that simple “cookbook copying” does not work (Ekblom 2002, 144; 2005c, 91), but good practice that should be copied is embedded in the process rather than in the product (van Soomeren 2002). Consequently, the Design Against Crime Evaluation Framework is activity focused, identifying activities within the four main areas of the design life cycle as shown in Figures 3.1 and 3.2 (Wootton and Davey 2005).

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Figure 3.1 Four Main Activity Areas of the Design Life Cycle That Make Up the Framework 1. Project Setup Project objectives Project structure and process

2. Project Development Briefing (and response to brief) Research and consultation Concept generation and design Feasibility testing (and concept selection) Detailed design Design testing and validation Production/ implementation Launch/handover

3. Use and Performance

4. Learning and Business Strategy

Management and maintenance Ongoing evaluation Client/customer relationship

Figure 3.2 The DAC Evaluation Framework

Source: Wootton, A., and C. Davey, Design Against Crime Evaluation Framework. A Framework to Support and Evaluate the Integration of Design Against Crime Within Development Projects (Salford, UK: Design Against Crime Solution Centre, University of Salford, 2005, 11).

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Within each activity area of the design life cycle, actions that should be taken to address crime and antisocial behavior are identified. These can be used to direct good practice relating to design against crime being undertaken within a design development project (Wootton and Davey 2005). An abridged version of the guidance is provided below. 1.0 Project setup 1.1 Project objectives In this section, we examine the incorporation of crime issues within the project objectives. Crime should always be considered at the objective setting stage of a development project. Crime risk should be identified by: • Consulting with crime experts such as the police and crime prevention consultants. It may sometimes be possible to take into account experience working on previous projects. • Checking whether the design falls into a high-risk category. For example, checking whether the design will be CRAVED and a so-called hot product (Clarke 1999). • Identifying aspects of the national and local context that might increase or decrease the crime problems in the area. To help in this respect, the DAC Evaluation Framework provides a snapshot of particular European countries in terms of crime levels and issues, approaches to design-led crime prevention, and the attitudes and practices of various stakeholder groups. It examines the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark—all countries at the forefront of efforts to promote design-led crime prevention (International Crime Victimisation Survey 2007). • Considering the types of user and misuser of the design or development and identifying any related crime problems. • Consulting appropriate guidance materials and standards relating to design-led crime prevention. For example, the European Standard CEN/TR 14383-2:2007:E; Secured By Design in the UK or Police Label Secure Housing in the Netherlands; “Safer Places” (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2004); and Problem-Oriented Policing Center in the United States.5 The objectives that are set should take into account any crime issues that are identified and be smart—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based. Unfortunately, crime issues and the need for these to be addressed through design are often excluded from the list of

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objectives due to concerns about media coverage and creating a negative image. However, crime issues are unlikely to be adequately addressed if not explicitly listed in the objectives (Davey, Mackay, and Wootton 2009). 1.2 Project structure and process This section is concerned with the nature of the development project structure and the process that is undertaken. This ranges from how time and resources are expended over the entire project to the skills and competencies that comprise the design team. Incorporating crime prevention into the logistics of the project requires that: • Adequate time is given to addressing all issues relevant to crime, especially at the front-end or early stages of the project. Design professionals suggest that they are better able to incorporate crime prevention into the design at the early stage of the process, as crime prevention is simply one of the many issues that have to be taken into account. They may resist attempts to alter the design following the detailed design stage because this delays the development process, which inevitably costs the developer money and may, for example, delay payment of the architect (Armitage, Monchuk, and Wootton 2007). • An adequate budget is provided to address all issues relevant to crime (especially at the front-end or early stages of the project). • Access is given to appropriate resources and support material to enable crime issues to be addressed. The team should comprise members who have knowledge and skills in: • Crime prevention issues and approaches. • Divergent skills required for innovation. • Convergent skills required for realizing design solutions. • Design and design thinking. • Understanding and interpreting requirements and constraints. Team members should ideally have practical experience of design-led crime prevention and be open to all ideas and issues regarding crime raised by other team members and stakeholders. Team members should not limit the team’s opportunity for inno-

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vation. They should not bring to the project a personal bias toward or against a particular stakeholder group or practical approach. Research shows that such biases can result in crime prevention experts being excluded from the consultation process and in crime issues being inadequately addressed through the design and planning process (Davey, Mackay, and Wootton 2009). 2.0 Project development 2.1 Briefing (and response to brief) This section is about briefing activities. It is recognized that this activity will not necessarily occur in all types of design development projects. If design activities are outsourced and a brief is developed for external design consultants, activities may also be undertaken by such consultants around formulating a response to the brief. When developing the brief, it is important that the document: • Provides crime-related requirements and that these are appropriate and based on adequate knowledge. • Includes specific crime prevention objectives. If crime cannot be included in the brief, then this information should be formally communicated to the design team in other documentation. For example, information about the occurrence of crime and offender modus operandi (MO) may have to be presented in a private document for the designers. When responding to the brief, the design team should ensure crime and related issues are discussed with the client and covered in any documents produced in response to the brief. In some cases, crime prevention may be part of a wider consideration of customer safety (e.g., where a design is likely to result in increased risk of victimization for the user). In such cases, consideration of crime issues may have significant commercial benefit. 2.2 Research and consultation In this section, we are concerned with research and consultation activities undertaken to better understand the project requirements and constraints. In some industries, this activity is known as requirements capture (Wootton, Cooper, and Bruce 1997). Activi-

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ties may include desk-based research; interviews with stakeholders, consultants, and experts; and site visits. The impact on project success of gaining a good understanding of issues and problems at an early stage is well recognized. Indeed, in manufacturing projects, the time and effort spent at the front end of the development process has proven to be a key factor in differentiating successes from failures. All relevant stakeholder groups and information sources should be identified, including: • Clients/customers. • Users—especially vulnerable groups. • Potential misusers. • Management and maintenance personnel. • Crime experts (e.g., local police) and design-led crime prevention experts (e.g., police architectural liaison officers or crime prevention design advisers). • UK Home Office guidance.6 • The European Standard for the Prevention of Crime—Urban Planning and Design—Part 2: Urban Planning. The current standard was approved by the CEN, July 21, 2007. The reference is: CEN/TR 14383-2:2007:E. The document supersedes ENV 143832:2003.7 • Problem-Oriented Policing Center (US)8—There are around 60 guides covering issues such as financial crimes, robbery of commercial premises, commercial burglary, shoplifting, markets in stolen products, domestic burglary, theft from cars, bicycle theft, vandalism, graffiti, disorderly behavior, and bullying. Each guide provides information about the crime or problem, the victims, the offenders (including modus operandi), and locations and times of crimes. They also explain how to analyze the problem in a specific area and to develop solutions. The relative importance of the various stakeholder groups to the project should be identified, using a ranking process. Information on the requirements and constraints from stakeholder groups and information sources can then be gathered and analyzed, and used to generate project requirements and constraints—this requires both analytical and creative thinking. The information about constraints should be summarized in a document—the requirements specification. The requirements need to be prioritized in terms of

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importance to the project. Any conflicting issues and trade-offs to be resolved should also be identified. The findings should be summarized in the design specification or similar document. 2.3 Concept generation and design In this section, we deal with the generation of design concepts. As indicated in the framework diagram, concept generation and feasibility testing activities are often performed iteratively. Once a design concept judged to be feasible is selected, detailed design activities can begin. Potential crime scenarios and risk factors should be considered for each design concept, and creative thinking should be used to generate crime prevention ideas that address the crime issues. This activity may be supported by using Ekblom’s conjunction of criminal opportunity model9 or the crime life cycle model10 developed by Wootton and Davey (2003). The crime life cycle model asks designers to consider each design concept in relation to the crimes that may be targeted at it, and then to go through the 10 stages of the life cycle model answering questions and recording ideas. The questions ask how the proposed design solution might address issues related to the causes of crime—including availability of resources for crime, access to the situation, design attributes, and the behavior of others. Crime prevention ideas should be incorporated into design concepts and into the concept design specification. Innovative design thinking is the key and a single idea may successfully tackle multiple causal factors. 2.4 Feasibility testing (and concept selection) Feasibility testing activities may occur concurrently with concept generation activities in an iterative process. In most situations, feasibility testing is focused mainly on establishing the business case for a design concept (i.e., whether it can practically meet identified financial and resource-related targets). There is a risk, therefore, that crime prevention design features might be compromised at this stage, and design against crime efforts sidelined. To help avoid safety issues being compromised, it is recommended that: • The cost of resources expended on design features related to crime prevention is calculated for each design concept. • The cost of crimes being addressed by each design concept is calculated. Information is available on the financial costs of

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various crimes (Dubourg, Hamed, and Thorns 2005) and on calculating cost-benefit analyses (Welsh and Farrington 1999). For each concept, it should therefore be possible to identify the benefits of addressing crime issues in the form of a business case. The concept selected should address the crime scenarios and crime risks identified and be cost effective. 2.5 Detailed design In this section, we deal with the detailed design of the design concept selected after feasibility testing. The designers’ goal is to create a finished design solution that meets all the requirements and constraints identified in the research and consultation stage. As indicated in the framework diagram, detailed design and design testing and validation activities are usually performed iteratively. The design solution is refined and amended until it completes testing and validation satisfactorily, and final production and implementation activities can begin. Design professionals are advised: • To review and prioritize crime and misuse scenarios that relate to the design solution. • To review the causal factors that may be relevant to the prioritized crime scenarios. Again, the crime life cycle model may be used to help with this. The findings should be summarized in a document—the design against crime report. Detailed design of the crime prevention measures should take place and the measures incorporated into the proposed design solution. A design against crime specification should be produced to support this process (see also Chapter 2 of this volume). 2.6 Design testing and validation As mentioned above, design testing and validation activities may occur concurrently with detailed design activities in an iterative process. When the proposed design solution has passed the testing and validation process, the design can be said to be finished. The crime prevention measures must be: • Tested with relevant users, stakeholders, and crime prevention experts. • Checked against published guidance and standards.

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• Bench tested or, better still, tested using a field trial to check that physical design features will function reliably in a real world environment. • Considered in terms of potential countermeasures that may be taken by offenders. • Checked against criteria specified in the design brief and specification. Longer-term issues relating to implementation and use of the design solution need to be considered, including production and assembly, management and maintenance, and potential changes over time. The issues should be summarized in the design against crime specification. The activities described here clearly relate to the process of formative evaluation used by practitioners involved in crime prevention projects. However, we have used terms design testing and validation common to design disciplines. 2.7 Production/implementation The production and implementation activities transform the plans, drawings, and written documents that describe the design solution into reality. To ensure that production proceeds smoothly, it is good practice to involve the production function in the earlier research and consultation (requirements capture) activities so that the design solution can incorporate production requirements and constraints. In some fields of design, the beginning of production and implementation activities may overlap significantly with detailed design activities. Those involved in production and implementation should understand the crime prevention design features and be made aware of their importance—the design against crime specification may be used for this purpose. This will help ensure that the realized design meets identified crime prevention requirements. 2.8 Launch/handover Launch and handover activities are concerned with communicating information about the design solution to its potential owners, users, managers, and maintainers. While most launch and handover activities will commence after the design solution has been realized (via production and implementation activities), some may be undertaken much earlier in the project.

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A launch plan and communication strategy should be developed to explain the crime prevention elements of the design to key stakeholders such as managers, maintenance staff, and users (if appropriate). It should be noted that certain crime prevention elements do not work if offenders become aware of them and that information about crime prevention may increase users’ fear of crime unnecessarily. 3.0 Use and performance 3.1 Management and maintenance In the context of the DAC Evaluation Framework, management and maintenance activities are relevant to only certain fields of design such as construction and the built environment. Such design solutions may include a management and maintenance plan of some sort, outlining key activities that should be undertaken over the design solution’s life. The crime prevention elements of the design solution will need to be managed and maintained appropriately, and steps taken to identify and resolve any problems and shortfalls. 3.2 Ongoing evaluation For learning to occur, projects must be monitored and evaluated at regular intervals throughout their life (i.e., formative evaluation should continue to be undertaken once the product is in use). In the context of the DAC Evaluation Framework, this involves answering key questions about how the design solution is performing with regards to crime prevention: Do criminals target the design? How have criminals responded to the design; for example, have they developed any countermeasures to overcome security features? How have users responded to the design—have changes in behavior made them more vulnerable to crime? Do users of the design feel secure? How has the design performed against crime prevention objectives? Evaluation involves gathering and analyzing data on crime incidents and perceptions of security of users. The findings should be used to improve the design. This involves identifying causal and contextual factors behind the good or bad performance of the design solution and potential improvements. A cost-benefit analysis is required to help select improvement strategies.

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Impact evaluations may be conducted by outside agencies responsible for monitoring crime (e.g., Home Office) or design performance. For example, the Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre, or Thatcham11 as it is widely known, subjects almost every new model of vehicle to a new vehicle security assessment. Thatcham conducts attack tests on the vehicle and laboratory tests on the security system’s components. The attack tests include breaking into the vehicle through the trunk, hood, or doors; overcoming steering locks; and trying to start the engine without the original vehicle keys. There may be several generations of a product or service. The findings of impact evaluations may therefore be used to improve the future designs. 3.3 Client/customer relationship Activities here are about maintaining and improving the organization’s relationship with its clients and customers. Crime prevention can be used to reinforce such relationships. Good long-term relationships are good for business, and can be an excellent way to both collect and disseminate information regarding design-led crime prevention. 4.0 Learning and business strategy For an organization involved in design to improve, it must embed learning within its business strategy. Business strategy should be informed by knowledge gained throughout the whole design life cycle, especially during the use and performance phase. In this way, organizations can exploit emerging opportunities to gain competitive advantage as well as contribute to effective design-led crime prevention. The development of a design against crime strategy may be appropriate.

Evaluating Design Against Crime Practice The DAC Framework has also been designed for use by evaluators to assess efforts taken to address crime and antisocial behavior within the design development process and wider design life cycle. The guidance outlines the actions that design decisionmakers should take in each activity stage within the framework model. In addi-

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tion, evaluation questions are printed in red on the right side of each page, indicating how efforts to address crime prevention will be assessed (see Figure 3.3). The framework provides an interview pro forma and report structure to support the evaluation process. Measures of Success The performance of developed design solutions should be evaluated to allow valid comparisons to be made across different project types and enable the impact of different development activities to be assessed. The following eight metrics have been identified from the NPD literature (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1987, 1995) as capturing the multifaceted nature of success: • Success rate—whether the development project is considered by the designers or organization to be a financial and commercial success or not. • Profitability level—the degree to which the design solution’s profitability exceeded or fell short of the minimum acceptable level, however profitability is measured. This is the traditional success/failure measure. • Market share—the estimated percentage market share achieved in the defined target market. • Payback period—the number of months (or years) from launch required to make back the initial investment. The higher the value, the worse the performance. • Sales vs. objectives—extent to which the design solution’s sales exceeded or fell short of profit objectives. • Profits vs. objectives—extent to which the design solution’s profits exceeded or fell short of profit objectives. • Window of opportunity (new categories)—extent to which the design solution opened a window of opportunity on a new category of products for the firm. • Window of opportunity (new markets)—extent to which the design solution opened a window of opportunity on a new market or client for the firm. In addition to the success measures above, the firm will need to collect data on levels of crime and antisocial behavior regarding the market or location relating to the particular design solution.

g

Project Structure & Process

This section is concerned with the nature of the development project structure and the process that is undertaken. This ranges from how time and resources are expended over the entire project, to the skills and competencies that comprise the design team. Logistics Timescales 2.1 c Ensure adequate time is given to address all issues relevant to crime (especially at the front-end/early stages of the project)

2.1a c Was adequate time given to address all isues relevant to crime during front-end/early stages of the project? 2.1b c Was adequate time given to address all issues relevant to crime during the project as a whole?

Budget 2.2 c Ensure adequate budget is given to address all issues relevant to crime (especially at the front-end/early stages of the project)

2.2a c Was adequate budget given to address all issues relevant to crime during front-end/early stages of the project? 2.2b c Was adequate budget given to address all issues relevant to crime during the project as a whole?

Resources 2.3 c Provide access to appropriate resources/support material to enable crime issues to be addressed (e.g., guidance material, expert advice, other stakeholders)

2.3

c

Was access provided to appropriate resources/support material to enable crime issues to be effectively addressed?

2.4

c

Did team member(s) have knowledge of crime prevention issues and approaches?

2.5

c

Were team member(s) skilled in divergent thinking required for innovation?

2.6

c

Project team Skills & competencies 2.4 c Team members(s) should have knowledge of crime prevention issues and approaches 2.5 c Team member(s) should be skilled in the divergent thinking required for innovation 2.6 c Team member(s) should be skilled in the convergent thinking required for realising design solutions 2.7 c Team member(s) should be skilled in design and design thinking 2.8 c Team member(s) should have experience in understanding and interpreting requirements and constraints Experience 2.9 c Team member(s) should have practical experience of design-led crime prevention

2.7

Were team member(s) skilled in convergent thinking required for realising design solutions? c Were team member(s) skilled in design and design thinking?

2.8

c

Were team member(s) skilled in understanding and interpreting requirements and constraints?

c

Did team member(s) have practical experience of design-led crime prevention?

2.9

58

Figure 3.3 Example of a Page from the DAC Evaluation Framework Publication (showing guidance and evaluation questions in relation to the section on Project Structure and Process)

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Conclusion Design professionals are being urged to consider crime issues when developing products, places, and environments. This pressure comes from a variety of sources, including: • European policy—the European Standard for the Reduction of Crime and Fear of Crime by Urban Planning and Building Design—CEN/TR 14383-2:2007:E. • National government—through policies and legislation aimed at public bodies (e.g., the Crime and Disorder Act 1998) and guidance (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Office 2004). • The police—accreditation schemes for development projects such as Secured By Design (UK), Police Label Secure Housing (the Netherlands), and procedures for considering crime prevention through the building control process (UK police architectural liaison officers and crime prevention design advisers). • Local authorities—specific crime prevention initiatives and the consideration of crime prevention within planning and the building control process. • Initiatives involving professional bodies such as the UK Design Council—the designing out crime initiative.12 The efforts of design professionals to address crime and related social issues should be evaluated and the findings used to guide future investment and activity—both at a policy level and for individual organizations. Scientific evaluations have been conducted by criminologists interested in measuring the outcomes of repeated design interventions that focus on reducing crime, such as CCTV, lighting, and the accreditation scheme Secured By Design. These types of evaluations offer a number of potential benefits. They identify: (1) whether there was a real change in crime levels, as opposed to random fluctuation or background trends. If there was a change, they can determine how much might be attributed to the preventative action; (2) whether there were unintended effects of the crime prevention action (e.g., increased fear of crime, displacement of crime to or from surrounding localities, stigmatization of areas or potential offenders; (3) how cost effective the action was for society, including reductions in policing costs, health care, etc.; and (4) whether

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the effects could be reproduced elsewhere. Such information is essential for policymakers and other stakeholders considering whether to support or promote a particular approach to crime prevention (Ekblom and Pease 1995). However, scientific evaluations are often too costly and time consuming for individual organizations to fund and support. Such evaluations must therefore continue to be supported by agencies such as the Home Office, police, local authorities, and research councils. Much crime prevention activity, however, involves small-scale interventions that are tailored to the context. Under these circumstances, stakeholders, such as the police, crime and disorder partnerships or community safety partnerships, and local authorities, may prefer to draw on the guidance offered by the Home Office (2004, 2009), integrating evaluation into the project management process. This type of evaluation supports project delivery and can be conducted by those involved in the project. It is entirely suitable for assessing the impact of design interventions that focus on reducing crime (i.e., crime prevention projects). Indeed, the guidance is based on a study of different police-led projects where the priority is usually the reduction of crime (Home Office 2004, 2009). The majority of designs, however, are not developed specifically to address crime and related issues and are not focused entirely within highcrime areas. Crime prevention is but one of a range of issues that have to be addressed. Most importantly in such cases, the final design has to be successful, which is usually achieved by developing a product, place, or environment that meets the needs of users. Wootton and Davey (2005) therefore developed a form of development process evaluation tailored to the needs of design professionals. The Design Against Crime Evaluation Framework aims to ensure that design projects are successful by drawing on success factors identified in the new product development literature (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1987, 1995). In addition, the framework embeds crime prevention within the design development process. The DAC Evaluation Framework has been validated in collaboration with project partners from across Europe. This involved a draft model and guide being applied to 10 European design projects (including one that focused primarily on crime prevention). European countries vary significantly in terms of levels of crime and fear of crime and in approaches to crime prevention, design, and planning. Instruments were therefore developed to help understand the impact of national context on design-centered crime prevention (Wootton and Davey 2005). Testing, validation, and research are ongoing activities and all feedback from organizations using the DAC Evaluation Framework is welcomed. While further studies are required to confirm the value of the

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framework to design professionals, it should be noted that the guide draws on a strong evidence base. Since the 1960s, over 2,000 NPD projects have been studied (Cooper and Kleinschmidt 1987). Feedback from the project partners suggests that design professionals would benefit from translation of the guide into other languages and from access to an abridged version of the guide. The guidance is based on key steps involved in the design process—project setup, project development, use and performance, and learning and business strategy. It is certainly comprehensive, covering in some detail the steps associated with each stage of activity and, therefore, sometimes may be repetitive. The evaluation framework might be edited down by tailoring the guide to specific design disciplines or focusing on the advice rather than evaluation. The Design Against Crime Solution Centre has drawn on content from the evaluation framework when developing a resource for design professionals published in 2011, as part of a project with the UK Design Council (Design Council 2011).13 The International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) published in 2007 demonstrates the value of incorporating crime prevention into the design of products and buildings. The most recent publication points out that the level of victimization peaked halfway through the 1990s and has since shown a slow but steady decline. The near universal drop in volume of crime is considered “arguably the most striking result of the fifth round of the ICVS” (International Crime Victimisation Survey, 2007, 16) and improved security is considered to have been one of the main forces behind the drop. Security devices have significantly reduced instances of property-related crimes such as burglary and vehicle crime (including thefts from cars, joyriding, and bicycle theft): Cars are stolen for two main reasons. Professionals steal cars and strip them to sell spare parts or to give a car a complete new identity. This kind of theft is generally well organised. Another motive for stealing cars is temporary transportation or joyriding. In recent years overall rates of car theft have gone down almost everywhere. Trend data on 13 countries show that this downward trend is fully caused by a drop in the less professional forms such as theft for joyriding. Anti-theft devices limiting easy opportunities for amateur thieves seem to be the most likely explanation for this universal drop. (International Crime Victimisation Survey 2007, 13)

The pioneering work of agencies, such as Thatcham, that test design performance and disseminate the findings to potential customers and insurers clearly plays a major role in supporting crime prevention

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by industries by making security a commercial issue. Further research should evaluate the value of such agencies, identifying opportunities to extend the approach to other industries and products.

Notes The authors would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for their support in the development and validation of the Design Against Crime Evaluation Framework: Paul van Soomeren, DSP-groep, Amsterdam; Sander Flight, DSP-groep, Amsterdam; Tobias Woldendorp, DSP-groep, Amsterdam; Mike Hodge, Greater Manchester Police; Jaki Zotos, Architects Design and Planning Unit, Athens; Basil Zotos, British Graduates Society, Athens; Günter Stummvoll, Institute for the Sociology of Law and Criminology, Vienna; and Elzbieta Budakowska, University of Warsaw. They also thank the editor and reviewers for their helpful advice. The research and writing of this chapter was supported by the European Commission’s Agis 2003 and Agis 2006 programs. The chapter reflects the views of the authors and not the European Commission. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein. 1. Further information on summative evaluation can be found in the Research Methods Knowledgebase, www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/ intreval.htm (accessed April 26, 2011). 2. Further information on formative evaluation can be found in the Research Methods Knowledgebase, www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/ intreval.htm (accessed December 13, 2011). 3. The UK Design Council website, www.designcouncil.org.uk/aboutdesign/managing-design/managing-in-design/integration (accessed April 26, 2011). 4. The Institutional Repository of the University of Salford, UK, http:// usir.salford.ac.uk/11481/1/DAC_European_Exchange_Tools.pdf (accessed April 26, 2011). 5. The US Centre for Problem-Oriented Policing, www.popcenter.org (accessed December12, 2011). 6. The UK Home Office website, www.homeoffice.gov.uk, and the archive of the original Home Office Crime Reduction website, http://tna .europarchive.org/20081105164318/http://crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk (accessed December 13, 2011). 7. The standard can be purchased from http://shop.bsigroup.com/en (accessed December 12, 2011). 8. The US Centre for Problem-Oriented Policing, www.popcenter.org (accessed April 26, 2011). 9. The Design Against Crime Research Centre website, www.designagainst crime.com/methodology-resources/crime-frameworks/#list-and-description (accessed April 26, 2011).

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10. The crime life cycle model can be downloaded from the University of Salford Institutional Repository, http://usir.salford.ac.uk/1381/ (accessed April 26, 2011). 11. Further information is available from the Thatcham Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre, www.thatcham.org (accessed December 13, 2011). 12. The UK Design Council website, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/ challenges/security/design-out-crime (accessed April 28, 2011). 13. This publication is available to download from the UK Design Council website, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/Security/Design-outcrime/Design-out-crime-guide/ (accessed December 13, 2011).

4 Making a Brave Transition from Research to Reality Rachel Armitage

IN 1999, THE FORMER DEPARTMENT FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY1

set up its Foresight Crime Panel as one of three cross-cutting themes to investigate the link between technology and crime. One of the outcomes was the creation of a task group to look at designing out crime from electronic products. Five years later, the European Union funded a 2-year project (Project MARC) to develop a crime risk assessment mechanism to measure the risk of theft of electronic products and to take steps to operationalize that mechanism. In this chapter, I present the risk assessment mechanism, developed under Project MARC, which allows those working within the fields of crime reduction and the design and manufacture of electronic products to assess a product’s risk of theft. In addition to the presentation of the crime risk assessment mechanism, I also propose a model for implementing the designing out crime of electronic products. Recognizing the need to both motivate manufacturers to design secure products and the need to encourage consumers to demand secure products, the model proposed is based on a two-tiered system. The first, a voluntary accreditation scheme and associated logo, would allow manufacturers to market their product as secure. The second, a signposting “traffic light” system, similar to that used within food packaging for levels of salt, sugar, and fat and the energy labeling of products would allow consumers to easily identify a product’s risk of theft as well as its built-in security features. Readers must understand that the proposed mechanism is not without weaknesses and that it has not yet been tested in practice. While presenting the findings of Project MARC, I acknowledge that improvements will need to be made before the mechanism 65

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can be utilized—primarily, the mechanism will have to be validated against crime data.

Reviewing the Progress Made Within Designing Out Crime from Products The idea of designing out crime from products is not new. The introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act in 1998, followed by the Department of Trade and Industry’s establishment of the Foresight Crime Panel in 1999, marked the start of a period that showed great promise for the field of designing out crime. Unfortunately, as is highlighted by Saraga (2007), many outcomes of the Foresight Programme, such as the creation of a task group to look at designing out crime from electronic products, were not provided with continued support and the Home Office (the government department primarily responsible for crime matters) failed to act on recommendations made by the panel. Regrettably, this weakness does not appear to be limited to the Foresight Programme, and a brief review of the gains made since the program leads me to agree that many initiatives came to an end with little actual impact on policy. The Foresight Crime Panel was one of three cross-cutting panels that the Department of Trade and Industry established in the second phase of its work in 1999. Recommendations made by the panel were included in the report Turning the Corner (Department of Trade and Industry 2000). Some of the most relevant recommendations on this subject include: (1) that a dedicated funding stream be established to focus science and technology attention on crime reduction; (2) that a national e-crime strategy be established for all levels of e-crime; (3) that thinking on crime reduction be incorporated into the mainstream of central government and business decisionmaking. Similarly, ongoing programs to encourage horizon scanning to identify and prepare for future threats should be established; and (4) that a program be developed to address crime at all stages of a product’s life cycle. The ensuing 7 years have seen some progress made toward achieving these goals. In response to the first recommendation, the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council launched its Think Crime initiative (November 2002), the aim being to encourage cross-cutting work from disciplines such as engineering and science to play a part in the reduction and detection of crime. In relation to the second recom-

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mendation, some progress has been made (McKinnon and Tallam 2002; Clarke and Newman 2002; G. Newman and Clarke 2003) and it is expected that the work currently being conducted under the Agis funding program, Programme—E-Services Crimes: Theft and Illegal Use of Electronic Services (led by Graham Farrell at Loughborough University), will make further progress toward this objective. The third recommendation, that thinking on crime reduction be incorporated into the mainstream of central government and business decisionmaking, is crucial to the field of crime proofing products and, although some progress has been made (particularly in recent months), the mainstreaming of crime prevention in relation to products and services could go much further. As Pease (2005) highlights, one of the ways in which this recommendation could be concretized would be to extend to central government and business the obligation imposed on local authorities, police, fire services, and primary care trusts to consider the crime implications of every decision that they make in Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act. Regrettably, despite this recommendation, there remains a failure to extend the provisions of Section 17 to the central government and the private sector. In reality this means that legal action2 can be used as an incentive to convince local planning departments that, for example, housing in the area should be built to Secured By Design standards, which render them less vulnerable to victimization (Armitage 2000).3 But those who design, manufacture, and retail desirable and expensive electronic goods have no legal responsibility for the crime and disorder implications of their products. While legislation alone may not always be the answer, the omission of the central government and the private sector from the provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act portrays the message that currently these sectors are not charged as major suppliers of criminal opportunities. Alternative methods of motivating manufacturers and designers to take responsibility for the crime implications of their design include incentives for designing out crime or penalties for the production of criminogenic design (this may include naming and shaming or financial penalties). Roman and Farrell (2002), Ekblom (2005a), and Farrell and Roman (2006) have each explored the principle of crime as pollution and, consequently, the concept of polluters (in this case, the manufacturers of criminogenic products) paying for the damage they are causing (in this case, the damage being increased crime). In his review of car safety and security, G. Newman (2004) also highlights the importance of consumer demand in influencing manufacturers to address these key issues.

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While it is reasonable to assert that the mainstreaming of crime reduction (in relation to products) has remained weak, potential gains could be made from the focus placed on this issue within the Home Office’s crime strategy—Cutting Crime (Home Office 2008) and the recent Design and Technology Alliance. Cutting Crime identifies a number of key areas for focus over the period of 2008 to 2011. One of the areas identified is a new approach to designing out crime that states that government will work closely with the corporate sector to design crime out of products and services. The strategy goes on to suggest that this will be achieved through developing incentives for businesses to think crime and through working closely with consumer groups to increase the demand for crime-free products and services. The fourth recommendation from the Foresight Crime Panel was that a program be developed to address crime at all stages of a product’s life cycle. The subelements of this recommendation suggested that there be an annual award for new products designed with crime reduction in mind; that ways to encourage a climate of demand for secure products among consumers be found; that the roles for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers in developing secure products be identified; and that a voluntary standards system within manufacturing would show that the criminogenic capacity of a product has been addressed. Progress was made with the first in the form of the Student Design Awards of the Royal Society of Arts as well as the Design Council’s Design Challenge competition. The second subcategory focuses on consumers: Do consumers want secure products and how can they be encouraged to demand secure products? In the case of car theft, Laycock (2004) found that the answer was a resounding yes, with the Car Theft Index and insurance combining to stimulate consumer demand for security. Within the built environment, Armitage and Everson (2003) found that those considering the purchase of a new property rated “a secure environment” as more important than five other variables selected by real estate agents for their popularity. This research also highlighted that consumers are willing to pay for extra security and do not expect developers to absorb these costs. This research has allowed policymakers to challenge developers who suggest that housing described or marketed as secure would give consumers the impression that the areas had a high crime rate. Replicating this research with consumers of electronic products would allow those working within crime prevention to challenge the assumption that consumers do not want their products to be safe because a stolen product will be replaced by a new upgraded product. It would

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also allow manufacturers to be confronted with the answers to the following: Do consumers want secure products? Are they willing to pay an additional premium for security? Would a secure product give manufacturers a market advantage? Do the benefits of a new upgraded replacement compensate for the emotional and physical trauma of being a victim of theft? It is hoped that the lack of focus on consumers will be rectified by the emphasis placed on designing out crime within the Home Office Cutting Crime strategy (Home Office 2008), which states that the government will work with consumer groups to encourage consumers to demand crime-free products. The third subcategory, identifying the roles for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers in developing secure products, although not specifically targeted is being encouraged by the Design Against Crime Team at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design (University of the Arts, London) and the Designing Out Crime Association (DOCA) that was formed in 1999. Unfortunately, the Home Office Designing Out Crime Working Group, which included representatives from agencies such as Intellect (the trade association for UK high-tech industry), the Consumer Association, and the Radio, Electrical and Television Retailers’ Association (RETRA), was disbanded in 2005 after just three meetings. However, in July 2008 the home secretary launched the Design and Technology Alliance with the aim of raising the profile of design against crime within industry and commerce. Hot products was one of the five business sectors agreed as the focus for alliance activity in the 2008–2011 period. Within its program, the Securing the Future strand aims to change the way that business thinks about crime prevention by encouraging businesses to put designing out crime at the forefront of their decisionmaking. Although existing multiagency forums have acted as arenas for debate, little has emerged to take forward initiatives to design out crime from products. The importance placed on designing out crime by the Cutting Crime strategy (Home Office 2008) did however serve to support the work conducted by the Design and Technology Alliance. As was highlighted earlier, Cutting Crime states that the government will develop incentives for business to think crime and work with consumer groups to increase the demand for crime-free products. The final element, to develop a voluntary standards system within manufacturing that would show that the criminogenic capacity of a product has been addressed, has made some progress, but the work has been somewhat disjointed with little coordination between the agencies

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involved. In May 2004, the European Union commissioned a team of European universities to develop a mechanism for measuring the risk of theft of electronic products and to discuss the feasibility of making this system operational (this project was called Project MARC). Three months after the commencement of Project MARC, the European Union issued Mandate M/355 EN to the European standardization organizations (ESOs) European Committee for Normalisation (CEN), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC), and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for the elaboration of European standards to identify and reduce crime risk in products and services. The mandate was issued with the request for a submission of a standardization work program by August 2005, 8 months before Project MARC’s final report was submitted. A CEN expert group was convened in January 2005 including members from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the Department of Trade and Industry, UK (DTI), the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI), the British Standards Institution (BSI), University College London, the Home Office, Selectamark, the Fraunhofer Institut, British Telecom, and ABI. CEN’s report, which contained seven recommendations, was submitted to the European Union in January 2006 (Report N020: CEN/BT/WG161, 2006). ETSI, a separate ESO, formulated its own response that contained four recommendations and was submitted in January 2007 (Brookson et al. 2007). It is not yet evident what outcomes have emerged from the European Union—however, what is clear is that such a lack of coordination between agencies and failure to consider the timing of relevant research can result in a duplication of effort; lack of consistency; and, ultimately, a delay in standards being produced.

Proposing a Transition from Research to Reality Introducing the Two-tiered Model It is evident from this review that many individuals and organizations are committed to pursuing the cause of designing out crime from products, yet little has been coordinated at a central level to implement the many ideas debated since the Foresight Programme. My aim in this chapter is to propose a model to implement some of the research conducted within this field, specifically that conducted by Project MARC (see Armitage and Pease 2007).

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I propose that, as a means of ensuring that both consumers and manufacturers are encouraged to think thief, two systems should be introduced. The first system, aimed at allowing manufacturers to differentiate their product within the market, is an accreditation scheme and associated logo that would allow products meeting the required standards to be marketed as a secure product. The exact specifications would need to be refined following further consultation with expert groups, but I suggest that a product awarded this label must have a security rating equal to or higher than the product’s vulnerability score (see the subsection Measuring Vulnerability and Security). If a product has a high vulnerability score (i.e., it is highly vulnerable to theft), it must have good security features. If the product has an insufficient level of security, it can still be labeled as a secure product as long as the vulnerability score is equally low. Similar systems are utilized in the food and building industry that enable products to be labeled as secure or healthy if they meet certain criteria. The healthy logo was proposed by the UK Food Standards Agency in its consultation regarding the labeling of food. This system would allow foods that meet the relevant criteria in terms of salt, sugar, and fat content to be labeled as healthy and, therefore, carry the logo. In a similar vein, the UK building industry has an accreditation scheme for buildings that allows them to be labeled as Secured By Design (and, therefore, marketed using the appropriate logo) where they meet the required standards of security. In addition to the proposed accreditation scheme and associated label, I recommend that the electronics industry be invited and encouraged to introduce a second labeling system that would enable consumers to easily and immediately identify the levels of vulnerability and security of a product. I propose that this system should be based on the signposting system (currently being suggested by the Food Standards Agency) and should include two signposts in the form of traffic lights (one for vulnerability and one for security), which would be colored according to the product’s ratings. If a product scores highly in terms of vulnerability to theft, the vulnerability traffic light would be red (i.e., stop). If the product has a medium score in terms of its vulnerability to theft, the traffic light would be yellow (i.e., proceed with caution). If the product had a low vulnerability to theft, the traffic light would be green (i.e., go ahead). The security traffic light would be colored using the same red, yellow, and green. I explore the justification for recommending a two-tiered system in more detail later in the chapter.

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Measuring vulnerability and security. In order to assess a product’s

level of risk either as part of the process of awarding secure product status or rating its scale on the traffic light system, a crime risk assessment mechanism was developed. This is discussed in much greater depth in Armitage and Pease (2007); however, in order to understand the proposals that I present in this chapter, a brief recap is required. Although Clarke and Newman (2002) had already developed a mechanism to measure a product’s risk of theft, preliminary consultations with key stakeholders from organizations such as the Home Office, Association of British Insurers, Department for Trade and Industry, British Telecom, and several academic institutions revealed some concerns. Clarke and Newman’s (2002) mechanism is based on two quantitative checklists. One assesses a product’s vulnerability to theft in terms of how CRAVED—concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, disposable—it is. The second assesses the product’s security features. For example, does it contain technology to negate its financial value if stolen, can it be tracked, and has it been field-tested for theft? Risk of theft is indexed by the relationship between scores on the two indexes. Products that have high vulnerability and low security will be particularly prone to theft; products that have low vulnerability and high security will be less likely to be targeted. The main concerns regarding Clarke and Newman’s (2002) mechanism are: • Lack of flexibility—are rigid checklists appropriate for use within the rapidly changing field of consumer electronics? This is particularly relevant to the security checklist where specific references to security features would deem the checklist obsolete within a short period of time. Concern was also expressed as to whether the measurement of vulnerability could reflect the life cycle of electronic products from innovation through to saturation. • Implementation—could such a mechanism be completed at the prototype stage? How likely is it that manufacturers would be able to rate a product’s desirability, popularity, and status before it was developed and advertised? Redesigning a product (to rectify poor scores) could be prohibitively expensive for manufacturers. • Subjectivity—certain elements of the vulnerability checklist are subjective and open to misinterpretation. For example, what is fashionable to one person may not be to another; the price of a day’s wages will also differ greatly between those completing the checklist. • Inter-rater reliability—an informal pilot test using the Clarke and Newman (2002) mechanism to measure the risk of theft of two elec-

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tronic products revealed a large variance between scores. For example, of the eight participants who completed the checklists,4 the Apple iPod scored between 11 and 18 out of a possible 21 for the vulnerability checklist (both the mean and median scores were 16) and between 0 and 3 for the security checklist (the mean score was 1 and the median 0). If this variation occurred during pilot testing of the checklists on a sample being guided through the procedure, what variations would occur when the checklists were being completed unaided? • Whose role are we assuming?—it is unclear which role those completing the checklist are supposed to assume—that of the thief/misuser or the owner/user. • Products as part of a system—the category of “Removable” does not adequately reflect the nature of many consumer electronic products that are part of a system. For example, the iPod itself may be used outside the home, but the charger, CD-ROM, and software allowing the product to be used typically are not. Although participants expressed concerns regarding the mechanism as a means of measuring the risk of theft of an electronic product, many felt that the principle of the mechanism—that risk should be commensurate with protection—should be retained. Participants also stressed that any new crime risk assessment mechanism must: (1) reflect the language of those who would be applying it (i.e., practitioners rather than academics); (2) that it should reflect the view of stakeholders from across Europe; and (3) that it must be based on a user-derived approach rather than imposing a mechanism on stakeholders. It should be acknowledged that Clarke and Newman’s (2002) mechanism was considered by the participants as an excellent base on which to build. The principle behind the mechanism was considered to be strong; however, participants felt that it could be improved. The process of revising the existing mechanism involved conducting an extensive consultation with key stakeholders from a variety of sectors representing both original and accession European states (i.e., new member states). A questionnaire was designed to collect information on both (1) participants’ views of the theft risk presented by a variety of electronic products; and, crucially, (2) participants’ views in their own words of what makes a product vulnerable and what makes a product secure. These data were collected by providing participants with detailed information on a product’s price, dimensions, weight, specifications, and built-in security features, and then asking them to rate each

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product as low, medium, or high in terms of its vulnerability and existing levels of security. As important as the rating was the participant’s explanation for that selection. For this reason, participants were asked to give three reasons why they had made each selection. A copy of the questionnaire is available from me. The five electronic products—MP3 players, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and laptop computers— were selected due to their putative varied risk of theft at the time of the research. To allow a sufficient level of data without placing high demands on participants’ time, three models of each product type were included in the questionnaire. The three models of each of the five product types were selected to ensure a balance of popularity, price, specifications, and dimensions. Table 4.1 displays the number of participants who took part from each country. The results reveal that only the UK and Italy achieved the maximum four respondents. Three respondents took part from the Czech Republic; two from Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden; and one from Spain and the Netherlands. In addition to the four participants from nine countries, the research team invited the views of those working for the European standardization organizations: ETSI, CEN, and CENELEC. One response was returned from ETSI, making the total number of respondents 22. Table 4.2 shows that, of a possible 10 (one from each of 10 countries), 7 respondents represented the insurance sector, 6 the law enforcement sector, 6 the consumer associations, 2 the manufacturers of electronic products, and 1 respondent the ESOs. Table 4.1

Geographical Spread of Interview Participants

Country United Kingdom Italy Czech Republic Hungary Poland Lithuania Sweden Spain The Netherlands Total

Frequency

Percentage

4 4 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 21

19 19 14 9 9 9 9 5 5 100

Note: Total percentage does not equal 100 due to rounding.

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Sectors That Participants Represented

Sector

Frequency

Percentage

7 6 6 2 1 22

32 27 27 9 5 100

Insurance Law enforcement Consumer associations Manufacturers of electronic products European standardization organizations Total

Although the questionnaire collected stakeholders’ views on the vulnerability and security levels of the 15 individual products, the main aim of the research was to collect their views on what makes a product vulnerable and what makes a product secure in their own words, as a means of informing the design of the revised crime risk assessment mechanism. Looking first at the definition of vulnerability, Table 4.3 shows the responses to the question “what makes a product vulnerable?” alongside the frequency with which that response was given. To minimize the Table 4.3

Producing a Scoring System for Vulnerability Factors

Explanation for Rating

Frequency (maximum potential score is 330)a

Score (frequency/330 ×100)

76 61 38 33 27 16 12 11 11 10 10 5

23 19 12 10 8 5 4 3 3 3 3 2

Small/light Expensive Popular Attractive design High quality specifications Marketable/easy to resell Good brand name Fashionable Popular among young people Commonly used Desirable Distinctive (can be identified from a distance) Looks expensive Carried openly No association with a specific person Notes: a. 22 (participants) × 15 (products). b. 0.3 has been rounded to provide a figure of 1.

3 2 1

1 1 1b

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number of factors in any future risk assessment mechanism, the responses provided by respondents were clustered into common themes. For example, “costly,” “pricey,” “expensive,” and “costs a lot” were clustered under the heading “Expensive.” To ensure that the procedure of allocating responses was valid and repeatable, the authors conducted the categorization process separately before agreeing on common vulnerability/security factors. The results revealed that, of a maximum potential score of 330 (22 participants multiplied by 15 products), the most frequent response to the question “what makes a product vulnerable?” was “small/light” with a score of 76. “Expensive” was the second most common response (with a score of 61), followed by “popular” (38), “attractive design” (33), and “high quality specifications” (27). The responses given by stakeholders when asked to define “what makes a product secure?” are outlined in Table 4.4. Although few responses were given by respondents, the table makes some attempt to score the security factors given. The task that participants undertook made no reference to the CRAVED framework. This was deliberate because framing the task in terms that assumed the validity of the CRAVED framework would be to assume what the research set out to test. The downside of this is that the data do not allow a direct test of CRAVED. Insofar as Table 4.3 can be interpreted in CRAVED terms, it endorses the relevance of CRAVED factors. Many of the comments clearly refer to CRAVED factors. Expensive means valuable, small/light reflects concealable, popular and desirable (and perhaps fashionable) mean enjoyable, and marketable means disposable. However, the meaning of other factors cited as conTable 4.4

Producing a Scoring System for Security Factors

Explanation for Rating Password protection Phone locking Cable lock Basic input/output system (BIOS) password Requires installation Personal identification number (PIN) code Serial number Note: a. 22 (participants) × 15 (products).

Frequency Score (maximum potential (frequency/330 score is 330)a × 100) 24 8 6 2 2 2 1

7 2 2 1 1 1 1

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tributing to vulnerability have to be interpreted. Does “high quality specifications” stand for expensive? Is “good brand name” a marker for expensive, enjoyable, disposable, or none of these? The impression that emerged was that CRAVED remains a good analytic framework. Notwithstanding this, the search for a simpler measure of vulnerability should be undertaken because simplicity in use is valuable. Lacking details of the actual rates of theft of the products included (which would require an enormous research project in its own right), the aggregate judgment of vulnerability made by the expert respondents was used as the benchmark for a possible simpler measure. Exploratory analysis was undertaken with the variables of price, weight, price per unit weight, and aggregate vulnerability score. Surprisingly, there was no relationship between price and rated vulnerability, and only a modest and statistically unreliable association between price per unit weight and vulnerability score. This pattern reproduced itself within each product type as well as across products. It therefore must be concluded that rated vulnerability is not reducible to the simpler variables of weight and price, a finding shown in studies such as Wellsmith and Burrell (2005). Whether rated vulnerability approximates more closely theft rates than price and weight, as noted above, can only be determined by a substantial additional research program, the feasibility of which is discussed in more detail below. Assuming the experts from different sectors involved as respondents bring knowledge and experience to the table, the conclusion is reached that their judgments of vulnerability cannot be reduced to simpler measures of weight and cost. Although there are weaknesses within the vulnerability checklist, the recommendation was that, with revisions, it could form the basis of a usable mechanism. However, the recommendation reached at the end of the research was that the security checklist was not a sound basis for evaluating product security. The central reason was that the progress of the research, and consultations with respondents and others, demonstrated that this approach would impose an artificial ceiling on the exercise of ingenuity and skill in crime reductive engineering and design. Designers may design down to the level of security required by the checklist as opposed to developing new and innovative crime reduction designs. The security checklist also understates the degree to which security is specific to product type. For example, most of the security measures set out in Table 4.4 are specific to individual product types or pairs of product types. Since no general or common security features emerge, the justification for standardization disappears.

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The new crime risk assessment mechanism: a critique. So what have these revisions achieved? The original consultation revealed that the majority of participants felt that the principles of Clarke and Newman’s (2002) mechanism should be retained, but that the new mechanism must reflect the language of those who would be applying it rather than being imposed from above. So did this research process achieve a more user-friendly mechanism? Ekblom and Sidebottom (2008) would say no. In their paper “What Do You Mean ‘Is It Secure?’” they describe and analyze some of the limitations of the MARC mechanism; in particular, those relating to concepts and terminology. They argue that the shortcomings of the proposed mechanism derive from using technical rather than functional language and the default approach to the use of terms. Ekblom and Sidebottom (2008) identify several problems with this use of technical language, including confusion and overlap in the use of the terms risk and vulnerability, the latter being used as a synonym for risk, as a source of risk, and as the resultant of the balance between risk and protection or security. They applaud the idea of attempting to redesign Clarke and Newman’s (2002) mechanism using the language of stakeholders, but argue that “Crime science . . . must take its terminology seriously” (Ekblom and Sidebottom 2008, 82) and that we should develop the language that practitioners can then learn and apply. The conclusion from this is that Project MARC’s aims were laudable, but did not address the weaknesses identified regarding language. The next step would be to redesign the mechanism by addressing Ekblom and Sidebottom’s (2008) critique, taking account of the perspectives of diverse users and ensuring that it is tested on them before final revisions are made. What about the other criticisms made in the original consultation, particularly the view that rigid checklists may not be appropriate within the rapidly changing field of consumer electronics? The research concluded that vulnerability should be measured using a checklist approach, but that the security checklist did not build on that produced by Clarke and Newman (2002). I suggest that while vulnerability should be measured using the proposed mechanism, security should be assessed by a EUROPOL (European law enforcement agency) technical group that would use a three-level rating to define a product’s security as good, adequate, or insufficient. Alternatives to the checklist were also explored, including incentives to design out crime, disincentives for designing criminogenic products, motivating consumers to demand secure products, and nam-

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ing and shaming manufacturers of high-crime products. Yet the merit of these approaches does not justify abandoning the checklist approach in its entirety. As I outline in the Conclusion of this chapter, lessons can be learned from fields such as crime prevention through environmental design, where multiple approaches have increased the desire as well as requirement to consider crime in building design. Improving the crime risk assessment mechanism. Although disap-

pointing, the failure to produce a mechanism that would be ready for use in practice is not surprising. The mechanism presented has many limitations revealed both during the course of the research and subsequent to it. The language should be revised to ensure clarity and consistency and the consultation exercise should be extended to a wider audience, including designers and offenders whose opinions on risk and vulnerability are crucial. One of the most significant modifications is that the mechanism must be validated against crime data before it can be applied in practice. Although useful as a first step, this mechanism is based largely on the views of a small sample of key stakeholders. It reflects what they view as vulnerable and what they view as secure, and is not tested against what is vulnerable and what is secure as reflected in crime statistics. Although I recognize the necessity for validation, this was not feasible within the time frame or budget for Project MARC, given that much of the police records did not contain information on the make and model of stolen goods—only the product (this problem was encountered by Wellsmith and Burrell 2005). Although the mechanism is far from perfect, I hope that the process of production as well as exposure to a critical audience will help to identify a range of practical issues that will need to be addressed before it can be adopted in practice. Implementing the System Returning to the two-tiered model. There are limitations in applying the two systems, the most notable being the issue of labeling products and packaging. It is crucial that manufacturers be viewed as end users of this model, and, therefore, any system proposed must consider their concerns. It could also be argued that consumers would prefer a single label and that a two-tiered model would prove confusing and unclear to them. Bearing this in mind, what is my justification for proposing the two systems of presentation (as opposed a single scheme)?

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First, if the model was based on the accreditation scheme alone, where products fail to achieve the secure label or where manufacturers decide not to apply for it, the product would contain no information on risk of theft. With the two systems in place, a product that had failed to meet the relevant standards or had not applied for the accreditation scheme would still contain the basic information to inform consumers about its risk of theft (from the signposting scheme). Where a label is absent, consumers may not associate this with a negative message. They may never have seen the secure label and would therefore not make a choice based on its absence. However, where the secure label was absent because the product had failed to meet the relevant criteria, the consumer would still be able to interpret from the traffic light system that the product had high levels of vulnerability and low levels of security. The second rationale for proposing the two systems is impact. Although further research would be required to test this assertion, I suggest that the traffic light system would allow consumers to interpret with greater ease the information being portrayed (i.e., the product is vulnerable to theft, but it is acceptable because it has high levels of security). With the accreditation scheme label alone, it may not be clear to consumers what the label means and why the product has or does not have this label. Bearing this in mind, why not recommend the use of the traffic light system without the accreditation scheme? I recommend that the two systems each serve a purpose and should therefore be implemented together. The secure label allows manufacturers to gain a commercial advantage over products without the label. It would be a simple, recognizable label that could be used for marketing purposes. The traffic light system allows consumers to immediately recognize a product’s vulnerability to theft as well as its existing level of security even if they have no knowledge of the particular accreditation scheme. While I feel that the two-tiered labeling system would be preferable, any transition into practice would need to be preceded by further consultation with both consumers and manufacturers. Engaging manufacturers. The prediction of crime risk, although interesting, will remain without impact unless those designing and manufacturing products have some incentive to consider the crime and disorder implications of their actions. As the previous subsection highlights, although I recommend that these schemes should be utilized on a voluntary basis, it is essential that their introduction be accompanied by publicity, research, policy, and legislative change. For manufacturers

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to accept the benefits of considering the crime implications of their design, they must be convinced that: (1) consumers want secure products and are willing to pay an additional premium for security; (2) if consumers want additional security but are not prepared to pay an additional premium, manufacturers will be incentivized to internalize the extra costs of increased security (Roman and Farrell 2002); (3) national, regional, and local governments are taking crime seriously and will introduce policy and legislation that creates an environment in which criminogenic design will not be tolerated; (4) manufacturers will receive a financial incentive to design secure products; and (5) manufacturers will be able to gain commercial advantage by differentiating their product based on its levels of security. For this scheme to achieve maximum impact, it is essential that its introduction be accompanied by measures to address these issues. Balancing preemptive assessments with the risk of miscalculation. One of the key messages to come from the initial consultation

process with key stakeholders was that the final crime risk assessment mechanism must be able to be applied at the prototype stage as any security changes required postproduction would be prohibitively expensive. The ideal scenario, like that found in designing out crime in the built environment, would be for assessments of vulnerability and security to be made before a product is developed to enable changes to be made to the design without requiring it to be rebuilt. Although this scenario is working well within the built environment, with most Architectural Liaison Officers/Crime Prevention Design Advisors consulted at the concept stage, products change so rapidly within the consumer electronics industry that there is a greater risk of miscalculation of risk. One example where risk was miscalculated was set-top boxes that enabled viewers to receive digital TV stations. As Ekblom (2005a) highlights, these were ideal candidates for theft in that they weighed little, were small in size, and were likely to cost in excess of £100. As is often the case with electronics products, the level of risk of this product was altered almost instantly by the industry’s decision to give the boxes away while recouping costs on service contract payments. Ekblom (2005a) questions whether “the forecast can be estimated and particularised to a type of product, in its anticipated environment of use, with sufficient confidence for design decision-makers to say ‘we accept this product is at exceptional risk of theft (and it is in our interest to reduce that risk)’” (Ekblom 2005a, 25). While I accept this reservation, I do not accept that the risk of miscalculation outweighs the risk of inaction.

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Overestimating vulnerability. The potential negative consequences

of overestimating the vulnerability of a product are: (1) the disapproval of manufacturers due to consumer avoidance of a product that has been mistakenly labeled as vulnerable; and (2) consumers taking additional security precautions to counteract a product’s vulnerability. In response to the first point, how likely is it that a miscalculation would result in a challenge from manufacturers? I propose that there are two reasons why this would be unlikely. First, a miscalculation is more likely to involve a product (e.g., a set-top box) rather than a make or model of a product. In this instance, all manufacturers of that product would have been affected by the negative assessment rather than just an individual company. The second reason that a challenge would be unlikely is that, like the case of set-top boxes, the miscalculation would not be immediately apparent and may take months or years to come to light. Manufacturers, who would be focusing on the next product, are unlikely to spend time and energy challenging an assessment that took place several years before. But the second point, that consumers take additional precautions in response to an inaccurate warning, would surely be a risk worth taking. Underestimating vulnerability. The risk of underestimating vulnera-

bility would be a more serious concern. The danger of making a false assessment is possible and is likely to be increased where assessments are made too early; that is, a specific make or model of a product appears less vulnerable, but changes in advertising or endorsements could alter its popularity to both users and misusers. To avoid this, the system developed must ensure that assessments take place early enough to avoid expensive changes to the design of the product, but late enough to be able to capture all relevant information relating to the product. The assessment system must also be flexible enough to move with changes in the market.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have presented a crime risk assessment mechanism, developed under Project MARC, which I hope would allow those working within the fields of crime reduction and the design and manufacture of electronic products to use to assess a product’s risk of theft. The mechanism was devised through consultation with key stakeholders from the fields of insurance, law enforcement, consumer groups, and

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manufacturing. I also propose a model for implementation that would allow manufacturers to differentiate their product within the market based on secure credentials and that would also allow consumers to readily identify secure products. Both the mechanism and model of implementation will be open to criticism. Many will argue that it is unfeasible, unachievable, and unmanageable. I conclude the chapter with a brief summary of what those criticisms may be before challenging those working within the field of crime reduction to be brave in taking steps to turn research into a reality, and promote greater security within electronic products. Addressing Difficult Incentives One of the key criticisms leveled at the proposed model is that consumers will not demand secure products because a stolen product is often replaced with a new, upgraded model. Although this is a valid concern that needs to be addressed, the argument that consumers do not care that their electronic products are stolen ignores three key points. First, many small consumer electronic products are uninsured; second, the loss of a product such as a laptop, MP3 player, or PDA invariably means the loss of data and an inconvenience to the consumer; and, third, a theft of a product rarely takes place in isolation. The victim whose product is stolen may experience physical injury, emotional trauma, or even death. Media reports have highlighted these issues. Both the Sunday Times (London) and the Daily Telegraph (London) reported that street robbery was rising as muggers targeted iPod users (Street Robbery Soars as iPod Users Targeted 2005; Street Robberies Soar as Muggers Target iPod Users 2006). And in the United States, there was wide coverage of the story that Steve Jobs (Apple Computers) personally contacted the family of a teenager killed for his iPod (Jobs Calls Family of Stabbing Victim 2005). Opposing the proposed system of securing electronic products on the premise that consumers will not want to avoid theft and would prefer to become a victim of crime—if it means that they will receive a new phone—is both unconvincing and uninformed. Will Offenders Differentiate Between Products? Many will argue that there is little point in differentiating consumer electronic products when many are stolen from handbags, houses, or cars with little consideration, at the point of theft, as to whether they can

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be reused. Again, this is a valid point, but surely one of the most effective methods of avoiding this would be to maximize the number of products that achieve the secure product label, thus reducing the odds that the handbag taken by an offender will contain any usable products. Reducing the likely benefits of stealing a handbag (or burglarizing a property) would in turn reduce the appeal of such a target. We Cannot Design Undesirable Products The final criticism cited by many is that this system is attempting to encourage manufacturers to produce undesirable products. This criticism is a misconception of what this model proposes. The aim is not to encourage manufacturers and designers to develop products that will not be attractive to consumers. Instead, the aim is to ensure that products that are highly desirable (due to their popularity and value) are equally secure. Manufacturers obviously want their products to be attractive to consumers and I do not suggest that products should be made less popular, fashionable, or desirable. Rather, I propose that the factors that make the product appealing to consumers be accompanied by commensurate user-friendly and attractive security factors that make them unappealing to offenders. It appears that the past decade has seen much discussion, but little action to put designing out crime research into practice. Therefore, I hope that this practical model, alongside the new weight placed by the Home Office on engaging with manufacturers and consumers to design out crime from electronic products (as described in their strategy, Cutting Crime), will help to make designing out crime as common a consideration as designing out accidents by civil engineers and, more recently, designing out carbon inefficiency in consumer electronic products.

Notes This research was conducted as part of Project MARC, funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme. The author acknowledges the contributions made by Ken Pease, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science; and Ernesto Savona and Martina Montauti, Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore. 1. Now the Department for Business, Industry and Science. 2. In the form of liability in private law for breach of a statutory duty or liability to judicial review under the doctrine of ultra vires.

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3. As well as countless other examples involving agencies deemed relevant to the reduction of crime. 4. This took place at the MARC Crime Proofing Steering Group. Even though partners were provided with a detailed explanation of the checklists and how to apply them, the scores still differed between them.

5 A Market Approach to Crime Prevention Graeme R. Newman

THE IDEA OF ALLOWING BUSINESSES TO POLLUTE—AT A PRICE—

once appeared outrageous, but in 1997 it was embraced as a key feature of climate change in the Kyoto protocol on global warming. The European Union pioneered its introduction and other developed nations began to follow. Drawing on an approach derived from situational crime prevention (Clarke and Newman 2005a, 2005b), in this chapter I explore the implications of thinking about crime as pollution; that is, conceptualizing crime as an externality of business practice in the way that economists have conceived environmental pollution. Taking the cap-and-trade marketing in carbon emissions as a model, I develop a scheme for the design of a market to reduce cybercrime using credit card fraud as an example, the abatement challenges of which display many similarities to that of carbon abatement. Whether or not it seems practical to design a market-based crime reduction scheme, simply exploring the implications of crime reduction from this point of view raises many new issues about the role of crime control in society, especially the role of government including police. Aligning responsibility for crime with the competency to prevent it constitutes the underlying dialectic of this chapter.

Thinking of Crime as Pollution While crime may be difficult to comprehend as pollution (except perhaps when pollution itself constitutes a crime), the global attributes of some forms of crime are similar to those of environmental pollution.1 87

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This is particularly true of crimes that are made possible by or are enhanced by the information technology environment. For example, we are all, directly or indirectly, victims or potential victims of various types of cybercrime (computer viruses, Internet marketing scams, identity theft, etc.) just as we are of pollution. Ultimately, the actual costs (social, environmental, financial) of pollution or crime are borne by individual consumers (i.e., the public). Yet individuals are typically called on to shoulder responsibility for the problems. Consumers must recycle their trash; potential victims of cybercrime must take steps to protect their personal information. Drivers are punished if they exceed the speed limit in cars that are manufactured to travel much faster than any permitted speed on the highways. We are also probably contributors to our own cybervictimization just as we are to pollution since we do have choices about whether or not we will install a firewall on our desktop computer or buy gas-guzzling automobiles. But the fact that the information technology environment is such that we must have firewalls and antivirus protection on our computers is a problem that originates with the corporations and businesses that have constructed the information technology environment with little regard to its security. Other similarities between cybercrime and pollution are: • Both problems are massive in proportion, affecting every aspect of people’s lives every day. • The public good (the air and water, the Internet) are exploited by each respective business sector. • Both problems are global in scope since their effects are not constrained by state borders. • Both problems are the by-products of technologies that have produced enormous positive benefits (the Industrial Revolution, the information revolution). • The competency to solve both problems lies mostly beyond the reach of ordinary individuals, but squarely with the businesses that have the capacity to design new technologies to reduce carbon emissions or cybercrime. • Both respective businesses have historically resisted attempts by government to get them to accept responsibility for the negative by-products of their business activities. This way of thinking about crime accentuates the comparative responsibilities of corporate, victim, and individual perpetrators for

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crime or pollution. The government response to pollution has historically been the legislation of standards followed up by regulation. In contrast, the government response to crime has historically been the legislation of the criminal code followed up by punishment. Similarly when environmental criminologists have turned their attention to pollution, they have treated it as crime, which locks them into the accusatory paradigm of criminal justice. For example, the solution offered by radical criminologists with regard to corporate crime is generally based on the identification of evil corporations whose misdeeds are uncovered and vilified, so it follows logically that these deeds should be criminalized and punished in the same way as traditional crime (e.g., Freidrichs 1995; Pearce and Tombs 1998; Reiman 2001; Simon 2006).2 Their approach applies the traditional dispositional theory of crime causation to corporate crime. This is not to say that this view of crime causation and the punitive policy that follows it is always inappropriate, but rather to suggest that it closes off other ways of looking at the genesis of crime, including traditional crime made possible by “crime promoters” such as retailers who make shoplifting possible by the way they openly and enticingly display their goods (Ekblom 2000, 41). Putting aside the philosophical issue of whether crime is somehow morally different from pollution, thus demanding of punishment regardless of its effectiveness in reducing crime, the idea of shifting the government response to crime as one of regulation and standard setting meets with one difficult hurdle: that the history of direct regulation has a spotty record at best with regard to the major areas historically subject to regulation such as pollution and car and consumer safety (Lynch and Stretsky 2003; Newman 2004). In fact, radical criminologists have pronounced government regulation of corporations as a complete failure (Lynch, Michalowski, and Groves 2000, 70). On the other hand, some criminologists have advocated regulation of various kinds to control pollution, although the tone of these writings has been accusatory and revelatory (Ayres and Braithwaite 1992; Braithwaite 1993). Indeed much has been written about the government and criminal justice response to environmental pollution (White 2003), a review of which would go far beyond the purpose of this chapter, which is limited to demonstrating the advantages of thinking about crime as pollution rather than thinking of pollution as crime. It is clear that some success has been achieved in reducing pollution, though obviously not enough. A brief outline of the experience of regulation of carbon emissions and the subsequent introduction of cap

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and trade as a form of regulation therefore is in order before we can apply the cap-and-trade model to crime reduction.

Origins of the Cap-and-Trade Approach to Carbon Reduction Serious attempts to reduce air pollution began in the United States soon after World War I (Griffiths 1977; Heidorn 1978), culminating in the Clean Air Act beginning in 1963 and variously revised and updated through 1990. This act, among other things, established standards for emissions of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and lead. Many states failed to meet the standards set by the Clean Air Act, so that many amendments to the act were introduced, including specification of the ways in which industry could achieve the required reductions. Yet in spite of significant reductions in most of the above pollutants, especially lead from the 1970s until the 1990s reported by the Environmental Protection Agency, major sectors of the industry are still not in compliance with the standards set by the Clean Air Act. The US Department of Justice sued the Tennessee Valley Authority in 2000 over its failure to meet the standards, and in response the Tennessee Valley Authority sued the Environmental Protection Agency claiming that its interpretation of the standards was wrong. Throughout the decades, environmental activists such as Greenpeace have targeted various industry sectors with protests. In general, the conclusion has been reached that direct regulation through setting standards is not the most efficient or effective way to reduce pollution. In 1970, the concept of emissions trading—“the right to pollute,” first introduced by Canadian economist John Dales (1968, 77)—was included as an emissions trading policy in the Clean Air Act. The essential idea was to replace emissions standards with emissions permits (Montgomery 1972). Eventually, part of the Clean Air Act of 1990 included the Acid Rain Program, which was a cap-and-trade scheme designed to reduce SO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2010. Generally, this program has been considered successful (Blachowicz et al. 2003; Harrington, Morgenstern, and Sterner 2004). While there is much controversy surrounding the cap-and-trade approach, there is little doubt that it will continue and expand. Even Greenpeace has come to recognize that it is the best hope for getting businesses to work together to achieve targeted reductions3 and some criminologists have advocated the engage-

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ment of the private sector in green markets and other incentives to reduce environmental pollution (Grabosky 1994, 1995). The system forms the core of the Kyoto protocol and has been introduced in some form in most major regions of the world (Blachowicz et al. 2003; Harrington, Morgenstern, and Sterner 2004). However, now that it has become the centerpiece of the Barack Obama administration’s policy on climate change, controversy concerning its effectiveness is sure to increase.

Cap and Trade and Crime Reduction Theoretical Basis: Social Efficiency and Externalities The cap-and-trade approach is derived from the classical economics paradigm that emphasizes efficiency. In general, the principle is that maximum efficiency can be achieved only when all costs and benefits of production are consumed. The assumption is that maximum efficiency is a desirable goal.4 Inefficiencies occur in the realm of cyberspace (and markets in general) when banks, Internet service providers, software vendors, and others produce too much or too little of a product or service.5 The by-products of business activity also create externalities that are a source of inefficiency and may be either positive or negative. In the realm of pollution, energy-producing companies that burn coal produce negative externalities in the form of sulfur and other polluting by-products. The electricity that the company contributes to the energy grid helps create positive externalities since many companies that produce other products are made possible by the availability of electricity.6 Since these positive and negative externalities affect many outside of the specific markets in which the businesses compete, these externalities are referred to as social costs and benefits. It is further argued that these external costs must be entirely internalized by those businesses that produce them in order for there to be maximum social efficiency. Otherwise, there is too much pollution or too much crime that harms those both internal and external to the particular market in which the businesses operate. Thus, some economists have drawn a distinction between private benefits and costs and social benefits and costs. Following McCain (2007), the relation between externalities and social and private costs and benefits are illustrated in Table 5.1. The social costs of crime include the direct and indirect effects on the victims and the extensive costs associated with administering and

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Table 5.1

Benefits Costs

Positive and Negative Externalities and Social Costs and Benefits External

Private

Social

Beneficiary does not pay Loser is not compensated

Beneficiary pays

Total of both

Loser is compensated

Total of both

applying the criminal justice system, costs that can be easily quantified; indeed, this has already been achieved in the field of car theft (see Ayres and Levitt 1998; Parry, Walls, and Harrison 2007). Crime is an externality of many different kinds of businesses. Shoplifting, for example, is an externality of the retailing industry, robbery of ATMs is an externality of the banking business, and so on. A major argument by those who criticize the cap-and-trade approach is that it gives businesses the right to pollute since all they have to do is to maintain their current polluting production methods (e.g., burning low-grade coal) by simply buying carbon abatement certificates that allow them to pollute. Moralistic terminology aside (an important issue to which I return toward the end of this chapter), translated into economic terms this criticism means that businesses gain advantage by producing negative externalities for which they do not pay, or according to which they can, for example, gain a competitive advantage in their productive costs. This is an argument based on fairness rather than morality. The original critics of the idea of efficiency (attributed generally to Pareto 1906)—that is, there is maximum efficiency when all resources are consumed so that any reallocation of resources must be at the cost of someone—is that it takes the distribution of resources as a given and offers no way to ensure that there is a fair or equitable distribution of resources. In fact, in this closed system, the only way to reach an equitable distribution of resources is to take some away from those who have too much and give it to those who have less. Clearly, this would require massive government intervention. Finally, if we take social costs into account beyond simply the economic costs that were those narrowly considered by Pareto, it becomes clear that some businesses produce negative externalities affecting those who are even outside the market. For example, too much beef production may result in too much effluent into rivers or methane gas into the air that negatively affects the lives of those who are not beef consumers.

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They are forced to share in the social costs of beef production. Pareto’s system does not take into account the social costs so that, even if there appears to be economic equity in a market, this may not truly represent the negative externalities generated by the market. A broader conception of costs that includes social costs as shown in Table 5.1 therefore goes some of the way toward penalizing those businesses that benefit from or ignore the social costs of their production. The efficiency argument therefore is that such businesses must completely internalize those social costs, which means that they must pay in some way for the pollution they produce, and that how much they should pay need not be confined to the market in which they operate alone but also should take into account the broader social costs of their production.7 Thus, the worst polluters should pay more. There are generally two solutions to this problem: the government intervenes and simply makes the producers pay a tax (i.e., regulation);8 or, it works out a market system that allows the businesses to devise ways to make up for (internalize) the negative externality. Cap and trade theoretically does this. There are problems with both approaches as shown below (Montgomery 1972). But first, let us look more closely at the idea of cybercrime as an externality. Cybercrime as an Externality Crime is rarely seen as an externality (Clarke and Newman 2005a, 2005b), certainly not in regard to what is known in the criminology literature as white collar crime or corporate crime. Such crime is viewed as a product of abnormal business activity, which naturally leads to an accusatory paradigm. While it has its merits in some cases (some businesses may be serial offenders), this approach treats crime-related business activity as an abnormal activity, reflecting something like a dispositional bias applied to corporations. The approach that I describe in this chapter looks on crime as a product of normal business activity in contrast to radical criminologists who study corporate crime assuming that the society in which corporations behave is abnormal (driven by greed and capitalism). The word normal as I use it refers to businesses behaving as they may, given the established regulatory and economic system within which they operate. The Internet creates many positive externalities; each time a new company is formed to exploit the facilities of the Internet, it incrementally makes the Internet larger and provides even more opportunities for

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more businesses to flourish. For example, eBay was made possible by the Internet, and many more retailing businesses have been made possible by eBay, and so forth. Google was not possible before the Internet, but its presence on the Internet has increased the efficiency of the Internet many times over. So the positive externalities created by the computing environment are immense and still growing. But the negative externalities are cybercrime. We should not be surprised at this since most if not all crimes have always required, at a minimum, specific information in order to carry them out such as finding targets, planning escape, and overcoming defenses. In sum, the negative externalities produced as a result of business activity in the information technology environment are the enhanced opportunities for committing these crimes (G. Newman 2008; Wall 2007; G. Newman and Clarke 2003). An illustrative example of a crime, the opportunities for which continue to be enhanced by the information technology environment, is credit card fraud (G. Newman 2003). The history of governmental intervention and business participation to reduce the complex crime of credit card fraud offers a useful example of how a cap-and-trade system might be implemented. In this case, the UK Home Office worked with credit card issuers, banks, retailer associations, and local police in order to effect a change in authentication procedures for credit cards in the 1990s. It was well known at the time that Visa in France had initiated a customer PIN for use of its credit card (similar to that required for an ATM card) and that its card fraud level was considerably lower than in other regions of the world. After extensive efforts by the Home Office to bring together the major players (i.e., those most competent to solve the problem), a system of authentication requiring a PIN number for credit cards in the UK was introduced. The challenge of introducing this system was daunting since it not only required the card issuers to change the technology of their cards, but also the retailers to purchase new machines to process them. In this case the government used a minimum of formal regulation, but applied its authority and weight to bringing the competent parties together while pressing for a resolution. A considerable reduction in credit card fraud was achieved (Levi 2008). Unfortunately, this reduction has been short lived. In the meantime, the Internet has become a dominant means of retailing so that credit cards themselves have not been necessary when purchasing online. The rise in card not present (CNP) fraud has therefore increased dramatically in recent years. Although some credit card issuers have issued a mini PIN (the additional three digits on the back of the card9), this

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requirement is not widely demanded by online retailers, and the rate of CNP fraud has continued to increase both in the UK and the United States (Levi 2008). Card issuers have introduced other kinds of controls such as pattern analysis, but the level of card fraud remains high, though exactly how high in the United States is not known since (unlike the UK) the card issuers do not publicize their rates of fraud. The rapid changes in technology and the rapid adaptation of offenders to new efforts to thwart their behavior makes this negative externality quite different from that of carbon emissions where technology evolves more slowly and faces probably much more difficult technological hurdles in dealing with carbon emissions. However, the cap-and-trade system is designed to place strong emphasis, even pressure, on the businesses to respond with innovation. It is not government telling businesses how to solve the problem (as it tried to do in parts of the Clean Air Act). The target level of fraud reduction is set and it is left to the businesses to innovate to keep their fraud levels low enough to meet the target. The cap-and-trade system, therefore, is ideal for negative externalities that change rapidly in response to new technologies and offender adaptation and that will require continued and persistent responsiveness by business security programs. Initiating Cap and Trade: A Hypothetical Case There are countless credit card schemes, such as the international cards (Visa, Master Card) and variations of these offering many enticements such as frequent flyer awards and no-interest checks, and many retailerspecific cards such as Macy’s that offer special discounts to users. The card issuers are banks that may range from local banks to the behemoths such as American Express, Bank of America, Chase, and Citibank, though even most local bank or retailer cards are now linked in some way to the major international card schemes. The market is highly competitive and card issuers use many different strategies to extend and maintain their customer base and adopt varying strategies for coping with card fraud. All, one can be sure, compute the private marginal costs of any fraud reduction method, but few if any calculate the social marginal costs of fraud emissions. A number of preparatory steps, initiated by government, are therefore needed, similar to those put in place to initiate carbon emissions trading: • A government entity selects an industry sector (e.g., power-generating plants, credit card–issuing companies) and sets a target

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level (cap) that is lower than the overall carbon or fraud emissions for the respective sector.10 • The amount of emissions below that cap are then divided into permits (in the form of certificates for every ton of carbon or, say, every 1,000 credit card frauds). • An initial market price is set for each certificate. This may be determined by auction, or by government that tries to estimate the value for businesses of purchasing the right to pollute as against reducing their own emissions. However, it is assumed that the price will quickly be set by the market. • Those companies whose emissions are way over the target level will buy permits that allow them to pollute (with carbon or crime); those companies whose emissions are below or who can reduce their emissions below the target level will receive the respective number of certificates from the government and can sell their certificates to polluters if they wish. For the purposes of the following highly simplified example, we assume just two companies are in the system, contributing to the entire number of credit card fraud incidents. The numbers are, of course, fictitious. Looking at Table 5.2, if a direct regulatory order had been given

Table 5.2

Simplified Direct Regulatory Model for Credit Card Fraud Reduction

Current fraud levels (incidents per annum) After 50 percent reduction for each company Cost of reduction (new technologies, type of cybercrime, etc.)

Company V

Company X

Total

4,000

2,000

6,000

2,000

1,000

3,000

2,000 @ $5 for each fraud prevented = $10,000

1,000 @ $6 for each fraud prevented = $6,000

$16,000

Target: Regulator orders 50 percent reduction for every credit card company across the board. How it works: The cost of reducing fraud levels increases as the levels of fraud are reduced because new technologies and methodologies are required to effect reductions once the obvious and easiest to implement interventions have been applied. Thus, the cost to reduce fraud levels is lower (i.e., $5 for each fraud prevented) for Company V than it is for Company X that already has low fraud emission levels so the cost of new technologies is higher at $6 for each fraud prevented.

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for every credit card issuer (in this hypothetical case, it is just Companies V and X) to reduce credit card fraud by 50 percent, the cost would have been $16,000 to reduce the total negative externality of fraud incidents from 6,000 to 3,000. In contrast looking at Table 5.3, using the cap-and-trade scheme, the cost would have been $14,400 to achieve an overall 50 percent reduction, a savings of $1,600. The underlying assumption of the differential costs of Company V and Company X is that the marginal cost of reducing fraud incidents increases as the number of incidents is reduced, which applies especially to Company V. That is, an optimum point is reached where the cost to reduce fraud further increases because of the necessity to find new ways to reduce the most recalcitrant offending. Thus, while it may be relatively cheap for Company V to reduce its credit card fraud for the first 1,000 incidents, more innovation will be necessary to achieve reduction of the next 1,000 incidents. However, for Company X, although the cost will be greater to achieve additional reduction in fraud since its starting level is already lower than Company V, the sale of its fraud permits will offset the cost of the reductions it must make. Table 5.3

Simplified Cap-and-Trade Model for Credit Card Fraud Reduction

Current fraud levels (incidents per annum) After each company’s reduction Cost of reduction (new technologies, purchase or sale of certificates)

Company V

Company X

Total

4,000

2,000

6,000

2,200 (45 percent 800 (60 percent 3,000 (50 reduction) reduction) percent) 1,800 @ $6 for 1,200 @ $3 for $14,400 every fraud every fraud prevented = prevented = $10,800 (includes $3,600 (includes purchase of sale of certificates at certificates at market price) market price)

Target: Regulator sets target level at 3,000 (50 percent reduction overall), allocates fraud emission permits, and sets an initial price. How it works: Company X has been issued certificates based on an assessment of the number of frauds it has not emitted (i.e., the number of frauds that would have occurred if not for its security procedures). Thus, the cost to the company to reduce the already low rate of frauds is offset by these certificates that it can sell in an open market. In contrast, Company V must buy these certificates in order to enable it to continue to emit frauds that would be more expensive to reduce than buying the certificates.

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In sum, the system achieves a cost reduction that is more economically efficient than under the traditional approach. But if it more efficiently reduces fraud, it also more efficiently reduces the social costs, which ultimately benefits the public good. This scheme: (1) challenges businesses to acknowledge their responsibility to reduce the crime; (2) provides economic and market incentives for businesses to reduce their fraud emissions; (3) gives businesses the flexibility in devising innovative ways for fraud reduction; (4) motivates businesses to persist in fraud reduction in the face of innovative offenders as long as the market in emission offsets remains viable, hopefully for the long term; and (5) from the point of view of economic efficiency offers a more costeffective way of achieving the reduction. The most significant advantage is the way in which this system places the burden on businesses to innovate in reducing their card fraud emissions. Because it is embedded in the information technology revolution, the technology of credit card fraud constantly changes, with the result that there is an ongoing “arms race” between businesses and offenders whose innovative adaptation to new technologies is well known (Ekblom 1997, 2002). Furthermore, because of the global reach of credit cards and the companies that issue them, the possibilities for governments to directly influence their business activities vary considerably, as Levi notes: As Chip and PIN become more universal in Europe and the Far East, US-issued cards become relatively softer targets and it seems plausible that whether inside the US or overseas, those cards will be hit harder, changing the cost-benefit ratio for prevention measures. On the other hand, it may be harder to generate an organisational forum for prevention within the US; while within Europe, the European Payments Council now plays a greater role, as part of the move towards the Single European Payment Area. (2008, 126)

The more diverse and splintered business environment of the credit card industry in the United States may be especially suited to cap and trade where the realities of direct government intervention are limited not only because it lacks the expertise to identify what direction security technologies and procedures should take, but because of the intense competitive environment that militates against the businesses working together with government as occurred in the UK and now gradually with the European Union.11 However, it is also apparent that the credit card industry requires sustained attention to the problem over a long period of time that governments are simply unable to provide. Busi-

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nesses, on the other hand, with the incentive provided by cap and trade, are more than up to the task. Thus, government’s role is simply one of providing the incentive for businesses to get on with it. A complex market would develop, with card issuers cutting deals involving incentives and liability transfers with merchant acquirers (those offering card schemes) and retailers.

The Challenges Ahead The major technical and political problem in establishing a crime reduction market for credit card fraud (or any other type of crime) would be the designation of the starting price of the card fraud emissions certificate, which requires a target level of credit card fraud that is acceptable. How this target level is arrived at is a considerable challenge to government, which must set the initial target and link this to the initial price for emissions certificates. Inevitably, of course, this target will be the result of much political haggling among politicians and with businesses. In fact, setting the initial certificate price was the most difficult problem that the European International Emissions Trading Scheme faced. When in the first phase of the carbon trading market, it gave allowances for emissions that were too generous, a mistake caused by the poor availability of carbon emissions data. This resulted in certificates that were too cheap and, thus, they became worthless. In the second phase this was corrected, and the price of emitting carbon was set much higher. Though the market has been volatile, it is now clear that the market is operating like any other market. Given this experience, the following steps would have to be taken in order to set up a card fraud reduction market. • A competent governmental body (preferably international given the fact that card fraud does not recognize national borders, especially now with online retailing) would have to be established with the authority to set a base price for card fraud emissions. • The collection of card fraud data would need to be systematized and required of all businesses operating or making use of credit card payments and receipts. • Based on the card fraud data, a price for its emission would have to be set and certificates issued reflecting this starting price.

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• Businesses would need to show that they had cut their fraud emissions by a certain amount in order for them to receive their initial certificates. Obviously, these measurements would have to be standardized and the calculations scrutinized. • The governmental body would need to select a business sector or designate businesses whose externalities contributed to credit card fraud. The supporters of carbon trading believe that the efficiency of the market will eventually result in all businesses complying with the emissions target set by the government simply because it will save them money. There is some evidence that this is occurring in response to the European International Emissions Trading Scheme, though it is not without its critics and it is probably too early to tell how things will turn out. By far the most strident critics of this market approach to carbon reduction are those who claim that the real culprits are able to shift their responsibility onto someone else (the free-rider problem). However, it is of considerable significance that the major environmental justice group, Greenpeace, after many years of opposition now advocates the cap-and-trade approach. The role of nongovernmental players in control of pollution has been important in changing perceptions of the pollution problem and, subsequently, creating pressure on businesses to take seriously the negative externalities they produce (Gunningham and Grabosky 1998; Braithwaite and Drahos 2000). Perhaps it is too soon to look to advocacy groups in regard to crime reduction markets, but there is ample evidence that such groups can be effective in changing corporate behavior such as fair trade consumer products, green solutions to energy, and corporate responsibility for alcohol abuse.12 Clearly, a major effort is needed to convince corporations that they bear prime responsibility for creating the opportunities for cybercrime through the negative externalities they produce (Hardie and Hobbs 2005).13 It may also be argued that credit card fraud is not a true externality because there are no public costs as there are, for example, in overfishing, since there is no danger of a complete depletion of credit like there is for particular types of fish.14 Furthermore, the costs of credit card fraud appear to be absorbed by the credit card industry itself and there are limits as to how much of the fraud can be passed on to the victims (consumers) simply because of the extreme competitiveness of the credit card market. The answer to this criticism depends on what is meant by public cost and, by implication, what it is that is being mar-

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keted. Consider water (the home of fish), which, due to pollution, is now more than ever recognized as a public good and its pollution therefore a public cost. As the cyberenvironment flourishes, almost all economic transactions depend on it, so it has become as necessary for economic well-being as is water for public health. The cyberenvironment is therefore very much a public good so that any pollution of it, such as by credit card fraud, is a public cost. The public costs of cybercrime in general are potentially immense and include, at a minimum, such criminal activity as supporting terrorism through money laundering and growth of criminal organizations, networks, and markets as well as the loss of confidence in banking and markets, particularly when major frauds are uncovered and often connected to major financial crises as has occurred in the Great Recession of 2008–2009.

Implications of the Market Approach The prime advantage of the market approach to crime reduction is that it rests on the realistic recognition that businesses (and people for that matter) will take advantage where they see an opportunity to do so and will not give up that advantage until it is removed or costs more than it is worth. Crime reduction trading assigns a monetary cost to accountability that is not directly imposed by a third party such as a government imposing fines, but is primarily imposed by the offending business on itself (though instigated by government when it sets the original base price of the negative externality) as it engages in the marketplace. The cap-and-trade control of opportunities for crime created by businesses clearly is a case where those most competent to reduce the opportunity for crime take on the primary responsibility for the crime—though in a flexible way allowed by market trading. It also shifts a portion of the moral responsibility away from the set of individuals who would commit the crime since those who would have committed the crime have been denied the opportunity to do so when confronted by effective crime prevention techniques. The relationship between competency and responsibility in preventing crime is complex as demonstrated by Laycock (2006) and others (Bowers and Johnson 2006; Homel 2006; Hardie and Hobbs 2005) and would require further examination if a cap-and-trade model were to be introduced. However, the problem goes beyond simply cap and trade. For example, are individuals who do not shred their credit card

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bills more responsible for their victimization than the corporations that fail to require PIN numbers for credit card use or due to poor internal security allow card details to be hacked or stolen from their databases? These problems are accentuated by viewing the reduction of credit card fraud from a market perspective. This way of thinking about crime reduction shifts the focus away from the traditional dispositional bias in policymaking in criminology that focuses on single cases, whether the deviance of individuals or corporations, and largely depends on the criminal justice system or heavy government regulation for its solutions. In the complex and rapidly changing world of crime, this is an inadequate policy approach since it assumes that police and others in the criminal justice system have the competency to solve these crime problems, the immediate causes of which lay well beyond their resources or traditionally defined roles. The approach advocated here is to realign responsibility for responding to crime with the competency to do it. This means drawing on a wide range of institutions and organizations, including corporations, trade associations, nongovernmental organizations, and interest groups like Greenpeace, as well as government organizations to solve specific problems of crime. In short, the cap-and-trade approach to crime reduction offers a realistic way of getting businesses to participate in crime reduction, thus realigning accountability for crime with the competency to reduce it. The chapters in this volume address one important aspect of this approach—the responsibility for businesses to design or retrofit security into their products. However, it is one thing to point out what should be done, but another to actually get it done. Furthermore, few criminologists have the competency or expertise to give specific direction to business on how to design their products. This is surely the province of engineers and designers as clearly demonstrated in Volume 18 of Crime Prevention Studies (see, particularly, Cooper et al. 2005). The failures of government in directly regulating carbon emissions as noted above have often been attributed to ill-equipped or ill-informed government civil servants trying to tell businesses what they should do. The capand-trade system places total responsibility on businesses to figure out how to reduce their emissions. All the government does is set the target. In conclusion, the approach of classical economics when applied to crime is driven more by fairness than by justice. The notion of justice in criminology is driven by the idea that punishment is a necessary element of justice, whether its goal is “deserts” or “deterrence.”15 It may

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be argued that the system that I advocate in this chapter undermines the traditional sense of justice that lies at the heart of what society does with those who break the law. Since the cap-and-trade system accepts that a certain level of crime will continue to be committed because some businesses will purchase crime emission certificates to allow them to keep contributing to opportunities for crime, some individuals and businesses will still commit crime, and, if caught, will still be held responsible for their particular crimes, and liable to punishment in the traditional manner. The traditional basis of crime and punishment is therefore not changed by a market approach to crime reduction, though it is perhaps a little undermined.16

Notes 1. The definition of pollution or environmental pollution is particularly difficult. In this chapter, it is used in its common everyday sense such as carbon emissions, poorly disposed of trash, undesirable smells, and in general the invasion of foreign bodies into some ideal and pristine environment. Thus the purity of air and water, plants, animal species, and so forth are generally held as things to be protected. To pursue this shaky ideal would take us beyond this chapter. Therefore, suffice it to say that the widely held affirmation of the merit in taking a strong position against pollution holds within it an unsavory element of “species-ism” (Singer 2011, 50). On the other hand, a more down-to-earth view of pollution or crime is to oppose it only when it threatens our survival or health. Some would add quality of life to this definition, but it leads quickly to the romantic moral position described above. 2. Using the criminal law to punish polluters has met with considerable difficulties. See del Frate and Norberry 1993; Gunningham, Norberry, and McKillop 1995; Heine, Prabhu, and del Frate 1997; Situ and Emmons 2000. 3. Greenpeace urged its members to join in a campaign to urge the US Congress to pass the cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions control in 2007–2008. See http://members.greenpeace.org/hotseat/National/default/about _us/. 4. This is an often contested principle, especially in its modern form of welfare efficiency and application to law. Its major exponent in the realm of law and social welfare is Posner (1980). 5. Thus, the basic economic concepts of demand and supply are directly relevant to achieving efficiency. 6. It is worth noting, however, that the distinction between positive and negative externality may not always be clear. For example, it was assumed by many (leading economists included) up until the Great Recession of 2008 that the provision of credit to people who could not afford big houses was a good thing. When the credit crash came, their inability to pay for their houses became a negative externality.

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7. The underlying principle of compensation that forms the basis of this approach to efficiency in markets is generally acknowledged to be KaldorHicks efficiency. This principle improves on Pareto efficiency by arguing that, so long as the winners compensate the losers (noting that in Pareto efficiency if there is a winner this must be at the expense of someone else, the loser) then no one is worse off and maximum efficiency is preserved (Hicks 1939; Kaldor 1939). 8. This dual approach is also called “voluntary” and “involuntary” in the government regulatory literature each of which contain several mechanisms or possible roles of government (G. Newman 2004). Government may take on several different roles in cajoling or otherwise influencing businesses (Clarke and Newman 2005b). 9. This mini PIN, called the CVV (Card Verification Value) or some other variation, is designed to shift liability for fraud away from online retailers. However, it ensures only that the credit card was once associated with the number. If the credit card has been stolen or otherwise accessed, the online retailer has no way of determining it. 10. In the United States, this would be a major hurdle to overcome because US credit card issuers have consistently resisted pressure to publicize their fraud levels. In principle, it should be possible for government to obtain such information while still ensuring that the fraud levels are not publicly known. The threat of public dissemination of fraud levels, however, is a major tool to pressure corporations into addressing the problem, as was clearly demonstrated when the car insurance industry began publicizing the comparative levels of car theft according to car make and model (G. Newman 2004). 11. At this point, the similarity with the problem of pollution emerges clearly. Pollution is an international problem, with some countries attending to it far more than others. It follows that those seeking to gain the advantage of polluting without cost will move to countries where there is less regulation. The same applies to credit card fraud. Poor regulation in the United States compared with the European Union could attract more foreign-based card issuers and offenders to expand their services in the United States. As with pollution, therefore, cap-and-trade remedies will eventually have to be international in scope. Should this occur, it would constitute a kind of displacement by enticement where companies that move to low regulation countries create new opportunities for potential offenders residing in those countries. This adds a layer of complexity to the idea of displacement since, given the global reach of the Internet, offenders may indeed be able to follow the new opportunities created by poor security companies with little regard to their physical location. 12. The Identity Theft Resource Center, www.idtheftcenter.org (accessed May 6, 2011) is an NGO that addresses the victimization of individuals by identity theft. However, it has not yet managed to focus clearly on the contribution to this problem by corporations even though credit card fraud is one of the main tools used by those who steal identities. 13. Government intervention with regard to identity theft has not focused on the credit card industry, but instead on the credit reporting industry whose role in exacerbating the problems of victims of identity theft has been uncov-

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ered and some minimal changes in its behavior legislated. Its role, however, is more with regard to mitigating the effects of fraud after the fact, not in preventing identity theft to which credit card fraud is a major contributor. 14. Although credit ostensibly dried up since the worldwide credit crisis of 2008, this is likely not a permanent depletion since credit is man-made. Fish are not. When they are gone, they are gone (unless, of course, we clone them). 15. The popular notion of restorative justice is but a sugarcoated version of this traditional view of justice as punishment. 16. In fact this punitive tradition may well be the basis of those who advocate criminalizing more behaviors than we do at present, including pollution by businesses and individuals. Perhaps the strongest cry, when faced by some unwanted behavior is “There ought to be a law against it!”

6 Designing Against Bicycle Theft Adam Thorpe, Shane D. Johnson, and Aiden Sidebottom

THE PAST DECADE HAS SEEN INCREASED EFFORTS TO PROMOTE

physical activity as a means of lowering levels of obesity, heart disease, road congestion, and traffic-related air and noise pollution. Reducing automobile dependency in favor of cleaner, healthier, more sustainable modes of transport—such as cycling—is a recurrent policy target. Pucher, Dill, and Handy (2010) provide a review of the various interventions designed to promote cycling internationally. These include infrastructural developments (such as the creation of cycling lanes), improving the integration of cycling with other forms of public transportation (such as increasing the provision of bicycle parking at bus stops and railroad stations), increasing the availability of bicycles (such as the increasingly popular bicycle-sharing schemes; see Shaheen, Guzman, and Zhang 2010), and numerous pro-bicycle education and marketing programs. To date, such interventions appear to have been successful. Cycling journeys in London, for example, have doubled in recent years to give cycling a modal share of all journeys of 2 percent. The mayor of London’s ambition is for cycling to have a 5 percent modal share by 2026, which would require a 400 percent increase in bicycle usage compared to estimates from 2000 (Transport for London 2010). Increases in cycling have also been observed in cities across Europe (Oja and Vuori 2000) and the United States (Xing, Handy, and Buehler 2008). While such achievements are encouraging, continuing and sustaining such change is challenging. An individual’s decision to ride a bicycle is influenced by myriad variables, one of which relates to crime. Research shows that the risk (perceived or actual) of being a victim of 107

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bicycle-related crime such as theft and vandalism is recognized as a barrier to bicycle use (Rietveld and Koetse 2003). For physical activity more generally, Loukaitou-Sideris and Eck (2007) describe how concerns over crime and personal safety can deter individuals from leading an active lifestyle. Boslaugh et al. (2005) also illustrate how neighborhoods that are viewed as unsafe tend to be perceived as offering fewer opportunities for physical activity. In this chapter, we concentrate on the crime of bicycle theft and discuss how this might be affected by changes in the population of cyclists. We argue that the predicted growth in the population of cyclists, influenced by recent policy drives, will likely generate increases in the number of opportunities for bicycle theft and thus stimulate criminal activity. If so, failure to address the crime risks associated with increased cycling might stifle attempts to promote active living and sustainable transport. Regrettably, despite various interventions being advocated or implemented, little reliable evidence exists on effective methods to prevent bicycle theft. The main focus of this chapter is the evaluation of seven prototype bicycle parking stands designed to encourage secure locking practices and thereby reduce opportunities for bicycle theft. The chapter is structured as follows. We begin by reviewing research concerned with bicycle theft. Second, we discuss the potential for design in bicycle theft reduction. Third, and as a potential example for other design against crime research, we describe the process of developing a design-led intervention in response to a local bicycle theft problem and outline our research design and hypotheses.1 Fourth, we present findings on the impact of the intervention on locking practices of cyclists, specifically the security afforded by different locking behaviors at the prototype stands compared to standard parking stands. We also assess the differences observed across the prototype stands in terms of their popularity and effectiveness. Finally, we discuss the implications of the findings for bicycle theft reduction.

The Problem of Bicycle Theft Research indicates that bicycle theft is a common problem (Frailing 1974; Mercat and Heran 2003; Roe and Olivero 1993; Gamman, Thorpe, and Willcocks 2004; Zhang, Messner, and Liu 2007). In Sweden, bicycle theft constitutes around 7 percent of reported crimes (Svensson 2002). Similarly in the Netherlands, Weijers (1995) found that 93 bicycles were

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stolen every hour. Estimates from the International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) indicate that cyclists are around three times more likely to have their bicycle stolen than car owners their car or motorcyclists their motorcycle (van Dijk, van Kesteren, and Smit 2007). Similar to other crime types, bicycle theft is found to routinely go unnoticed by the police because of underreporting. For example, results from the ICVS show that just 56 percent of bicycle thefts were reported to the police (van Kesteren, Mayhew, and Nieuwbeerta 2000). Moreover, a comparison of police recorded statistics in England and Wales and estimates from the British Crime Survey (BCS) suggest a fourfold difference in the extent of the problem. This is supported by Tarling and Morris’s (2010) analysis of crime reporting patterns in England and Wales between 1991 and 2007–2008. They show that bicycle theft has seen the largest decline of all crime types in terms of the percentage of BCS crimes that are reported to the police. Interviews with bicycle theft victims show that this is because many believe the police are unlikely to apprehend an offender or recover their stolen bicycle (Bryan-Brown and Saville 1997). Even when incidents are reported, Gamman, Thorpe, and Willcocks (2004) argue that many reported incidents fail to be recorded because bicycle theft is typically considered a low police priority. Johnson, Sidebottom, and Thorpe (2008) outline various reasons why bicycles are attractive targets to thieves and constitute what Clarke (1999) refers to as a hot product—finding bicycles to be concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, and disposable (CRAVED). For example, bicycling is described as a utilitarian pursuit (Winters et al. 2007, 52). From a crime perspective, this implies that most thieves (regardless of, say, age) will look inconspicuous riding away on a stolen bicycle, which effectively makes the crime concealable. Bicycles can be tools as well as targets for crime. A stolen bicycle can facilitate further criminal activity through increasing the speed and area in which offenders can forage for crime targets. Zhang, Messner, and Liu (2007) write that bicycles are attractive targets for theft due to their monetary value and transportation utility. In relation to the latter, van Dijk et al. (2005) show that, in countries where bicycle ownership (and theft) is high, rates of car theft are consistently low. They argue that “on the market of illegal transportation, bicycles could [therefore] be a substitute for cars, if bicycles are in sufficient supply” (van Dijk, Mayhew, and Killias 1990, 52). The issue of sufficient supply is associated with the previously described policy drives. Research exploring the factors that influence travel mode decisionmaking shows that modality choice is strongly

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determined by mode ownership or availability (Xing, Handy, and Buehler 2008). From a crime perspective, Felson and Clarke (1998) provide numerous examples of how increases in the opportunities for crime are typically associated with increases in the levels of crime observed. All things being equal, increased bicycle usage—particularly as an alternative form of transportation—may be expected to generate increases in the number of opportunities for bicycle theft and potentially a greater demand for bicycles and their replacement parts. This is supported by findings from the recent ICVS, which demonstrates a statistically significant relationship (r = 0.76) between bicycle ownership (a proxy for opportunities) and national levels of bicycle theft (van Dijk, van Kesteren, and Smit 2007). As previously noted, this relationship between theft and opportunity may prove damaging from a policy perspective as research finds that fear of bicycle theft is a major inhibitor to bicycle use (Davies, Emmerson, and Gardner 1998; Replogle 1984; Rietveld and Koetse 2003). In the Netherlands, for example, Bech and Immers (1994) found bicycle theft to be the main reason, alongside hazardous traffic conditions, for not owning a bicycle. Furthermore, interviews with bicycle theft victims indicate that few replace their bicycle once stolen (Mercat and Heran 2003). Thus, in order to achieve the described sustainability-oriented cycling targets, consideration will need to be given to how best to reduce the likelihood of bicycle theft.

Strategies to Reduce Bicycle Theft Compared to other high-volume crimes such as burglary, bicycle theft has received little academic attention. Most notable is the lack of systematic evaluation of interventions to reduce bicycle theft. In a recent review Johnson, Sidebottom, and Thorpe (2008) categorized bike theft interventions into four groups dependent on the crime reduction mechanism through which they were expected to work, namely: (1) interventions designed to detect bicycle thieves in the act (i.e., “bait” bikes); (2) interventions that seek to deter bicycle thieves by focusing on the registration and recovery of bicycles (thereby making stolen bicycles more difficult or risky to dispose of); (3) schemes aiming to improve the security of bicycle parking facilities (both individual bicycle parking stands and parking facilities as a whole); and (4) schemes seeking more specifically to increase the security of locks and the manner in which they are applied. Of greatest relevance to this chapter are the third and fourth cat-

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egories that concentrate on the situation in which and time at which bicycle theft occurs; particularly whether elements within the situation are amenable to manipulation to prevent (rather than detect) bicycle theft. Various studies report that bicycles that are stolen are typically locked insecurely (Weijers 1995; Mercat and Heran 2003; Roe and Olivero 1993). Thus, many bicycle theft reduction interventions have sought to promote secure locking practices by encouraging the use of more secure locks, encouraging more secure locking techniques, or educating cyclists about crime risks associated with poor locking practices. These schemes typically use some form of victim-oriented publicity to convey the intended message (see Barthe 2006). For example, Sidebottom, Thorpe, and Johnson (2009) assess the impact of a targeted publicity campaign in which stickers—designed to improve cyclists’ locking practices through providing an illustration of how to lock a bicycle securely—were attached to a series of bicycle parking stands in onstreet public bicycle parks in the UK. They found modest albeit significant improvements in the security of cyclists’ locking practices compared to that observed at bicycle parking stands at the control sites. This was consistent across two different settings. The authors conclude that the modest impact was a positive outcome in light of the costs and implementability of the intervention: the communication strategy was cheap, noninvasive, and easy to implement, suggesting that the stickers might be a cheap and effective strategy against bicycle theft. In crime reduction mechanism terms, the intervention described by Sidebottom, Thorpe, and Johnson (2009) aimed to reduce bicycle theft through raising cyclists’ awareness of how to lock their bicycles more securely. This in turn was believed to prompt a behavioral response (a positive change in locking practice) that would increase the effort and risk associated with committing this type of offense—two factors that are manipulated by many forms of situational crime prevention (e.g., Clarke 1997). However, the authors noted that increasing cyclists’ awareness of crime risks does not necessarily equate to changes in behavior; cyclists must choose to act on crime prevention guidance and a positive response to intervention will not be guaranteed from every recipient all of the time. Additionally, in cases where guidance is effective in raising awareness, positive behavioral shifts may require an incubation period (i.e., time may be required for cyclists to acclimatize to intervention-induced changes in the environment through, say, purchasing appropriate or additional locking devices). Changes to the environment may also be necessary to fully realize possible outcomes. For

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example, cyclists may try to improve their locking practice, but this may be impeded if there is little or no opportunity for them to do so; it is difficult to lock both wheels and frame to a tree, but easy to do so to a stand designed with this in mind. Sidebottom, Thorpe, and Johnson (2009) concluded that a more successful approach in terms of maximizing impact would be to manipulate the parking stand itself in a manner that encourages (or even ensures) better locking practices and, therefore, reduces the discretionary element typical of most publicity-based crime reduction schemes.

Design Against Crime: The Invisible Hand of the Prevention-minded Designer It is widely recognized that human behavior is the product of an interaction between the individual and the situation. Just as individuals can differ in various physical and psychological attributes so too can situations differ in the type and number of behavioral opportunities they present. Manipulating the situation through user- and abuser-centered design—that is, design that understands and responds to the needs and behavior of users (locking practices) and abusers (theft MOs)—can have a positive influence on the behavior of legitimate users and a negative influence on the behavior of illegitimate users (abusers) and catalyze a reduction in opportunities for criminal behavior. Situational crime prevention is predicated on this assumption and many case studies attest to the success of appropriately targeted opportunity reduction measures (see Clarke 2008). However, manipulating behavior through design is a complex and challenging task. Effective design must successfully balance various troublesome trade-offs such as promoting the desired behavior without impinging on related behavior or compromising aesthetics, cost, or function. Effective design against crime must also surmount the additional obstacle of being user friendly while simultaneously abuser unfriendly (Ekblom 2005a). The way in which a mindful designer must negotiate these multiple requirements in order to thwart thieves while accommodating legitimate users can be understood by considering the central mechanisms underlying situational crime prevention: perceived risk, perceived effort, and perceived reward as they relate to the legitimate user and the thief (abuser). The designer must seek to minimize risk and effort required to achieve secure behavior on the part of the legitimate user

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and to heighten their rewards for doing so. Conversely, the risk and effort presented to the abuser (i.e., the difficulty and risk of discovery or capture linked to successful crime commission) must be increased while the rewards that may beget a successful abuser should be minimized by the design. A highly successful design will deter, discourage, or block abuse with minimal impact on legitimate use so as to go unnoticed by the legitimate user. In such cases, the user may be thought of as protected by the invisible hand of the designer.2 For the crime of bicycle theft, various factors may influence victimization risk. These can range from distal external factors such as the ratio of motivated offenders to capable guardians (that is, anyone able and perhaps motivated to intervene to prevent a theft; see Cohen and Felson 1979) to those more directly influenced by the cyclist such as the type of lock used and how it is applied. In this study, we are concerned with how the immediate situation affects bicycle theft. In England and Wales, results from the BCS 2004/2005 indicate that a substantial proportion of thefts (33 percent) occur in public places, predominantly from on-street locations (18 percent of all offenses). In Cambridge, for example, bicycle thefts were found to account for 20 percent of all crimes reported in the city center (Bullock and Tilley 2003). As previously described, research consistently shows that many bicycles reported stolen were locked inadequately and it is plausible that this is influenced, in part, by what a bicycle is locked to. For example, a vertical lamppost makes it hard for a cyclist to lock both the bicycle wheels and the frame. Consequently, one way of reducing bicycle theft would be through the appropriate design and provision of on-street parking stands. However, for bicycle parking stands to be effective in reducing bicycle theft, they need to satisfy considerations other than security: bicycle parking must be attractive, convenient, safe, and easy to use. Otherwise cyclists may pass up the opportunity of using the formal parking in favor of less secure, but more convenient, alternatives such as a tree or lamppost close to their destination (a phenomenon known as “flyparking”; see Johnson, Sidebottom, and Thorpe 2008). In this study, we assess the impact of attempts to improve cyclist locking practices through manipulating bicycle parking stands at an onstreet parking site. Our aims were twofold: (1) to assess how cyclists locked their bicycles to Sheffield or 艚 shaped stands (the type of stand commonly provided for bicycle parking in public places internationally) and identify where and how design could usefully intervene to

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influence parking behavior and improve security against theft; and (2) to evaluate whether cyclist locking practices changed when locked to bicycle parking stands designed to promote secure locking practices, thereby reducing the number of easy opportunities for theft and consequently increasing the perceived or actual risks and effort associated with committing bicycle theft. Method One open access on-street parking facility in central London was selected as the test site for intervention. The costs associated with designing, prototyping, and implementing bicycle parking stands prohibited us from implementing in more than one site. The test site was selected because of the high volume of bicycle theft experienced in and around it (as identified by local police crime analysts) and the high volume of parking facilities at this location: 31 Sheffield stands providing 62 parking opportunities.3 All stands at the test site were of the same Sheffield design. No secure parking advice (such as stickers) accompanied the stands. In this study we, like others (see, e.g., Reiss 1971; Sampson and Raudenbush 1999; Weisburd et al. 2006), considered systematic observations to be the most appropriate tool for gathering data. These offered the opportunity to monitor how bicycles were locked to parking stands as well as garner contextual details relating to the type and condition of the bicycle (and related accessories) observed and the type of lock (if any) used. This was important: (1) because it informed the design response in regards to the contextual relationships between objects and users, including subtleties that would be difficult to capture using other methods; and (2) because such observations reflect the real-world conditions under which cyclists lock their bicycles and, hence, possess greater ecological validity than, say, observations of cyclists locking their bicycles in an artificial laboratory setting. A critical measure for this evaluation was the locking style of cyclists. The dependent variable in the study was the way in which bicycles were locked; in particular, the level of security that different locking practices afforded. We used a simple coding system, following Sidebottom, Thorpe, and Johnson (2009) to classify the locking practices of bicycles observed, namely: good, both wheels and frame were locked to the stand; OK, one wheel and the frame were locked to the stand; and bad, either one wheel or the frame or neither were locked to the stand.

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In the preintervention period, one of two researchers made observations of every bicycle stand at the test site. To ensure consistency, we developed a recording sheet for the researchers to log the relevant details of each parking event. This also allowed for identification of duplicate observations of the same bicycle parked on-site at different times of the day, which were subsequently removed from analysis. A nonparticipant observation method was employed so that researchers made no contact with the cyclists whose locking behavior they observed. To assess interrater reliability, a comparison was made of a random sample of 100 observations coded independently by two researchers. All observations were found to have been coded consistently. Following the preintervention period (described below), we analyzed the data gathered to assess the parking behavior of cyclists. We then prototyped seven different bicycle parking stands in response to the observations made. Once produced, the new stands were installed at the test site at stand positions closest to the destination served (a university). This was an attempt to maximize usage at the prototype stands and, therefore, generate a sufficient number of parking events to observe and analyze. We then randomly selected two of the existing onsite Sheffield stands to act as a control group in order to assess changes in locking practices postimplementation. Preintervention Observations and the Design Against Crime Response We made over 8,400 preintervention observations of parking events between August 2005 and January 2006. This comprised site observations every hour (between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M.), 5 days a week (Monday through Friday) for 1 week per month (for 6 months). After removing duplicate observations of the same bicycle parked on-site at different times of the day, we identified a total of 1,195 unique parking events. As discussed, preintervention observations served two purposes: the first methodological, to establish a baseline measure of locking practices to Sheffield stands at the test site; the second design-based, to inform designers of context-specific cyclist behavior in order to guide the creation of the design-based interventions to follow. In relation to the latter, the central findings to emerge from Sheffield stand observations can be divided into three sections: (1) those relating to the bicycles observed; (2) those relating to the site; and (3) those relating to locking behaviors.

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Findings related to the bicycles observed. Seventy-five percent of

cyclists used a standard diamond frame design (including a crossbar, also known as a top tube). This information is important to designers of site-specific bicycle parking stands. Eighty percent of bicycles were of the larger framed and wheeled varieties (i.e., mountain bicycles, stepthrough frame types such as Dutch “city bikes” [stadsfiets], and racers). The majority of bicycles’ front wheels were fitted to the frame using standard bolting methods (60 percent), 33 percent of bicycles’ front wheels were fitted to the frame using a quick release mechanism, and 7 percent of bicycles’ front wheels were fitted to the frame using fittings categorized as unusual. These include pit locks and other fittings that deny the opportunity for the wheels to be easily removed (i.e., in the event of a puncture). And 23 percent of bicycles were parked with accessories such as lights, helmets, or drink bottles. Findings related to the site. Stands closest to the destination served (a university) were the most popular for bicycle parking. This is consistent with recommendations that bicycle parking should be located as close as possible to the destination it serves to encourage optimal usage (Sustrans 2004). Weather did not affect locking behavior. This countered the assumption that wet weather would lead to more hurried and less secure locking practices. This suggests that, in this case, covered bicycle parking would not add to the security of locking practices. Stands adjacent to those supporting abandoned bicycles were less popular among users even when the stands in question were located close to the university entrance and, therefore, could reasonably be expected to be favored by cyclists. In the spirit of the concept of broken windows (see Keizer, Lindenberg, and Steg 2008; Wilson and Kelling 1982) whereby signs of neighborhood decay and norm violation are hypothesized to encourage crime and delinquency by signaling to offenders that such behavior goes unchallenged, we refer to this as the “broken bicycle effect.” The presence of broken or abandoned bikes not only has potential to encourage more vandalism, but also deters use. Site usage decreased over the course of the week: Monday was the day of greatest usage and Friday experienced lowest usage. Usage throughout the day peaked between the hours of 1 P.M. and 3 P.M. Findings related to locking behaviors. There are 180 locking combinations possible when securing a diamond frame bicycle (which 75 percent of users possessed) to a Sheffield stand with up to two locks. Of

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these, 72 percent of site users used one of seven methods. Fifty-three percent of cyclists locked only one wheel to the stand. This is considered an insecure locking practice as it allows for theft of the unsecured wheel (theft from bicycle). This is a common perpetrator technique referred to as unbolting: the stolen wheel prohibits the owner from riding the bicycle away. Consequently, these bicycles are often left parked by owners and, as a result, thieves may return at a later time when they have the correct tools and opportunity to remove the lock and steal the rest of the bicycle. Nineteen percent of cyclists locked their bicycle using a locking technique that secures only the crossbar to the horizontal section of the Sheffield stand. This is perhaps the least secure of all locking techniques as it does not secure either wheel of the bicycle. This insecure locking practice also facilitates a common theft perpetrator technique referred to as rotational leverage where the thief lifts the bicycle and rotates the frame against the lock and stand. Either the bicycle frame will be damaged or the lock will break. If the lock breaks, the thief can steal the bicycle. If the frame is damaged the bicycle will likely be abandoned by the thief, but still rendered unusable or severely damaged. Eighty-seven percent of site users secured their bicycle using only one lock. This insecure parking practice often occurs because it can be difficult to secure both wheels and the frame of the bicycle to the stand using only one lock. Also the use of only one lock means that, if a thief has the tools or knowledge to break the lock, the bicycle may be stolen. Better locking practice is to secure the bicycle with two locks of different types. This reduces the likelihood of the bicycle being stolen as it requires the thief to be present in the situation with the knowledge and tools to break two types of lock. Twelve percent of users of the site secured their bicycle using two locks. One percent of users of the site secured their bicycle using three locks. Twenty-two percent of users of the site locked the front wheel only. Thirty-one percent of users locked the back wheel only. This finding indicates that, if cyclists lock only one wheel, it is more likely to be the back wheel. Back wheels tend to be more expensive to replace than front wheels and harder to remove. Six percent of cyclists locked both the front and back wheel to the stand. This indicates that even those cyclists using two locks (12 percent) do not always secure both wheels to the stand. This suggests a lack of knowledge in relation to “best locking practice.” Of particular interest to the design team4 were the 19 percent of cyclists who locked only the crossbar of their bicycle to the stand. This locking practice is particularly insecure, as it leaves the parked bicycle vulnerable to common theft techniques described above. This insecure

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locking behavior may include, typically, locking the bicycle by its crossbar because the design of the Sheffield stand presents the horizontal portion of the stand next to the crossbar of a standard diamond frame bicycle, thus making it the easiest method of securing the bike to the stand. Also, locking it by the crossbar often prevents the bicycle from falling over, which can happen if only one lock is applied lower down on the bicycle, say, by securing only one wheel to the stand. Consideration of the above findings led the designers to seek to ensure that, in addition to those considerations typically addressed by bicycle stand design (such as the Sheffield stand design), a secure stand design should seek to address the following key requirements: reduce the opportunities for insecure locking practice, particularly the securing of bicycles to the stand using only the crossbar; support the bicycle from falling and the front wheel from falling to the side; and increase the security of bicycle parking for those who use only one lock. In February 2007, seven different prototype stands (one of each design) were installed on-site, replacing seven Sheffield stands. Illustrations of the new stand designs (except the offset stand) are shown in Figure 6.1. We designed each stand to address the requirements described above in different ways and, more generally, to reduce the opportunities for insecure locking practices while being easy and convenient to use by cyclists. We tested two hypotheses to assess the impact of the new stands on cyclists’ locking practices: H1 Locking practice at the prototype parking stands will (collectively) be better (more secure) than cyclists’ locking practices at Sheffield stands at the test site. H2 There will be variation in the security of cyclists’ locking practices within the different prototype bicycle stands. We made a total of 2,368 observations postintervention. These took place over three separate observation periods. The first was a 1-week period in February 2007 (the week following implementation). This was selected to identify any problems that arose immediately following implementation. The remaining site visits began 4 months later: a 2week observation period from June 14 to 28 and a 2-week observation period from July 4 to 19. The decision to delay the next sweep of observations was based on the assumption that time would be required for

Figure 6.1 The Prototype Bicycle Parking Stands

Front wheel enclosure stand

M stand, straight

Pagoda stand

M stand

Courtesy of Broxap

Chain stand

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P stand

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cyclists to acclimatize to the new bicycle stands and that more reliable usage patterns would be observed following such a delay. The procedure for each site visit matched that of the preintervention period: the parking site was observed every hour (between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M.), 5 days a week (Monday–Friday) for the chosen time period. Postintervention observations focused on the new stands and, for the purpose of comparison, two randomly selected control stands. Of these observations, 246 were unique locking events (35 for the Sheffield stands and between 27 and 33 for each of the new designs). The reasons for attrition in the data were simply that some stands were not occupied at the time of observation and many of the same bicycles were parked at the same stands for a number of hours. Before reporting the results we need to mention a limitation in this study, which we expand on in the Conclusion: it is that bicycle theft data at a suitable level of precision were unavailable. Therefore, following Sidebottom, Thorpe, and Johnson (2009), we chose change in cyclists’ locking practices as an intermediate outcome measure with which to assess the impact of intervention. We assumed that identified (positive) changes in locking practice would demonstrate the mechanism through which the intervention could reduce crime and, thereby, indicate a reduction in opportunities for theft.

Results Before examining locking practices for each type of stand, we conducted analyses to see if some stands were used more frequently than others. This is obviously important from a crime prevention and town planning perspective and relates to the issue discussed earlier: to be effective, new designs must match (if not be better than) extant designs in terms of all user requirements, not just security. Because each stand had been observed with equal frequency, popularity of the different designs can be estimated by computing the fraction of the total number of observations that a stand was unused; the lower the fraction, the more popular the design. Figure 6.2 shows that the Sheffield stands (the standard bicycle stands) were used with a higher frequency than any of the prototype stand designs. The Sheffield stands were in use around 70 percent of the time that observations were made, whereas the new designs were less popular, being in use for an average of around 50 percent of the time (range = 32 percent to 53 percent).

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Figure 6.2 Fraction of Time Bicycle Parking Stands Were Observed as Unused 1.00

0.90

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Offset M

M stand

Pagoda

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M straight

Enclosed

Sheffield

Stand Type

Popularity

Note: Number of unique locking events = 246.

Changes in Locking Practices over Time Figure 6.3 shows the differences in locking practices observed for the Sheffield stands (n = 1,195) compared to the new stand designs (n = 217) before and after intervention. For the preintervention period at the Sheffield stands, over 70 percent of bicycles were locked badly with those events classified as good accounting for the smallest proportion of all events observed. It is also apparent that locking practices were considerably better for the new stand designs. Interestingly, following intervention improvements were also observed in the locking practices of bicycles parked at the two randomly selected Sheffield stands. Reasons for this are offered in the Conclusion. However, Figure 6.3 shows data aggregated across all the prototype stands, which could therefore mask individual variation within them. Figure 6.4 confirms this is the case and, while this is only a descriptive

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Figure 6.3 Locking Practices for Sheffield Stands vs. the Prototype Bicycle Parking Stands as a Single Group 0.8

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Sheffield before Sheffield after

Fraction of all locking events

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New

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analysis, it shows that locking practices are better for some designs than others. To examine the statistical significance of the findings reported here a Monte Carlo (MC) permutation test was used (for a discussion of these tests, see Robert and Casella 1999; Johnson 2009). Such tests assess the statistical significance of an observed effect by comparing it with what would be expected on a chance basis, as determined using MC simulation. Briefly, to evaluate changes in locking practices at the prototype stands against chance expectation, we shuffle the data for example by randomly assigning observations from the before and after periods to either the same or different periods, preserving the sample sizes for the two intervals. One iteration of this procedure would not be particularly instructive and, therefore, MC simulation is used to draw 999 random samples of permutations from those possible.5 Next, a density function can be derived that summarizes the distribution generated across permutations. The null hypothesis is tested by comparing the observed (actual) changes (before and after intervention) in good, OK, and bad locking practices with the density function generated through

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Figure 6.4 Locking Practices for Sheffield Stands and Each Prototype Bicycle Parking Stand

MC simulation. If there is no effect of intervention, then the size of the effect for the observed data should be located somewhere around the center of the distribution for the shuffled samples. A more systematic approach to analysis, as adopted here, is to derive p-values from such computations using the formula described by North, Curtis, and Sham (2002): p=

n – rank + 1 n+1

where n is the number of simulations and rank is the position of the observed value in a rank-ordered array for that cell. Sheffield Stands (preintervention) vs. Prototype Stands Statistical analyses confirmed (all ps < .05) that compared with locking practices at the Sheffield stands (located at the same site) before intervention, for every new stand design significantly more good locking

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practices and significantly less bad locking practices were observed. For two of the new stands (M straight and offset M), significant increases in “OK locking practices” were also observed. Control Sheffield Stands vs. Individual Prototype Stands As discussed above, Figure 6.3 shows the differences in locking practices between the Sheffield stands (n = 35) and all the prototype stands (n = 217) aggregated as one group. However, our observations indicated that locking practices varied within the prototype stands (Figure 6.4). To explore this variation further, Table 6.1 shows the data (presented in Figure 6.4) in a slightly different way. Here, the cells of the table contrast each type of locking practice for the stand considered with those observed at the control Sheffield stands (postintervention). Each ratio is derived by dividing the proportion of locking events of each type (good, OK, and bad) for the new designs with those for the control Sheffield stands. For example, a value of 1.0 for good locking practices would indicate that the same proportion of locking events was categorized as good for the new stands as it was for the control Sheffield stands following intervention. A value above 1.0 (say, 2.0) would indicate a higher proportion (twice as many) of good locking events for the new stand and a value of less than 1.0 (say, 0.5) a smaller proportion (half as many). Values shown in bold in the table are those for which the differences exceeded what would be expected on the basis of chance (computed using a permutation approach similar to that discussed above). Locking practice was found to be significantly better for four of the prototype stands: the chain, pagoda, M straight, and offset M stands. Relative to the Sheffield stands, bad locking practice was significantly Table 6.1

Good OK Bad

Ratio of Differences in Locking Practices for the Prototype Bicycle Parking Stands Compared to the Control Sheffield Stands Chain

Pagoda

M Straight

Offset M

Normal M

P

Enclosed

1.70 1.06 0.23

1.64 0.98 0.39

1.21 1.49 0.22

0.88 1.76 0.22

1.02 1.25 0.68

0.60 1.31 1.03

1.06 0.98 0.96

Note: Ratios in bold are statistically significant at the 5 percent level. Total number of unique locking events is 211 (prototype) and 35 (control).

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less likely for each of these designs and either good or OK locking practice more probable. For example, at the chain stand there were 1.7 times as many locking events classed as good than would be expected if locking practice at this stand was commensurate with those observed for the Sheffield stands postintervention. In addition, bad locking practice at the chain stand was observed around one-fifth of the time that it was observed at the Sheffield stands (postintervention). As the number of locking events classed as OK was comparable for the chain and Sheffield stands, this suggests that this design facilitates a change in locking practice from the least to the most secure style of locking—the desired result. The same pattern was observed for the pagoda design. For the other new designs, the effects were in the desired direction, but nonsignificant. It is worth bearing in mind that the statistics in Table 6. 1 could also be argued as conservative estimates of the impact on locking practices because such calculations were made against the control Sheffield stands postintervention, which Figure 6.3 indicates saw noticeable improvements from the preintervention period.

Conclusion In this study, we evaluated the impact of seven prototype bicycle stands designed to improve cyclists’ locking practices, thereby increasing the (perceived or actual) risk and effort associated with bicycle theft. We tested two hypotheses: the first hypothesis examined whether cyclists’ locking practices improved at the prototype stands compared to the practices of those who locked their bicycles to traditional parking stands at the same site. Results showed that, overall, the new stands produced a positive change in observed locking practices. We interpreted this as a positive intermediate outcome measure representing a reduction in opportunities for bicycle theft. In addition, and in relation to the second hypothesis, marked variations were also observed within the new stand designs, with some being more popular and more effective than others. The variation observed in the popularity of different stand designs warrants discussion and has implications for crime reduction more generally (and associated activities such as town and transportation planning). In this study, cyclists were given the option of choosing one of eight different stand designs (the seven prototype stands plus the Sheffield stands) and some proved more popular than others. From a crime prevention perspective, this suggests that some designs may render less of a crime

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reduction impact if, while promoting better locking practices, fewer cyclists use them. Thus, the popularity or suitability for the population of interest is a general crime prevention concern, whereby otherwise effective interventions—in terms of the mechanisms through which positive outcomes are generated—may fail to produce satisfactory outcomes simply because of limited usage. In a different example, Bowers and Johnson (2006) describe a case of anti–handbag theft chairs that failed to yield significant reductions due to a simple lack of usage. From a research perspective, unpicking the cause(s) of such instances is important: (1) to help identify what interventions work and why they do not work in certain contexts (Pawson and Tilley 1997); and (2) to reduce the risk of falsely attributing unsatisfactory results to failure of the underlying theory rather than planning, implementation, or mobilization failure (see Ekblom 2011a; Ekblom in press; Knutsson and Clarke 2006). However, with respect to bicycle parking facilities, ordinarily cyclists are not offered a range of stand types from which to select because most parking sites have only minor (if any) variation in the stands available. In this type of scenario, where choices are limited, the popularity of a particular stand design may be of less concern. Popularity can also be considered from a different angle. The Sheffield stands proved to be the most popular insofar as they were occupied for a greater proportion of the day than the other designs, but unfortunately locking practices at these stands were suboptimal. To slightly overstate the point, relative to the prototype designs, the Sheffield stand may actually increase the likelihood of bicycle theft. To elaborate, an aim of bicycle theft prevention is to reduce the amount of time that bicycles are locked insecurely and, hence, most vulnerable to theft. Thus, to optimize the reduction of the number of opportunities for theft per unit of time, the most popular design should encourage the most secure locking practices. Because the Sheffield design appears to be less likely to encourage more secure locking practices, relative to other designs, it may increase the number of crime opportunities per interval of time (e.g., the hourly risk of bicycle theft) compared to other stand types. From a practical perspective, the choice of bicycle stand therefore requires consideration as to which types of stand appear to be the most popular as well as which types of stand are likely to encourage better locking practices. On the basis of our findings, the pagoda stand may be the best example of a design that successfully straddles both criteria.

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It may be useful in further research to survey why cyclists favor a particular design over alternatives. One hypothesis is that cyclists’ greater familiarity with the Sheffield stand may explain their preference of it over the prototype models. However this would not explain the variation in popularity within the new designs. Additionally, it is important to consider the accessibility of the stands to cyclists when being used by more than one bicycle at a time. The pagoda, front wheel enclosure, and offset M stand designs all require the cyclist to approach the stand from a particular direction so as to come alongside the stand while avoiding collision with the section of the stand intended to stop the front wheel of the bicycle falling to the side when parked. Only the M stand and the chain stand allow cyclists to approach the stands from either direction and successfully come alongside the stand to enable secure locking. A further consideration is the likely cost of the stand. All the new stand designs use more material and more manufacturing (e.g., more bends being placed in the metal) in their construction than the Sheffield stand. This necessitates a higher unit cost. The M stand design requires the least additional material and manufacturing and, consequently, the least additional cost. In light of the above when balancing the troublesome trade-offs (Ekblom 2005a) between convenience for users, impact in terms of positive behavioral change with regard to secure locking practices, and costs of provision, the M stand appears the most viable option. Limitations of This Study Two limitations in this study warrant discussion. First is the possibility that the results were skewed by a self-selection bias introduced because of the placement of the prototype stands; specifically, their proximate positioning (compared to the control Sheffield stands) to the destination served. For example, a selection bias could have occurred if closer stands tend to be used by cyclists who are more likely to lock their bikes securely. Equally, one might assume that stands closer to the destination served would be occupied first compared to stands that are farther away. If true, those cyclists who arrived at the test site the earliest would be those with increased likelihood of using the prototype stands. If this population were to have an increased propensity to adopt good locking practices, then this may give rise to potentially distorting selection effects. Similarly, repeat use of a particular stand on different days by the same user may also skew the findings. Such speculations cannot be

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validated with our data. However, aware of their potential existence, we can outline two ways to overcome them. First, one could randomly allocate prototype stands across all available positions at one test site. Resources permitting, a further option would be to implement a blanket change in stand type at one bicycle parking site, with observed changes analyzed against a suitable comparison site elsewhere. In practice such caveats arose due to the scale of this project that represented the first testing for the new stand designs and therefore placement decisions were predicated on how to best optimize usage, which we acknowledge may have had a negative impact on the rigor of the research design and evaluation. A second limitation is the absence of actual crime figures. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the prototype stands using an intermediate outcome measure: cyclist locking practices. Obviously, the ultimate outcome measure of interest and the most policy-relevant measure of effectiveness is levels of bicycle theft. Regrettably, policerecorded bicycle theft data at an acceptable level of geographic detail were unavailable in this study. They were unavailable because many recorded offenses tend to be indexed to general locations (e.g., landmarks or shops) or particular streets rather than specific locations and, consequently, the geocoding of bicycle theft events can be inaccurate. This is problematic when, as is often the case, numerous bicycle parking sites exist on one street, but theft offenses are geocoded to centroids along that street. Though we consider locking practice to be a valid and reliable intermediate outcome measure, insofar as positive changes will likely contribute to reducing opportunities for bicycle theft, it must be noted that multiple factors beyond locking practices will affect risk of victimization. Further research assessing both intermediate and ultimate outcome measures is therefore required, specifically to determine whether positive changes in cyclists’ locking practices, as found herein, are associated with reductions in bicycle theft. Implications of the Findings for Future Research While we observed improvements in locking practices at the prototype stands, we also documented positive changes at the two control stands following intervention. It is worth considering what might explain these findings. One hypothesis is that simple changes at the bicycle parking site in the form of the new stands being installed initiated change in the behavior of all cyclists through the long-standing Hawthorne effect,

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whereby individuals alter their behavior simply because of changes in an environment, even when those changes are not associated with experimental manipulation (for a general discussion, see Mayo 1933; in relation to crime prevention, see M. Smith, Clarke, and Pease 2002). While we selected the nonparticipant observation method employed here to reduce the possibility that cyclists would be aware of the study, we acknowledge the possibility that the implementation of the stands may have produced such effects. A second hypothesis is that some as yet unmeasured variable improved the locking practices observed. For example, increased police activity at the bicycle parking site and surrounding locales, for which we had no data, may have exerted a positive influence on how bicycles were secured. A third hypothesis is that improvements at the control stands represent a micro-level effect of diffusion of crime control benefits effect to targets not receiving intervention (see Clarke and Weisburd 1994). In mechanism terms, such diffusion effects are plausible: cyclists observing bicycles parked at the new stands were more likely to see good locking practices than those observed at the Sheffield stands (both the control stands and Sheffield stands preintervention) and may, consequently, imitate such behavior and similarly adopt good locking practices to other parking stands where amenable. Equally, if demand for the new stand types outstrips supply, cyclists who had previously used the new stands may be forced to use the Sheffield stands but may retain the improved locking practice, thus initiating a carryover effect. This change could also be reinforced through positive experiences of less incidents of bicycle theft (both individually and vicariously); the classic observe-imitate-reinforce sequence underpinning social learning theory (see Bandura 1977). At present, the above hypotheses are speculative, yet nonetheless testable and of relevance to crime prevention more widely. Further research employing a research design capable of assessing such questions from the outset, with a view toward understanding the mechanisms underpinning them, will be useful.

Notes This research was conducted as part of “Bike Off 2—Catalysing Antitheft Bike, Bike Parking and Information Design for the 21st Century,” funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Designing for the 21st Century program. The authors thank

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Dennis Challinger, Paul Ekblom, and Nick Tilley for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. 1. Those familiar with problem-oriented policing will recognize that the design process described here holds similarities with the scanning, analysis, response, and assessment phases of the SARA process (Eck and Spelman, 1987). Ekblom (2005a) notes similar parallels with the 5Is framework. 2. For a related discussion, see Thaler and Sunstein (2008). 3. A Sheffield stand is designed to hold two bicycles, one on either side of the stand. 4. See www.bikeoff.org (accessed April 29, 2011). 5. The number of resamples drawn increases the number of decimal places to which the probability of an observed outcome may have occurred on a chance basis. A minimum of 19 resamples are required for significance testing at the 5 percent level, though more are desired to generate a reliable test. To examine statistical significance at the 0.001 level, 999 resamples are required.

7 Designing a Counterterrorism Trash Bin Rohan Lulham, Olga Camacho Duarte, Kees Dorst, and Lucy Kaldor

IN THIS CHAPTER, WE PRESENT A CASE STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF

the process of designing and developing a counterterrorism trash bin (CT bin) led by the Designing Out Crime Research Centre (DOC) at the University of Technology, Sydney. DOC was established at the university in 2008 following a competitive proposal process initiated by the New South Wales Department of Justice and attorney general. The first of its kind in Australia, DOC was established to fulfill the department’s ambition to research and develop innovative ways of “using design to reduce opportunities for crime” (New South Wales Department of Justice and Attorney General 2008, 38). The inspiration for the center came in part from the example provided in the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts, London. In bidding for the privilege of operating such a place, DOC’s director envisioned a research center that would utilize design knowledge and expertise to tackle problems of crime. Discourse and practice in designing out crime at the time was dominated by a number of environmental criminology frameworks, in particular crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) and situational crime prevention (SCP). While it was acknowledged that these frameworks have a sound logic, the director found that the information in the frameworks fitted poorly within modern design processes. In addition, there was a sense that the potential for using design and design processes to resolve problems of crime was greater than that represented in these frameworks. In this chapter, we describe and explore the complexities of the CT bin design process, highlighting how the technique of reframing the 131

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problem was central to the development of the design. By analyzing the CT bin product using common environmental criminology frameworks, we highlight an apparent paradox of these frameworks: that they are useful for description and evaluation of products, but less useful for actually designing products. We suggest this paradox stems from the origins of these frameworks and argue that what is required is a greater focus on studying the features, qualities, and information present in design processes that produce products effective in designing out crime. The chapter is organized as follows. First, we describe the design process involved in developing the CT bin. Next, we analyze and describe the CT bin product using common environmental criminology frameworks. Following this, we reflect on design processes in relation to the common environmental criminology frameworks. Finally, we provide conclusions and directions for future research. A sketch of an early version of the CT bin is shown in Figure 7.1.

Design and Development of the CT Bin In this section, we present the process of designing the CT bin, focusing on the conceptual challenges emerging from this specific design problem. Possibly surprising for criminologists, CPTED, SCP, and other similar frameworks were largely absent from the design process.

Figure 7.1 Sketch of an Early Version of a CT Bin

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The disposal of trash came to be an issue for the New South Wales railway authority around 2000. Bins were temporarily removed from Sydney’s train stations as a measure to minimize potential terrorist attacks during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and, subsequently, were permanently removed in response to terrorist attacks on public spaces in major world cities, particularly the Bali bombings in 2002. Removal of the bins was seen as the only viable option in light of terrorist threats and in the absence of a suitable alternative. Soon, the absence of trash bins became a nuisance to the public as well as a problematic operational issue for the railway authority. Over the years the railway authority received a high volume of complaints about the inconvenience, uncleanliness, and unsightliness created by the absence of trash bins. Eventually, the need for reinstating bins on and around railway stations seemed impossible to ignore and the railway authority entered into a partnership with the New South Wales police force to investigate available bin designs. However, although both organizations shared the primary objective of ensuring the safety and comfort of commuters and the general public, the objectives, values, and the differing nature of their day-to-day operations and responsibilities produced significant differences of opinion on the suitability of existing trash bin designs. The railway authority was a large bureaucracy organized into various divisions. The issue of reinstating the station bin impacted directly on two senior management departments (Strategy and Service Development, and Safety and Environment) as well as matrices of operations staff (incorporating cleaning, maintenance, and security) and customer service staff (incorporating front line, communications and marketing, and market and product development). The railway authority was under pressure both from the New South Wales government to solve the problem of the lack of trash bins to appease the public and equally from the public to uphold its customer service by providing clean premises. The police force, though also a large organization with a number of subgroups, was represented in this instance by the counterterrorism command alone. The police also felt significant pressure from both the government and the public to protect all involved from the threat of terrorism. Each organization’s inward focus on its own operational needs had complicated the process of finding a suitable bin. Thus, after attempts to settle on a single design proved fruitless, the railway authority and the police finally decided that they needed designers to analyze the merits of the various designs. DOC was approached to provide this expertise.

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DOC suggested that the problem be explored as part of its Winter School program and the stakeholders agreed. The Winter School (named because it occurs during the Australian winter break) involves presenting teams of senior undergraduate design students with a realworld design brief and assisting them to explore solutions that meet stakeholders’ needs. Stakeholders are then given the opportunity to review students’ solutions and refine and develop the design of their choice. The program offers great potential for a win-win situation: students benefit from the experience of being “professional” designers while stakeholders receive cost-effective, innovative ideas to solve persistent problems. However, the outcomes of the Winter School are likely to be unsatisfactory for both parties if the problem is not accurately defined initially. Thus, the fundamental first step in the initiation of a Winter School project is to develop the problem and deliver a robust brief.

Reframing the Problem and Redefining the Brief DOC’s designers went about the process of developing a Winter School brief for a railway station trash bin through a series of discussions and workshops with the railway authority and the police. The initial brief given to DOC by the railway authority and police was to provide design advice that would assist them in choosing or adapting a design from among the three main typologies of existing counterterrorist bins, which the two organizations had already explored in some detail. The railway authority and police presented these to DOC and highlighted the features that rendered each typology deficient and unfeasible in the present context. The first typology was designed to contain the lateral damage that a bomb could produce, by deflecting the explosion upward. In addition to being extremely expensive to produce and difficult to service because it was built from special materials, this design was entirely unsuitable for the covered platforms found in a majority of city train stations. The second typology involved design features that limited the type of objects that could be placed in them, significantly complicating cleaning operations. The third typology consisted of only a metal hoop fitted with a clear cylindrical plastic bag, which made for easy cleaning and ensured that a weighty object such as a bomb would be difficult to conceal from station staff, but entirely negated the objective of improving the visual appearance of the station.

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DOC’s designers were immediately aware that the solution was not to be found by choosing or adapting a bin design from those existing— and, indeed, that the problem was not as simple as the sum of the deficiencies of the three typologies. With the aim of problematizing the problem, DOC’s designers undertook to steer discussion away from the object of the bin and the stakeholders’ conflicting views and instead toward the bin’s intended function in the context of station operations. The process of problematizing the problem and catalyzing its evolution is known in design literature as reframing (Schön 1995; Paton and Dorst 2010) and is a critical part of the design process at DOC. Akin (1990, 108) refers to reframing as problem restructuring, “the development of major breakthroughs, not necessarily arriving in the form of a flash but revealed as a result of a fundamental alteration of the manner in which the problem at hand had been viewed.” To catalyze the reframing process, DOC’s designers sought to gain a broader understanding of the pressures and needs felt by each stakeholder organization. This was done by mapping out the functions that the bin needed to fulfill, the role of each stakeholder and manager in regard to using, servicing, managing, and maintaining trash bins, and how all of these would be complicated by a bomb threat. In normal situations, the railway authority was responsible for servicing and maintaining the bins to ensure their proper function, which was a major operational undertaking in itself. Yet in the event of a bomb threat, the police would be responsible for evacuating all passengers and others in the station in order to carry out detection and deactivation procedures. The railway authority’s main concern in the reintroduction of bins was that an evacuation such as the police were required to undertake represented a major disruption that could temporarily paralyze the entire transport system. The issues revealed in this discussion allowed DOC’s designers to bring to light the most perplexing deficiency of the three bin typologies, which had thus far not been articulated by the railway authority or police. As a group, the typologies presented solutions for detecting suspicious packages in bins, limiting the placement of bomb-sized objects in bins, and containing the explosion of bombs in bins. However, none of them adequately addressed the need for safely analyzing the contents of bins containing suspicious packages to confirm the absence or presence of a bomb. While the prospect of a bomb explosion in a crowded train station was undoubtedly horrifying, the magnitude of the operations involved if a threatening package could not be analyzed—evacuating thousands of

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rail customers and delaying countless others, diverting rail services, deploying the bomb squad, and so on—also represented a disastrous threat to Sydney’s rail service. Furthermore, the event of the false alarm presumably would occur more often than a true bomb threat and, since the disruption of normal life is an objective of terrorism, cumbersome security measures (e.g., those required in the event of a bomb scare) can actually achieve a terrorist’s aims. Thus, an issue that had until that time been treated as peripheral, owing to the stakeholders’ concentration on the object of the bin, emerged as crucially important. Reframing the problem in this way assisted the railway authority and police to perceive that the real crux of the issue was how a trash bin might affect their operations in the event of a bomb scare—and how a good design could aid their emergency procedures while a poor design could hinder them. With this in mind, DOC’s designers in conjunction with the stakeholders developed the brief for the Winter School. The redefined brief required students to consider that, while the need to prevent a terrorist depositing a bomb in a bin undetected was extremely important, total prevention was impossible and therefore a successful design needed to aim to minimize the opportunity to deposit bombs in bins, minimize the impact of a blast on a train station, and, most important, minimize the disruption to operations if a bomb is suspected. The newly redefined brief provided the space for the Winter School to explore design features previously not considered in any of the existing bin typologies. The project group comprised students from diverse design disciplines in a collaborative design laboratory environment. Students used diverse methodologies including probes, visualizations, forecasting, and future scenarios to discuss and reflect on stakeholders’ needs and to experiment with the concepts suggested by the redefined brief. Students considered the major issues, including the bin’s visibility and usability, the management of trash in railway stations, and related operational and logistical issues; in particular, the needs of police and station staff in the event of a bomb threat. It was understood that, for a bin design to be acceptable to stakeholders, it must facilitate the work of the bomb squad. Therefore, it needed to have the shape and other physical characteristics that allowed the use of X-ray machines, the most effective means of determining the bin’s contents. Once students had explored and developed the design concepts, they spent time creating high-quality visualizations to help the stakeholders appreciate the potential of the design concepts presented. These

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visual representations, in turn, motivated stakeholders to engage with the designs and provide feedback that reinvigorated the design process. Various designs were presented to and considered by the stakeholders, but the design that they chose included a number of features to ensure that it satisfied the stated requirements in a variety of ways. The bin’s most innovative feature (which has since been patented) is a narrow gap at the back to permit the insertion of various sizes of X-ray panels to allow safe examination of contents. Vibration-proof rails surround the gap into which the X-ray panel is inserted so the bin can be examined without the slightest movement to the structure or its contents, thus avoiding the triggering of a vibration-sensitive bomb. This feature allows faster inspection by police, thereby eliminating the need for lengthy evacuations of the station. The design is subtle and does not interfere with either the aesthetics or the primary purpose of the bin, yet it also addresses terrorist risks without exacerbating fear. Communicating closely with stakeholders helped define other design features to support the bomb-resistant character of the bin. Apart from the X-ray slot, the other key security and functional characteristics of the final CT bin are: • Shallow depth to restrict the overall volume of trash and prevent objects from being obscured as well as to attract the regular attention of cleaners. • A narrow, circular aperture (less than 12 centimeters) to allow disposal of standard passenger trash, but restrict the placement of large items. • Transparent outer shell (except at the rear) to allow for quick visual inspection. • A sturdy front-locking system to prevent the bin from opening ordinarily, but ensure that it can be unfastened quickly and easily by a police robot if it is deemed necessary to further examine the bin’s contents. • Components built primarily from plastic to minimize harm in the event of an explosion. • Flat and opaque rear. • Rectangular and narrow shape to allow it to be placed unobtrusively in various locations, including wall and floor mounting. The bin is also constructed of a number of separate components to ensure cheap and easy replacement of parts if necessary.

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After the Winter School, the design process moved from the idea creation and experimentation stages to the development of models and prototypes, the trial and evaluation of prototypes, and the improvement of design features. This was done in close collaboration with the stakeholders involved. During the process of modeling and prototyping, some aspects of the bin were adjusted to support manufacture, but the bin’s essential design features were retained. Two hundred bins are currently in place on railway stations in Sydney, helping to provide a cleaner and safer environment. Figure 7.2 provides an image of CT bins on a railway platform. This case study of the CT bin captures some of the richness and complexity of the design process and demonstrates the ways in which design can address complex security problems by using a variety of modes of engagement, methods, and approaches. It also shows how an effective design process hinges on collaboration and willing involvement from stakeholders, and how a collaborative process can incorporate and respond to the diverse needs of multiple stakeholders. Complex participatory design projects like the CT bin can at times lose traction, but in this case the innovative way that the design process evolved and the developments arising from it secured its completion. More importantly, this case study shows how a design process that allows fluidity and flexibility and is not restricted by deterministic guidelines can result in innovation and the development of a new typology. As a fourth typology, the CT bin’s design features respond to the

Figure 7.2 CT Bin on a Sydney Railway Platform

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needs of mitigation, rapid detection, and efficient management of a bomb, addressing operations that are potentially affected by a bomb threat while simultaneously enhancing the primary function of the bin: to collect rubbish and keep railway stations clean. In the section that follows, we describe this product according to established environmental criminology frameworks within the discourse on designing out crime; namely, security function framework (SFF), CPTED, and SCP.

Product Description and Analysis of the CT Bin Environmental criminology frameworks provide a basis for describing, assessing, and categorizing the presence or absence of design features that contribute to reducing crime in places or products. These frameworks are also often promoted as a basis for designing products and places to reduce crime. We analyzed the design out crime qualities of the CT bin using three of these frameworks: SFF, CPTED, and SCP (Clarke 2005; Cornish and Clarke 2003; Wortley 2008). Security Function Framework In Chapter 2, Ekblom introduces the security function framework as a framework for describing the functions of a security product. Applying this framework to the CT bin provides a succinct overview of many of the functional qualities of the bin. The principal purpose of the CT bin is a functional and serviceable trash bin for use in public spaces in railway stations. It has a subsidiary purpose of minimizing the misuse of the bin for the concealment and detonation of an explosive device. In addition, it has as an auxiliary purpose of facilitating the verification and efficient management of security threats (including false alarms) related to trash bins. The primary security niche for the CT bin is as a securing product, although there is an additional one in terms of facilitating security management (the auxiliary purpose). The mechanism by which the securing niche is achieved is through features that limit the size of objects that can be placed in the bin and features that facilitate the monitoring and identification of objects in the bin by staff and the public. The mechanism by which the security management niche is achieved is through features that facilitate the efficient use of robotoperated bomb disposal and X-ray equipment. The technicality of the

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CT bin includes the use of a small 12-centimeter aperture for depositing trash; bin materials and dimensions that allow visual access of the bin contents, promote maintenance, and control access; and, at the rear of the bin, a secure purpose-designed slot for an X-ray slide. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Within both discourse and practice on designing out crime, the CPTED framework is widely used to inform the assessment of environments and products to reduce crime. Its origins include Newman’s (1972) work on defensible space, Jacobs’s (1961) critique of modern development approaches, and Jeffery’s (1977) sociophysical crime prevention model, although its conceptualization has changed over time. CPTED is now typically described in terms of a number of discrete principles for assessing design: natural surveillance, territorial reinforcement, access control, activity support, and image management (Cozens, Saville, and Hillier 2005). We apply each of these in turn to the analysis of the qualities of the CT bin. The design of the CT bin could be seen to facilitate natural surveillance through a number of mechanisms. The use of transparent outer materials enables both staff and the public to see the contents of the bin, permitting identification of suspicious items. The actual size and capacity of the bins also facilitates natural surveillance. The 90-liter capacity is somewhat smaller than typical public space bins and, because it requires station staff to attend to them more frequently, increases staff surveillance and monitoring of the bins. The shallow depth of the bin also prevents the layering and easy concealment of items behind the trash. Interviews conducted by NSW (New South Wales) rail with users of the bin has also revealed that the novelty of being able to clearly see the bin’s contents attracts people’s attention and curiosity, which in turn provides greater surveillance (N. Karlovasitis, personal communication, May 2, 2011). The bin’s small aperture can be considered an access control characteristic as it prevents people placing sizable items in the bin such as large explosive devices. This is particularly important since limiting the size of an explosive device also limits the amount of encasing material that can be weaponized as shrapnel, significantly reducing the potential for damage. Access control features are also demonstrated in the build quality of the bin, the robust locking fixtures, and anchoring of the bin to the floor, all of which ensure that only staff have access to the bin’s contents. These

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features also establish a degree of territorial reenforcement, identifying the bin as the managed property of the railway authority. In terms of activity support, there are aspects of the bin design that seek to promote wanted behaviors and hinder behaviors associated with conditions more conducive to a terrorist act. We identified that placement of trash next to or on top of the bin makes it easier for a person to deposit an explosive device concealed as rubbish around the bin. Observations of users of the CT bin indicated that the sloping top, in combination with the small aperture, forces users to place their trash inside the bin and completely prevents placement of objects on top of the bin. It also discourages users from tossing their trash in the direction of the bin as if it were a basketball hoop, a behavior that is prompted by the appearance of typical large-aperture rubbish bins. The CT bin also has elements that are designed to assist with image management. In accordance with a key consideration of the stakeholders, the bin portrays an efficient, clean image consistent with appropriate guardianship and management of train stations. On another level, the bin’s atypical shape, size, and design help to communicate a security aware, purposeful approach to the management of trash. The latter consideration was deemed essential as key stakeholders were concerned that the reintroduction of typical-looking public trash bins in railway stations might communicate to the public and staff that there was no longer a terrorism risk and that this in turn would impact on people’s vigilance about noticing and reporting suspicious objects, thus inadvertently increasing the risk. These two image management considerations led to the efficient, purposeful aesthetics for the CT bin. Situational Crime Prevention Techniques Within the area of situational crime prevention, a number of frameworks have developed that seek to categorize different techniques used for preventing crime. Most notable among these are Clarke’s frameworks that draw on rational choice theory (Cornish and Clarke 2003) and routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979), although Wortley (2008) has proposed some relevant and interesting additions in terms of precipitators of crime. In this analysis of the CT bin, we focus on Cornish and Clarke’s (2003) framework, which proposes that situational techniques that prevent crime can be categorized into five broad categories. They consider that situational techniques reduce crime by (1) increasing the effort for criminal activity; (2) increasing the risk of

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detection; (3) reducing the rewards; (4) reducing provocations (removing soft targets); and (5) removing excuses for unlawful behavior. With reference to the CT bin, the small aperture opening and transparent materials effectively increase the effort required to place an explosive device in the bin. A potential offender must consider that the device needs to be small enough to be placed in the opening and adequately disguised so that staff and the public do not identify it. As a result, the small aperture opening and transparent materials also increase the real and perceived risk for the offender of being detected when depositing a device. The small opening requires that a device be placed in the bin rather than thrown. In addition, the hanging inner plastic liner becomes distorted when heavy objects are placed in the bin. Risk for offenders is also increased by people’s attention to and awareness of the transparent bin (as discussed above) and the efficient, purposeful aesthetic. The CT bin effectively reduces the potential for reward by limiting the size of the explosive device that can be deposited and, in so doing, restricts the potential damage that an offender could cause. In addition, through the X-ray slide feature, the bin creates a safer, more efficient means of assessing threats and thus minimizes the potential for accidents and disruption. This thwarts one of the primary objectives of terrorists: to disrupt the normal functioning of a society and, in so doing, to advertise their cause (Asal and Rethemeyer 2008). The final categories of reducing provocations and excuses are less relevant in the instance of the bin.

Reflections A Paradox of CPTED and SCP Frameworks On the surface of it, our description of the design process and our analysis of the CT bin product against criminology frameworks presents an apparent paradox; namely, that a product can be CPTED compliant even though it was developed from a design process where these frameworks were not prominent or a primary focus. In the CT bin example, our experience was that CPTED and other environmental criminology frameworks were useful and informative in describing the qualities of the product, but were of little utility in the actual design process. We believe this paradox is common. Many products that effectively design out crime are developed using design processes that have little connection to established environmental criminology frameworks.

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However, when one considers the origins of these frameworks, it should not come as a surprise that they are better suited to evaluating rather than designing. CPTED, SCP, and other similar frameworks were developed from the study of actual products and places that were associated with reduced crime levels. Academics evaluated these buildings and products to identify the crime prevention qualities that were common among them and then sought to classify and describe these qualities as a set of general principles (O. Newman 1972). The frameworks that resulted are thus underpinned by research and observation of the ultimate goal of a design process (the design solution) rather than the means (the process itself). It follows, then, that these frameworks have genuine utility in assessing and rationalizing the crime prevention qualities of products and places such as the CT bin. They cannot, however, reasonably be expected to offer insights or guidelines relevant to the process of designing products and places that limit crime. Some of the confusion in how, where, and when to use CPTED possibly stems from the fact that the observations inherent to CPTED—for example, that natural surveillance reduces opportunities for crime—do indeed represent sound logic. That is to say, they make sense. It is tempting, then, to assume that if we design using these frameworks (e.g., as a checklist), we will necessarily arrive at an effective crime-reducing design. Our experience with the design of the CT bin suggests that this is not true. In this case, design was not a process of applying CPTED, but rather was a negotiated process between a manager client, key stakeholders, and a design team. Problems were not defined in terms of inadequacies in territorial reinforcement, access control, or natural surveillance, but through an understanding of how organizations and people use, abuse, and maintain trash bins and terrorism risks in railway stations (Gamman and Thorpe 2009; Gamman et al. in press). Our conclusion, based on this experience, is that one cannot sensibly use generalized observations, no matter how valid, to reverse-engineer effective design solutions to specific problems. Limitations of CPTED as the Basis for a Design Process Notwithstanding the above, in the practice field, CPTED in particular is often considered a design process (Crowe 2000; Atlas 2008). In our experience and that of others (Ekblom 2008a, 2011c; Gamman and Pascoe 2004; Kitchen and Schneider 2006), CPTED does not provide a useful basis for a design process because general principles do not solve

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specific problems. Below, we offer some observations as to why we believe this to be the case. Design principles do not constitute a design process. CPTED is

essentially a number of design principles that reflect common relationships between design and criminal events. Design principles, whether they relate to crime, or hygiene, or environmental sustainability, are not an effective basis for a design process because they are implicitly rigid and are often anchored to a particular time and place. They provide neither the structure nor the flexibility required to deal with the complexities of different contexts, situations, and stakeholder needs. When design principles are applied as if a design process, as is often the case with CPTED, this results in an overly simplistic process that is more akin to prescription than design. The possibilities for using design to reduce crime are broader than five principles. The principles of CPTED provide a narrow def-

inition of the mechanisms by which design can impact on crime. The CPTED principles are primarily based on one body of work related to reducing crime by regulating perceived and actual ownership of space through facilitating access control, territorial reinforcement, and surveillance (Altman 1975; O. Newman 1972; Crowe 2000). While the ideas behind this body of work are important, there are many other ways design can reduce crime that do not fit easily within the bounds of CPTED. For example, design can be used innovatively to influence people’s emotions, behavior, interactions, and perceptions in ways that reduce crime and antisocial behavior (Lulham 2007) such as designs for public environments that focus on altering people’s moods in subtle and harmless ways through the use of music, smells, lighting, and so on. When CPTED is considered as the primary basis of the design process, however, all of these other possibilities are effectively ignored. Design can reduce crime by changing aspects of the context, not just situations. By definition, situational crime prevention approaches

such as CPTED limit the targets of design to situational criminal events. It is not the case, however, that the only way in which design can impact on crime is through its direct influence in situations. Design can also reduce opportunities for crime in a wider context, by changing the systems that influence people’s routine activities, access to information (i.e., smartphone applications), and cultural beliefs and lifestyle choices related to crime. However, when the focus of the design process is on

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situations, opportunities for influencing the broader drivers of crime in society are not considered. Focusing on usability can be as valuable as focusing on misuse.

Frameworks situated largely in the criminology and justice fields, such as CPTED, also tend to become offender focused in the way they view crime and its solutions. An understanding of offenders and a focus on their behavior is undoubtedly an important ingredient in designing out crime; however, focusing predominantly on offenders when designing can lead to an overly heavy emphasis on preventing and controlling misuse at the expense of other considerations. For many crime problems, improving the usability of products and places by focusing on users and appropriate use often produces more effective and holistic design solutions (Gamman and Thorpe 2007). Indeed, there are many instances when, as a result of circumstance, the ordinarily appropriate users of a product or space quickly become the misusers or offenders. To give an example of a problem common in evening entertainment areas, the combination of alcohol and reasonable frustration over the lack of adequate usability systems (such as public transportation) can turn otherwise well-meaning partygoers into criminal brawlers as they fight with each other to get the next taxi and kick the door of the empty cab that drives past them. An effective design solution in that instance would be to improve access to transport. Yet this solution is unlikely to be reached by an offender-focused approach, which tends to produce solutions that revolve around limiting freedoms to control offenders.

Conclusion The CT bin is an example of a design out crime product developed through a negotiated design process. Critical to the development of the bin was the reframing of the problem within the design process. Through the reframing, the client developed a new, clear understanding of the design problem and the requirements for a counterterrorism bin. From this new definition of the problem, the CT bin was designed in conjunction with the client and subsequently endorsed by the relevant stakeholders, something that had previously been difficult. The CT bin is now in over 25 railway stations around Sydney and a key feature of the CT bin design, the X-ray slide, has been patented. Describing and analyzing the CT bin design using three environmental criminology frameworks highlighted an apparent paradox: that

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our CPTED-compliant bin design was not designed using CPTED. This led us to the observation that, although DOC often finds CPTED, SCP, and other similar frameworks limiting and unhelpful in design processes, they can be logical and useful frameworks for assessing and describing a design out crime product. We argue that this is not altogether surprising considering that CPTED, SCP, and other similar frameworks originated from the study of common features of places and products associated with less crime, rather than the study of the design processes associated with the development of such products. This disconnection between the origins of criminological frameworks like CPTED and SCP, and the use for which they are often promoted, sheds light on a common tension between criminologists and designers. Criminologists often lament that designers do not utilize the knowledge that they have developed about products and places that reduce crime. Designers working in the field of designing out crime, however, find that this knowledge (as presented in these frameworks) is not particularly helpful for the design process. We contend that general principles for designing out crime—if they are to be helpful at all—must be based on research into the design processes that lead to the development of products that effectively reduce crime. We also propose that further research into the elements and features that make these processes successful or not is generally necessary to extend knowledge in the field. Research of this kind, undertaken by both designers and criminologists, could identify innovative ways of designing to prevent crime as well as addressing the ways in which information contained in established criminology frameworks could be transformed for use in design processes. DOC has now undertaken over 50 projects in the area of designing out crime. In each of these, we have found exploring the characteristics of design processes that produce safe, usable products and places to be rewarding, fruitful, and full of new solutions to old problems.

Note The authors acknowledge Nicholas Karlovasitis for his detailed description of the design process from the perspective of lead designer; Douglas Tomkin for his role as facilitator in this project; and Rodger Watson for guiding the chapter forward. They also gratefully acknowledge RailCorp for being an active partner with the courage to see the project through to implementation.

8 Packaging Against Counterfeiting Lorenzo Segato

IN RECENT YEARS, WITH THE OPENING OF NEW MARKETS AND

the consequent expansion of global trade, several kinds of economic crimes under the “brand theft” heading have significantly increased. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, and the European Union agree that counterfeiting is constantly growing and fakes have become widespread throughout the world, potentially including all sorts of goods. The last European Commission Report (European Commission, Taxation and Customs Union 2009, 2) estimates that in Europe “the number of goods suspected of infringing intellectual property rights, detained in 2008 increased by 126% to 178 million articles, from 79 million in 2007.” Criminals and criminal organizations can actually avail themselves of skills and advanced technologies for reproducing easily almost any product. Globalization has created criminal opportunities for the spread of fake products by exploiting circulation of goods, faster connections between more and less regulated markets, and loopholes between different legal systems (particularly regarding laws on intellectual property rights [IPR] infringements and the legal prosecution of counterfeiters in developing countries). Counterfeiting not only affects economic interests of companies in terms of lost profits and those of governments through lost revenues and taxes. Other consequences (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy 2009) are the loss of employment, damage to reputation and image, stifling of innovation, enrichment of criminal organizations, and endangering of consumers’ health and safety. Recent cases have revealed fake clothing, drugs, food, and cosmetics containing dangerous elements such 147

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as cadmium (in shoes), melamine (in milk), and arsenic and tar in dangerous amounts (in cigarettes). But in general there is a major concern about the evolution of counterfeiting from a victimless crime to a more profitable and dangerous crime (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy 2009), which is becoming ever more closely linked to money laundering and financing of terrorism (International Chamber of Commerce Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau 2009). Strategies against counterfeiting include, inter alia, tougher legislation (including sentencing), strengthening of international cooperation, innovative solutions, consumer education, control of the product life cycle, and crime-proof packaging. Security measures on packaged goods can reduce theft, tampering, and contamination as well as counterfeiting, with relevant implications on consumers’ health and safety in the last two (the importance of tamper-proof packaging has become evident worldwide since the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders). Packaging can be effective in crime prevention in reducing the possibility of committing a crime, in reducing probability that a negative event will occur, and, finally, in reducing harm deriving from crime. Prevention strategies are directed more toward using technological add-on techniques on packages, rather than incorporating design against crime into package design. Research on crime prevention through product and packaging design should be developed further. And design against crime can play a strategic role in developing crime-proof solutions that consider different aspects related to both target hardening and criminal gain. Nevertheless, cooperation between researchers and industrial sectors is still low while the experience of packaging as an instrument for preventing counterfeiting is in fact rather limited to single products (Clarke 2009). Nevertheless, several organizations consider the adoption of packaging technologies to be a strategic way to counter the proliferation of fakes and to reduce its wide and negative consequences. See, for instance, the brochure of the World Health Organization’s International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT) Counterfeit Drugs Kill (World Health Organization, International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce 2008) and the Food and Drug Administration’s question and answer about counterfeiting.1 Moreover, international conferences on counterfeiting provide information about the phenomenon and stimulate companies to adopt packaging solutions to prevent all kinds of brand exploitation.2 I begin this chapter with a brief overview of the counterfeiting phenomenon and trends, with a special focus on those sectors that especially affect consumers’ health (i.e., pharmaceuticals, foods, and bever-

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ages). Then, I continue with an analysis of packaging functions from those addressing content protection and consumer advice to specific security functions dealing with crime-related risks. I also briefly explore the offender’s perspective; for example, opportunities resulting from the misuse of packaging for criminal purposes, or how criminals cope with secure packaging. Then, I deal with the principles for designing packaging against counterfeiting; in particular, the attitude of packaging for risk reduction and the troublesome trade-off between security and other packaging functions. Finally, I present two case studies concerning the implementation of packaging devices against counterfeiting and some recommendations for the future.

Counterfeiting: A Wider Global Issue Because of counterfeiting, one can buy a purple Gucci new jackie bag for €100 (US$130) instead of €1,950 (US$2,600), or Viagra pills at a quarter of their price. But also one could fly on a plane with aeronautical parts that may have been altered or their history misrepresented, or give a baby a toy made with toxic plastic. If IPR infringements—from economic and legal points of view— have relevant implications on trade, company profits, and government revenues, the phenomenon of counterfeiting can have negative consequences on citizens’ health, safety, and security. For instance, the active ingredient in a fake Viagra pill can be a substance that is the same as the real one, or simply null, or somewhat different, or maybe even dangerous. Counterfeit parts are assumed to be the cause of at least two airplane crashes, a Tuninter Atr72 near Palermo and a Helios Boeing 737 close to Athens.3 And the enormous gain criminal groups make by managing fake markets is supposed to feed money laundering and terrorism worldwide (International Chamber of Commerce Counterfeiting Intelligence Bureau 2009). One could never imagine that buying a pirate copy of a DVD can finance international terrorism, but it does (Treverton et al. 2009). In recent years, the expansion of the world market has brought a simultaneous widespread proliferation of fake products, exploiting brands’ attractiveness. A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2007) estimates that in 2005 around 2 percent of global international trade could have been in counterfeited or pirated goods (around US$200 billion). In Europe (European Union, Taxation and Customs Union 2009), seizures over the period

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1999–2008 increased from 4,694 to 49,381, and the number of articles detained for suspected IPR infringement rose from 25 million to 178 million in the same period. According to the report Counterfeiting: A Global Spread, a Global Threat (UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute 2007), the recent growth of the phenomenon is linked to different causes, which increased opportunities and advantages for the criminal organizations undertaking this crime relative to, say, drug trafficking. For example, according to the report, there is an opportunity to exploit the position attained by renewed brands by replicating their products without sustaining the costs of the legal company. This exploitation is facilitated by significant expansion of global markets as well as by the presence of “new markets” following the collapse of highly regulated economic regimes, such as ex-Soviet countries, or the partial introduction of market economies, such as China. Furthermore, counterfeiting is a highly profitable activity for two main reasons: (1) the profit related to the sale of an individual unit of counterfeit goods compared to that attainable from the sale of a different type of illegal product; and (2) the risk derived from this activity in comparison to other illegal activities. Fakes follow existing crime routes used for other traffic and counterfeiting is a lucrative crime with relatively little risks. In fact it is often fought with weak actions and penalties, partly because of a limited perception of its nature, scale, implications, and the pervasive role of criminal organizations and partly because interception and seizure are rather difficult. In the period 2007–2008, fake clothing was detected in Europe more frequently than cigarettes, CDs, and DVDs (55 percent, 0.9 percent, and 4.5 percent, respectively). But CDs and DVDs represent 23 percent and 44 percent of the total number of seized items because they are usually shipped in large containers while the number of clothes seized is about 9 percent of the total (European Commission, Taxation and Customs Union 2008, 2009). Moreover, advanced technologies are easily available on the market and sometimes criminal organizations infiltrate legal activities and use them for counterfeiting and laundering illicit profits while increasing their business by exploiting new brands and marks. This is especially a problem in the counterfeiting of medical and alimentary products. Medicines According to the World Health Organization’s International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (World Health Organization,

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International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce 2008), fake drugs can be distinguished from originals because of their content based on the incorrect amount of active ingredients, incorrect ingredients, or absence of active ingredients. Counterfeit drugs range from generic medicines to those used for the treatment of infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. While some fakes could lead only to therapeutic failure without any additional health implications, other fakes might seriously affect the users and even cause their unexpected death. An example is offered by the 365 deaths during 2006 in Panama caused by the use of fake medicines containing glycol (an industrial solvent) instead of glycerine (Bogdanich and Hooker 2007). Estimating the extent of counterfeiting of medicines is difficult, mostly because of the lack of data, especially on developing countries (in particular, sub-Saharan Africa) where weak regulations, ineffective law enforcement activities, and lower incomes produce a wide diffusion of fakes. Counterfeits represent less than 1 percent of the entire market value in industrialized countries; more than 30 percent in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; and about 20 percent in the former Soviet Union. Many factors are responsible for the recent growth and the wide proliferation of fakes. First, the costs involved in the production of counterfeit medicines are often low compared to the investments in development, testing, and distribution of original drugs. Indeed, as reported by the US Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, it takes up to $250 million and approximately 10 years to legally develop and market a medicine used worldwide, instead of 2 months and roughly $250,000 to compete with a similar illegal product (Barry 2002). Second, the high costs of certain medicines for the people living in developing countries oblige them to buy counterfeit drugs in unregulated street markets while more and more people in the world are involved in purchasing medicines on the Web (often deceived by a picture of the original product instead of one of the fake). Third, the Web has been revealed as one of the main vehicles for the sale of counterfeit goods because of the low-level risks that counterfeiters have to deal with, including the rare possibility of being identified (see the case study of Pfizer’s Viagra below), and the high number of potential buyers reached. Other elements such as inadequate legislation, ineffective cooperation among stakeholders, and the lack of awareness about the size and the risks related to fake medicines make counterfeiting of drugs an appealing activity for organized crime.

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Food and Drink The counterfeiting related to the food and drink sector affects both trademarks and geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs (European Union Regulation No. 2081/92), in particular for famous brands or products. Sometimes, fakes exploit brand attractiveness with gross imitations; for example, Parmesan and Gradano copying Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano cheese. Such imitations have rapidly spread over the world and, in some cases, fake products entered the local market before the originals as happened for some “made in Italy” items that were produced in China. In other cases, criminals reproduce perfectly distinctive elements and packages of foods, such as Parma ham and mozzarella di bufala, cheating both customers and the shopkeepers. Within the beverage sector, fakes may either be produced by refilling the original bottles with raw and inferior substitutes or by large-scale operations that include the entire production cycle from the preparation of raw spirits to packaging procedures. Imitations include wine, beer, and alcoholic ingredients used for the preparation of cocktails because mixing can mask the particular and distinctive taste of the alcoholic base. Such products often contain poorquality and sometimes contaminated ingredients. The recent scandal of the Chinese milk contaminated with melamine4 and more than 40,000 annual deaths in Russia caused by the use of counterfeit vodka5 are only a couple of examples. Although it is not possible to provide an exact estimate of the phenomenon, statistics reveal that fake items originate mainly in a few countries, as indicated by the number of seized articles in Europe in 2007 whereby almost 46 percent of counterfeits in the food and drink sectors came from Turkey and more than 37 percent from China (European Commission, Taxation and Customs Union 2008).

The Role of Packaging in Crime Prevention According to the Business Dictionary, packaging can be defined as the processes (such as cleaning, drying, preserving) and materials (such as glass, metal, paper or paperboard, plastic) employed to contain, handle, protect, and/or transport an article. [The] role of packaging is broadening and may include functions such as to attract attention, assist in promotion, provide machine identification (barcodes, etc.),

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impart essential or additional information, and help in utilization. (Businessdictionary.com, accessed December 13, 2011)

Packages have the primary function of containing and protecting “the contents from spoilage, contamination or damage, especially when hauled over long distances by plane, ship, rail or truck” (Meyers and Gerstman 2004, 7). Sometimes the law requires specific information concerning the quality and the reliability of products, particularly for food and medicine. Moreover, packaging is an important vehicle of information with which companies provide notices about the content, use, and disposal of the product and of the package itself. Trademark labels and packaging also have the aim of promoting companies by persuading people to purchase their brands. Packaging is an essential component for a product in diverse sectors, for example, the food, clothing, electronic, chemical, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industries. Nearly 60 percent of the whole package production is used by the food industry alone.6 Depending on the characteristics of products (e.g., materials, consistency, durability) and the requirements of shipment, retail, and consumption, packages can involve primary, secondary, or tertiary levels. Primary packaging envelops the sales units intended for final consumers, secondary packaging groups individual pieces, and tertiary packaging allows bulk transportation of a large number of items. Just as with goods, packaging follows a certain life cycle that comprises several phases.7 The first deals with package design and specification, which is aimed at defining the future characteristics of the package. Packaging design is a part of graphic design. Resources are directed to the development of projects designed for accomplishing these functions and expressing marketing capacity of the product. Next is the extraction of raw materials used in the following phase of packaging manufacture. After that, products are packed and distributed to retailers, and finally reach the consumers. Once the goods have been used, packages can be reused, returned to retailers, recycled, composted, or put in a landfill. Packaging plays a role also in product security, either in offending strategies (i.e., how criminals overcome secure packaging or misuse and abuse packaging for criminal purposes) or in defensive strategies that reduce the risk of crime. Offenders deal with packaging either because they are interested in the content (e.g., for theft, handbag snatching, pilfering) or they are looking for alternate crimes such as

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counterfeiting, fencing, or tampering. In other cases, the package itself is the target of criminal interests because it can be used for functions different from those of the originals: Cardiff’s Statement of Licensing Policy states that “Glasses and glass bottles containing drinks may be used as weapons during incidents of disorder, inflicting serious harm. Consideration should be given to the use of plastic or toughened glass containers.”8 Criminals can use original packaging for illicit businesses (R. Goldstein 2009), for instance by refilling original bottles with fake spirits or wine.9 The presence of discarded packages of expensive devices (e.g., flat-screen TVs, cameras, laptops) outside of houses, particularly in districts with door-to-door trash collection services, can provide information on suitable targets to potential burglars. Furthermore, packages can contain personal information that can be used by trash bin raiders for identity theft. On the other hand, packaging can play an active role in reducing the risk of crime, although crime prevention capacity is seldom considered in packaging design and usually “takes the form of technical features which, in the majority of cases, have resulted from retrospective modifications of previous designs on products which have encountered security related problems” (Design Council 2000, 73). As a consequence, product security strategies often include the thinking about security measures to be applied on or incorporated with packaging, with the prevalent use of technological solutions. As a consequence, packaging in general is not designed to be intrinsically secure, but to become secure by virtue of external technological solutions that are applied or incorporated. In other cases, the package itself becomes a security measure, for instance when small hot products or fast-moving consumer goods are sealed within large packages (Clarke 1999). Packaging can be effective in crime prevention by reducing the possibility that a crime can in principle be committed, by reducing the probability that a negative event will occur, or by reducing the harm derived from a crime. First, packages should reduce the risk of pilfering and shoplifting in retail outlets by use of electronic tags, large boxes, or large blister packs that make it more difficult, obvious, and time consuming to remove or conceal the product. Tampering and its harmful consequences can be reduced by introducing tamper-evident solutions, in which unauthorized access to the protected object can be easily detected. Packages can also be secured through tamper resistance (i.e., the capacity to resist tampering for its particular physical features).

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Existing Solutions and Technologies In some cases, solutions are strictly confined to the package design, like those aimed at making the reproduction of packages and logos harder by making copying or scanning extremely difficult. Nevertheless, for the most part they are add-on technologies that make counterfeiting more easily detectable through covert or overt devices consisting of particular labels and seals, holograms, traceability systems, and so forth.10 Table 8.1 presents a list and a brief description of the principal existing packaging solutions and technologies against counterfeiting. Troublesome Trade-offs One of the crucial questions in choosing packaging functions (containing, protecting, marketing, information, security) remains the troublesome trade-off (Ekblom 2005a); that is, the balance between different elements of the problem that must be adjusted in a preventive strategy. A package must be safe, secure, appealing, but also economic, convenient, and green meaning recyclable and made with environmentally friendly materials that have a low impact on nature and its resources. In recent years, attention has been directed toward the waste of materials and the serious environmental implications caused by packaging production (see, e.g., the European Community’s Packaging & Packaging Waste Directive [94/62/EC]; European Commission 2006). Furthermore, companies are concerned with developing more economic packages that achieve different functions while respecting laws and directives that include recycling and other environmental issues. Security trade-offs must balance, for instance, the presence of security measures and the capacity to make evident and recognizable any manipulation of the aesthetics of the package. No water distributor would put warnings on a water bottle about the risk of tampering and the opportunity for customers to check the integrity of the plastic before drinking because this would probably have a deterrent effect in purchasing bottled water rather than on tampering. Instead, all distributors agreed to make the plastic thicker and thereby more resistant to injectable poison in order to make bottles safer without generating public alarm.11 This choice, however, has an impact on CO2 emissions. Distributors could instead use glass bottles, although these of course are heavier and have some safety issues because of possible breakage.

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Table 8.1

Principal Packaging Solutions and Technologies Against Counterfeiting

Security design Optical variable devices (OVD), i.e., holograms Color shifting Ultraviolet or infrared light–visible elements Digital watermarking

Microtagging

Digital DNAa Radio frequency identification (RFID)

Bidimensional bar coding Design against crime

A sophisticated security design consisting of complex patterns of static lines and variable line widths makes copying packages and labels extremely difficult. They essentially consist of optical markings that reflect light in order to generate an illusory multidimensional image. Depending on the angle of view, special inks allow a shift in color of package labels that helps users to assess the authenticity of the product. Package and label inks can contain ultraviolet or infrared dyes that are visible to the human eye only if exposed to a UV or IR light source. This technology is aimed at adding copyright notices or other types of information, either visible or invisible, to digital video, images, or audio equivalents, and then also to package labels in order to make the product identifiable as the original. Microparticles consisting of chemical DNA-like codes are incorporated with the package and its material (paper, film, adhesive, etc.). Companies provide customized codes for specific products and packaging. Thanks to the traceability of microparticles, it is possible to effectively detect counterfeits. The digital DNA code is aimed at demonstrating the authenticity of products through a nonsequential numeric code embedded within the package. This is a track-and-trace technology consisting of a radio frequency chip that contains product data expressed as an electronic product code (EPC). Therefore, every product is assigned a unique electronic serial number in order to make it possible to track and trace items through the supply chain. In contrast to the traditional bar code, it carries 10 to 30 times more information and then allows more efficient detection of fake products. Designing packages in order to decrease criminals’ capacity to reproduce realistic fakes. See, for instance, the bottle designed for the Hungarian Beekeepers Federation.b

Notes: a. This solution has been developed by Certilogo S.p.A., www.certilogo.com (accessed July 22, 2011). b. See www.packagingnews.co.uk/news/887900/O-I-unveils-jar-help-Hungarys-beekeepersbattle-fake-honey (accessed April 28, 2011).

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Troublesome trade-offs can affect packaging design according to the priorities of the enterprises or the market; however, security is seldom one of the elements taken into account by either.

Packaging Against Counterfeiting Design Against Crime, Counterfeiting, and Packaging Solutions Design against crime theories and principles can be helpful in contrasting counterfeiting with other IPR-related crimes. For instance, using distinctions raised in Ekblom’s (2005a) review of the field, designers can deliver products that are inherently secure such as those with tamper-resistant packages, those that have added-on security tools as seals and holograms on packages for the detection of fakes, and those that act to restrict the resources of offenders such as tamper-evident medicine containers and packages. Within the design process, the think thief perspective (Ekblom 1995, 1997) must deal with trade-offs such as those of aesthetics, legal and ethical issues, environmental considerations, safety, convenience, and costs (Ekblom 2005a). Therefore, crimeproof solutions must necessarily satisfy different needs and purposes over and above the crime-related ones and, for this reason, it is important to follow a clear rationale during the intervention phase. From a similar perspective, the holistic and human-centered approach of the design process based on the design experience model (Cooper and Press 2003) considers the wide experience of products (life context, engagement, experience, and resolution) in relation to crime and the fear of crime. The design process and its fundamental stages of consult, develop, test, and deliver (Design Council 2003; Cooper and Press 2003) follow the crime life cycle model (Wootton and Davey 2003; Chapter 3 of this volume), a framework that describes crime from a cyclical point of view as to how offending behavior can breed further offending behavior. Such a model takes into account 10 phases, either prerequisites to a crime event (phases 1 to 6)12 or postcrime issues (phases 7 to 10), and breaking the cycle is the real key to sustainable crime prevention. The crime life cycle model could be appropriately utilized to describe the life cycle of counterfeiting and help the development of crime-proof packages. Because counterfeiting is an instrumental crime, rather than an expressive one, its life cycle can be understood as having 10 phases:

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Phase 1—offender’s readiness to offend. Not applicable to instrumental crime. Phase 2—availability to offender of resources for crime. Affordable technologies, expert knowledge, and practical experience are all key factors related to this crime. Co-offenders are considered as a particular resource because they can help offenders to perpetrate their crimes; for example, a producer that helps organized crime to illegally reproduce a trademark, a retailer who knowingly sells counterfeit goods, and a consumer who knowingly purchases fakes because of their famous brand at lower price. Phase 3—offender’s presence in or access to situation. For instance, a drug counterfeiter can exploit uncontrolled illegal markets to distribute fake medicines. Phase 4—design attributes of product, place, or environment. In this case, packaging design has been revealed as a strategic sector in which to concentrate resources for facing the proliferation of fakes. Phase 5—behaviors, actions, and abilities of others. Depending on this feature, people can prevent or promote counterfeiting when both aware and unaware. There is a fine line to be drawn between people who merely promote counterfeiting by, for example, buying possible fakes without checking their origins, and those who are clearly deliberate and knowing co-offenders as described above. Phase 6—offender’s anticipation of risk, effort, and reward. This phase refers to the counterfeiter’s rationale about the perspectives related to crime, indicated by the risks of being detected and identified, the efforts, and the potential rewards as large profits coming from the exploitation of famous brands. By addressing the phases above, counterfeiting could be more effectively prevented, and postcrime issues could be favorably mitigated as well. Phase 7—immediate impact (for both victims and offenders). Counterfeiting can affect consumers’ health and safety and damage the interests of companies and governments while producing large profits for criminals. Phase 8—detection of crime. Packaging designs, including add-on devices, permit easier detection of fake products and the counterfeiters that produced them. Phase 9—prosecution of offender (and co-offenders). Several laws, for example, those aimed at protecting products of excellence

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against brand theft crimes, make it possible to better prosecute offenders. Phase 10—longer-term consequences. Counterfeiting can lead to significant long-term consequences such as those involving the fear of consumers affected by the use of fake products and the loss of trust in brands. Nevertheless, the long-term consequences can be reduced in various ways; for instance, by increasing people’s awareness of the problem, by introducing efficacious assistance policies, or by protecting companies’ interests. However, interventions on detection, prosecution, and long-term consequences could have a beneficial, deterrent impact on the counterfeiters’ readiness to offend and could positively break the cycle. Situational Crime Prevention The action research approach of situational crime prevention (Clarke 1997) is already embedded within the crime life cycle model, but it is worth restating here in its original form. The presence of a target or victim, the absence of a capable guardian, and the overall opportunities make crime possible. In this regard, the noteworthy techniques of situational crime prevention could be appropriate to address the counterfeiting problems while providing a valid framework that allows description and classification of different solutions such as those referring to packaging. Such solutions could respectively increase efforts and risks, reduce rewards, and remove excuses. Packaging can impact in particular on the opportunities of concealing hot products and removing them from shelves and displays without the actions being spotted by store staff. Moreover, packaging security systems can make it difficult to take objects outside the stores’ electronic doors. A consideration especially important for protecting consumers’ health, however, is that packaging must ensure the possibility of distinguishing original products from fakes. While awareness of purchasing fake products has no health implications where CDs and DVDs are concerned, it is absolutely crucial for customers of food, drinks, cosmetics, and medicines, and also can have serious consequences in the spare parts sector.

Case Studies The use of security devices and technologies in packaging has the advantage of preventing both counterfeiting itself and the associated

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consequences for consumers (death and serious illness, public panic and crisis), companies (lost revenues, loss of brand integrity), and governments (reduced tax revenues). Depending on the fact that counterfeiters have now gained more skills and can avail themselves of ever more affordable and advanced equipment, every case needs specific solutions and the use of mixed technologies can favorably increase and enhance results. Indeed, crime prevention could be considered as a sort of “arms race” between crime preventers and offenders who innovate and exploit the obsolescence of certain technical solutions (Ekblom 2005a). Pfizer Case Study: Radio Frequency Identification and Color Shift Labels A major, well-documented case dealing with counterfeiting and packaging solutions is that of Pfizer, a renowned pharmaceutical company that sells its products all over the world. As stated by R. Mages, director of global security for Pfizer, Viagra is still the most counterfeited drug.13 The company estimates lost revenue due to counterfeiting at about $2 billion a year while the sales of original products in 2007 reached $1.8 billion, with an overall amount of more than 8.6 million seized bottles in 41 countries. Fake items have also entered the legitimate supply chain of countries supposedly free from the problem; for example, Canada, the United States, and the European Union. Several online pharmacies represent the main source of purchasing counterfeit pills, and unidentified spammers use the Web for promoting fake Viagra, generic Viagra, or generic sildenafil citrate (the active component of this drug), notwithstanding only Pfizer is licensed to sell the active principle.14 Counterfeit Viagra is generally less expensive than the original and can be purchased without a prescription. In recent years, through a close collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory authorities, Pfizer has introduced some advanced packaging technologies aimed at making counterfeiting harder or more easily detectable. At the end of 2004, the company began to affix RFID tags to all Viagra packages destined for the US market. With this technology, an RFID writer gives the product a unique electronic product code while an equivalent reader enables a check on the authenticity of products. Although it is adopted more in the United States than in Europe because of the lack of standards in the latter region, RFID technology is broadly considered as a promising anticounterfeiting tool for the pharmaceutical sector. Meanwhile, prior to

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adoption of RFID (that requires both harmonized radio frequencies and readers), the 2D data matrix coding system (like a checkerboard instead of a 1D bar code, hence containing much more data) can already be used because the system holds and provides data required by industry, retailers, and authorities for tracking and authenticating products (Net Resources International 2006). Among Pfizer’s products, Viagra is not the only drug subject to counterfeiting. For example, other cases refer to the detection of different counterfeit medicines such as Lipitor, Norvasc, Zoloft, and Celebrex.15 An innovative solution against the reproduction of fakes relies on the introduction of a particular color shifting logo on the package.16 If rotated, the product label shows a change in color from blue to purple. With this technique, even consumers can establish the authenticity of the product. In order to address other IPR infringements such as tampering, other solutions include tamper-evident packages for alerting pharmacists to not sell such products and consumers to avoid the use of medicines that show discrepancies. Certilogo and Digital DNA The Protect Your Brand project, jointly developed by Accenture (a global management consulting and technology service) and Certilogo (business solutions against counterfeiting and other forms of commercial fraud), is aimed at guaranteeing the authenticity of “made in Italy” all over the world. An innovative solution, digital DNA17 serves to protect consumers from the risk of purchasing counterfeits while enhancing marketing strategies and ensuring a more strict control of distribution. The system is based on a unique nonsequential numerical code (representing the virtual identity of products) that can be embedded within the package through several devices such as RFID tags, labels, holograms, and bar codes. Consumers can assess the authenticity of products at any moment and place (before and after purchasing it) by checking the identity code via landline, mobile phone short message service (SMS) or wireless application protocol (WAP), and the Internet. Other information provided by such queries (e.g., composition and place of production) permit a wider interaction between brand owners and consumers who can be asked about preferences or purchasing modalities. Indeed, the aim of this feedback is to ensure the brand’s reliability in a context of uncertainty caused by the growth of commercial fraud and IPR infringements.

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The agroalimentary sector has been the first to adopt digital DNA devices to verify its products of excellence, indicated as denomination of protected origin (DOP) and denomination of controlled origin (DOC). For example, Olio Benacus and Acetaia San Giacomo18 have subscribed to Certilogo to protect their traditional brand against fraudulent imitations, whose relevant and serious consequences are represented by the loss of consumers’ trust in such products. Another refers to the famous Brunello di Montalcino red wine. With an average annual production of 200,000 bottles and a globally significant exportation (40 percent of the production is for the US market), it is one of the most counterfeited wines worldwide. After having already adopted such different solutions as microchips embedded within the labels or special holograms, producers have recently decided to enhance the level of security by adding the Certilogo code. Indeed, in a period of expansion in the promising markets of China and Russia, a variegated protection system could probably discourage counterfeiters.19 Besides in the agroalimentary sector, digital DNA has been applied to eight global fashion trademarks. And the rapid proliferation of fakes within cosmetics and pharmaceuticals makes the adoption of this security device desirable for these respective industries.20 Certilogo can allow access to its database for other users such as retailers, company inspectors, customs officers, and law enforcement authorities. Hence, besides being an instrument of business strategy, such technology can lead to advanced investigations aimed at detecting illegal activities dealing with IPR infringements and certain hot spots of crime in order to undertake successful apprehension of counterfeiters. Nevertheless, because of its recent introduction, such technology still needs to be effectively assessed after a long-term implementation period.

Conclusion Packaging design can represent a strategic domain in which to concentrate resources and efforts against IPR infringements and their serious consequences. As I have discussed in this article, a wide range of technology has been developed and implemented to prevent the crime of counterfeiting. Such technologies mainly consist of devices that are embedded within the package, rather than strictly referring to packaging and its features, but nevertheless they are an important part of the

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entire package design. Security designs, holograms, color shifting labels, light-visible elements, digital watermarking, microparticle tags, digital DNA, RFID, and bidimensional bar codes are all effective instruments to prevent counterfeiting. Depending on companies’ strategies to tackle the problem, a variety of mixed solutions can lead to more effective results in target hardening and the easier detection of fakes. In some cases, packaging design has become part of preventive strategy. However, a strategy for preventing counterfeiting through packages designed against crime is still missing. With respect to this, design against crime can play a relevant role because, beyond the techniques and methods, it also considers different aspects linked to both crimes and the modus operandi of criminals and criminal organizations. Hence, strict cooperation between the brand owners and producers and crime researchers is essential to develop crime-proof products that are effectively secure against the risks of counterfeiting. This strategy should involve: (1) identifying which products can be hotter or risky (in terms of public health) in order to decide how much attention must be paid to packaging against counterfeiting. This also includes the various troublesome trade-offs discussed above; (2) designing a product and a package that can primarily reduce harm for customers, reduce the possibility to commit a crime, or when customers’ health is not involved the probability that it occurs; (3) identifying the perpetrator techniques, once the product—and the package— are on the shelf, in order to understand modus operandi and take adequate countermeasures, adapting defensive strategies to the criminals; (4) supporting customers’ capacity to detect fake products. In this sense, companies can play a significant role by advising buyers how to distinguish between fakes and original products. Indeed, an increasing number of packaging solutions are aimed at helping consumers to avoid the risks of buying counterfeit goods while making them aware of the existence of fake products; (5) embedding the implementation of packaging solutions and technologies in a wider framework of policies and integrated activities both at the local and international level. This wider strategy must include enhanced legal instruments, tougher penalties for criminals, more effective regulatory systems, and stricter cooperation between national and international law enforcement agencies to share information about the phenomenon (including tools such as modus operandi) in order to detect counterfeiters and their criminal networks. In recent years, more intensive cooperation between national and international organizations dealing with the problem and the private

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sector has taken place with a growing number of reports, studies, and conferences on counterfeiting, often dedicated to packaging solutions as promising tools to prevent such crime. Among other things, this has led to an increase in stakeholders’ awareness of the matter and enhanced efforts to fight the problem. In relation to this, packaging design can also be considered as a promising domain for developing ever more efficacious solutions against counterfeiting.

Notes The author wishes to thank Mara Mignone for her ideas, and Michele Origgi for support in the collection of information and for the two case studies. 1. US Food and Drug Administration, www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ ucm169898.htm (accessed May 18, 2011). 2. Some of the conferences are: the International Anti-counterfeiting Strategies Conference 2008, “Optimising the Efficiency of Your Anti-counterfeiting Strategy Through Effective Resource Management and Risk Mitigation” (February 27–28, 2008, Milan); the 3rd Annual Anti-Counterfeiting & Brand Protection Summit, “Implementing Strategies for Combating the Growing Industry Epidemic While Defending Your Brand Integrity” (April 28–30, 2008, New York); and the 3rd Annual Conference on Pharmaceutical Anticounterfeiting Strategies, “Dynamic Solutions to a Dynamic Problem” (June 30–July 2, 2008). 3. Corriere della Sera, “Disastri aerei, adesso si indaga sui pezzi di ricambio contraffatti,” August 26, 2005, http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2005/agosto/26/ Disastri_aerei_adesso_indaga_sui_co_9_050826045.shtml (accessed December 14, 2011). 4. Melamine Milk Crisis, www.newsfood.com/?location=English&item= 47854 (accessed April 28, 2011). 5. Moscow’s drinking problem, New York Times, April 16, 2011, www .nytimes.com. 6. CEN (European Committee for Standardization)—Packaging, www.cen .eu/cenorm/sectors/sectors/transportandpackaging/packaging/index.asp (accessed April 28, 2011). 7. Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) (n.d.), “Quick Help: Getting Started on Products and Packaging, www.wrap.org.uk/retail_supply_ chain/design/quick_help_getting.html (accessed May 18, 2011). 8. Cardiff Council, Licensing committee, “Report of the Chief Regulatory Services Officer, Licensing Reform—Glass Bottles and Glasses,” October 12, 2005, p. 1, www.cardiff.gov.uk/objview.asp?object_id=2345 (accessed April 28, 2011). 9. The story of a £18,000 bottle is available at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ uknews/1578111/18000-Petrus-is-a-fake-says-customer.html (accessed April 28, 2011).

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10. An overt device is immediately visible to the observer. In contrast, a covert device is a security measure visible only with the use of special devices. 11. Tgcom, “Arriva la bottiglia anti acquabomber,” http://www.tgcom 24.mediaset.it/cronaca/articoli/articolo267006.shtml (accessed December 14, 2011). 12. This aspect of the model is based on Ekblom’s (2011a) conjunction of criminal opportunity framework on the causes of crime; see also www.design againstcrime.com/web/crimeframeworks (accessed December 15, 2011). 13. Pfizer, “Counterfeiting Medicines Is on the Rise in the United States and Around the Globe, Putting Patients at Risk,” www.pfizer.com/products/ counterfeit_and_importation/counterfeit_importation.jsp (accessed April 28, 2011). 14. Interlink Enterprise Computing, “Counterfeit Viagra Spammer Nets $15,000 per Day, www.spamdailynews.com/publish/Why_Viagra_spam_ floods_your_mailbox.asp (accessed April 28, 2011). 15. See, for example, www.pfizer.com/products/counterfeit_and_ importation/counterfeit_qa.jsp (accessed April 28, 2011); “Counterfeiting: A Global Problem,” www.packaging-gateway.com/features/feature208/ (accessed April 28, 2011); “Counterfeit Drugs: The Science of Telling the Real from the Fake,” http://faultydrugs.com/fda_drug_advisory/fda-warns-about-counterfeitalli-products (accessed May 18, 2011); and “Pfizer Notifies U.S. Pharmacists of New Information About Counterfeit Lipitor,” www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/ stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-03-2003/0001958700& EDATE (accessed April 28, 2011). 16. www.packaging-gateway.com/features/feature208/ (accessed May 18, 2011). 17. See www.certilogo.com (accessed April 28, 2011). 18. See “Counterfeit Proof,” Italia Imballagio magazine, www.italiaim ballaggio.packmedia.net/files/066_070_0.pdf (accessed May 18, 2011). 19. Ferraino G, “Il corriere della Sera, Ho comprato il Brunello, è quello vero?” October 8, 2008. The complete article is available at http://archivios torico.corriere.it/2008/ottobre/08/comprato_Brunello_quello_vero__co_9_081 008123.shtml (accessed April 28, 2011). 20. Guerra ai falsi, “Ecco il Dna digitale,” Il Corriere della Sera, October 8, 2008. Available at http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2008/ottobre/08/Guerra_ falsi_ecco_Dna_digitale_co_9_081008124.shtml (accessed May 28, 2011).

9 Reducing Handbag Theft Paul Ekblom, Kate Bowers, Lorraine Gamman, Aiden Sidebottom, Chris Thomas, Adam Thorpe, and Marcus Willcocks

CHAPTER 2 SET OUT THE SECURITY FUNCTION FRAMEWORK AS A

systematic way of explaining design against crime. In this chapter, we put the framework through its paces by describing an intimate account of the design rationale of Grippa clips, which are intended to prevent handbag theft in bars. The term handbag used in this chapter refers to all kinds of bags, such as shopping bags, laptop backpacks, and purses. Besides reporting on a specific research, design, and development project, this exercise serves to illustrate the complexity and challenge of the design against crime task and the ongoing progress in weaving together design and crime science research and practice. It also tests out the capacity of SFF to handle the task for which it was developed. Note that this is a description and discussion of how the Grippa clip is intended to function. It incorporates findings of various user-testing exercises, but it is not an evaluation of the impact of the clip on crime, although a version of SFF with an evaluative facet could be developed. We describe what happened in the attempted impact evaluation below (see also Ekblom in press). As set out in Chapter 2, the SFF description covers four main dimensions: purpose, security niche, mechanisms, and technicality. In this chapter, the last two dimensions—mechanisms and technicality— are merged because the latter intimately realizes the former. If a person visits a public bar, café, or library their handbag, if they have one, is at risk of being stolen. The British Crime Survey suggests that people who visit cafés and bars three or more times a week are at greater than twice the risk of theft than those who do not (Kershaw, Nicholas, and Walker 2008). Diverse attempts have been made to prevent 167

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this category of crime, but those of interest here center on the design of products—furniture and fittings—to help handbag owners in such places to protect their property. Various items have been designed and tested at the Design Against Crime Research Centre. One is the Stop Thief Chair, described in Chapter 2.1 Another—the subject of this case study—is the Grippa clip, a hinged loop fixed under the table edge on which people may hang their handbags. Figure 9.1 shows the final version of the Grippa clip. DACRC and UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science collaborated on what was intended to be a thorough design process informed by research and theory, followed by a large-scale and rigorous impact evaluation of the clips on crime. The design and evaluation processes built on earlier experience of developing the clips and putting them through trials as documented in C. Smith, Bowers, and Johnson (2006). Fuller, visually illustrated reports of the research, design process, and attempted impact evaluation are available at www.grippaclip.com.

The Grippa Clip’s Purpose The principal purpose of the Grippa clip is to reduce the risk of theft of handbags from owners seated at tables in public places such as bars, Figure 9.1 Final Version of the Grippa Clip

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cafés, or libraries. But underlying this deceptively simple statement is considerable diversity when we consider the perspectives of different stakeholders and managers. Purpose from the Handbag Owner’s Perspective We take as the immediate user the owners whose handbags are at risk of theft. The principal purpose of the Grippa clip is theft reduction. Owners want to reduce the risk of loss of their handbag and its contents. The fact of victimization from theft is in itself unpleasant. The event may bring with it further harm, including sentimental and financial loss, crime proliferation (e.g., mishandling of credit cards), and sheer hassle (finding how and where to report the crime, stopping and renewing credit cards, changing locks, etc.). Other quality of life and community safety harms more broadly associated with the theft problem include an inability to relax in bars, whether in anticipation of risk or recollection of previous direct or vicariously known theft events. Reassuring handbag owners so that they feel safe enough to enjoy themselves may therefore be a significant benefit, even if they have not consciously thought of this or voiced it to others. But it is important not to make owners feel so safe they rely entirely on technology and drop their guard. This is an issue of risk homeostasis (Wilde 1998; Norman 1990 who suggests, e.g., designing bathtubs that look more slippery than they actually are to ensure that bathers take necessary safety precautions) that we return to below. Subsidiary purposes for customers (both handbag owners and others) include tidiness by keeping handbags off the floor and hence clean, the kind of thing addressed by a customer care approach by the bar or other establishment. Desire requirements are broad, and not necessarily crime-related benefits for owners and users. We identified those that follow from several sources: (1) intuitive attempts of the research and design team to think like the modal bar customer; (2) research into crime patterns in bars (Sidebottom and Bowers 2010); (3) trial iterations of Grippa table mock-ups in workshops with bar management, police, and design students;2 (4) interviews and observations on pilot trials of Grippa clips in two bars in London and two in Barcelona;3 and (5) observations of functionally equivalent Chelsea clips in real-world use and under scrutiny for their design and construction.4 According to these sources, handbag owners want easy, intuitive operation of clips, and the capac-

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ity to protect a wide range of sizes, shapes, and weights of handbags (unlike the Chelsea clip whose gape and strength were limited by form and materials).5 Customers (not just handbag owners) want to avoid: • Injury to themselves or damage to their handbags and clothing directly from the Grippa clip, whether its mere presence (e.g., bruising from the projecting clip) or its operation (e.g., trapping fingers). • Injury indirectly from tipping the table and its contents (due to the suspended weight), or in case of breakage of Grippa clip (e.g., handbag drops to floor when clip breaks, sharp stump remains under table); tripping on handbag when rising from or approaching seat; or handbag getting kicked, trampled, or scuffed by owner or others when held in particular positions on or above the floor. • Nuisance from effort to hitch or unhitch bag, not just on arrival and departure, but when going to the bar to order a drink, answering one’s mobile phone, visiting the restroom, going outside for a smoke, etc. • Forgetting handbag when leaving bar. • Acquiring an uncool or otherwise inappropriate image from being seen as concerned enough about crime risk to use the Grippa clip. • Adverse ambience—wider harms from the appearance of obvious security products conveying the feeling of being beleaguered by crime, or the lesser harm of having to view unattractive fixtures and fittings in the bar. • Costs of Grippa clips passed on as higher prices of drinks. • Increased risk of theft by signaling the possession of an attractive handbag to would-be offenders, or by inappropriately persuading the owner to take the handbag off their person if they are otherwise more comfortable and secure with it there. Society’s wider interests—in SFF known as hygiene requirements— were variously represented by agencies such as the police and embedded in national or local government policy. This information was obtained by informal discussions with police design advisers and crime reduction teams, a familiarity with government policy in terms of published literature on crime strategy, and awareness of other policy issues across gov-

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ernment. Via the police, the interests of local government departments such as community safety, health and safety, and trading standards were vicariously voiced. These requirements include: • Avoiding costs to taxpayers of crime and insecurity as well as moral costs of tempting potential criminals into action. • Avoiding excessive use of energy or raw materials and creation of waste from manufacture and distribution; promoting recycling at end of product life. • Respecting health and safety (e.g., avoiding injuries from tripping over) and public health (e.g., cleanability). • Being supportive of local social and economic regeneration strategies (encouraging custom trade and improving the area’s reputation). • Being inclusive (e.g., usable by older people or people with disabilities). Purpose from the Bar Management’s Perspective This information was obtained from informal interviews with bar staff, bar managers, and senior district managers of the collaborating bar company. It also came from workshops where staff were variously presented with crime analysis findings and mock-ups of Grippa clips on tables that they could try out and discuss with the designers. It was supplemented by our own informal “business thinking” knowledge and exercises. Note that the purposes and requirements of the bar company are not homogeneous. The people serving behind the bar and dealing directly with victims and others will have a different set of priorities and perceptions from the middle or senior managers in a context of limited company loyalty and short-term employment. In other contexts, staff may be longer serving, loyal, and committed to company values (where they own the property themselves they will of course have a greater personal investment). This attitude of staff subsequently appeared crucial to the utilization of the Grippa clips by customers (Ekblom in press). The bar company’s principal strategic purpose is to make a profit, without impediment or interruption. A subsidiary purpose may be positive enhancement of corporate social responsibility and company image or reputation, normally to support profit rather than necessarily for their own sake.

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How do such strategic purposes relate to Grippa clips? The most important issue is why a bar company would want to install the clips at all when the main benefits arguably accrue primarily or exclusively to customers. Indeed there are risks to the company’s profit and image to consider, which are discussed below. Possible positive reasons why companies would want to install the clips include: • Attracting more customers and, hence, gaining competitive advantage over rivals through an image of improved security and customer care. • Avoiding loss of customers through unpleasant theft experiences associated with the venue. • Avoiding hassle from handbag owners who, on discovering their loss, take up the time of bar staff. • Alleviating or averting the attention of police or health and safety officials seeking to reduce a handbag theft problem, which may generate problems ranging from hassle to loss of license in extreme cases. • Enhancing the company’s corporate social responsibility image. Some of these purposes could be collective—all bars would have common interest in reducing theft if a particular neighborhood acquired the reputation of a theft hot spot to be avoided by customers. Others would be individualistic—displacing theft to competitors could have inadvertent benefits. All of the above purposes more or less align the interests of the bar company with the purposes and desire requirements of customers identified earlier, simply because happy customers who feel safe buy drinks and make return visits. To the extent that the police and health and safety officials can effectively apply pressure, bar management interests will also become aligned with societal hygiene requirements of crime prevention and community safety. What is less clear is how far the bar management perceives this to be beneficial. This in turn depends on what they believe that the customers, or the public officials, perceive and want; what they believe is the risk of choosing not to comply with the wishes or meet the needs of either party; and what they believe is the minimum compliance needed to secure their own objectives. We must consider the possibility of compliance and alignment that is both tokenistic and temporary; that is, suspended as soon as the pressure appears to be off (Ekblom in press).

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It is somewhat more straightforward to identify the generic desire requirements of Grippa clips for the bar management. These cover a mix of in-function and as-object issues: • • • • •

• • • •

Economy of purchase. Economy and ease of installation. Durability. Economy and ease of maintenance and replacement or removal with minimal damage. Possible recyclability or transfer to new furniture (bars change their furniture, and sometimes style of furniture, every few years). Ease of cleaning. No impediment to the movement or stacking of tables. Aesthetics of product alone and in combination with furniture, interior decor, and brand identity. Versatility so that it can work on furniture other than tables.

Desire requirements specifically related to crime and safety include not awakening customers’ perceptions of risk and feelings of anxiety about crime and, hence, loss of trade; not presenting a negative image of the venue or company and, hence, loss of trade; and not conceding liability of bar in case of theft and, hence, extra costs. Purpose from the Manufacturing and Marketing Perspective Although DAC Research Centre is a nonprofit university-based institution, our interest is in designing crime prevention products that make a significant and widespread impact on crime and quality of life. This requires the products to be of a kind that could be made, sold, and used in the real world for a profit and a decent and durable return on investment. We therefore take on the role of the pseudocommercial marketer and manufacturer. This is based on the experience of actual licensing to industry of some of our products (including the CaMden bicycle stand and Stop Thief Chairs) and team members’ own experiences of working in industry. Various attempts to market Grippa clips are in progress. Manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers or finishing contractors (i.e., shopfitting service providers), obviously, wish to make their own profit. Therefore, they must align themselves with all of the above pur-

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poses and requirements, especially demand from the bar companies that are their customers and, ultimately, by proxy from customers in the bars (the end users). Beyond basic profitability of marketing an individual product, offering security along with other services and products may confer a unique selling point or competitive edge and allow operations or production to enter new domains. Generic desire requirements include: • Ease and economy of manufacture including low cost of raw materials, reliability of their sourcing, production and durability of casting molds, minimal waste and low reject rate, simplicity of production, and requiring the fewest parts. • Ease of packing, storage, and transportation without damage or deterioration. • Ease of installation. • Widest possible market for fewest possible variants to enable efficiencies and economies of scale and durability of design in the face of new decor and furniture on which to be fitted; hence, versatility of style and fitting is more important than being maximally adapted to specific contexts. • Control of product liability issues (e.g., adherence to international standards on product safety or protecting customers from nickel allergy); this requires alignment with hygiene issues. There appear to be no specific crime-related requirements apart from those simply deriving from alignment with the wishes of bar management. Appeal to a Wider Group of Managers There is relatively limited profitability appeal to bar companies from investing in protection of handbag owners through purchasing, installing, and encouraging use of Grippa clips and practically any other security products or services. Company ethics and values may vary on their wider corporate social responsibility (Hardie and Hobbs 2005). This means that, in mobilizing the bar companies to fit Grippa clips, it is safest to assume that some external pressure may be needed to maintain their motivation. This could come from legislation for security, or more immediate pressure from local police and licensing authorities in tackling a theft problem, or from the central government (Clarke and Newman 2005b; see also the work of the UK’s former Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime6). Therefore, it would be a sensible

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requirement to make the Grippa designs appeal to such people and organizations. Appeal could be supported by making the designs and their crime prevention rationale fully understandable and aligned with principles that the managers would support. Such an approach supports climate setting (Ekblom 2011a; Ekblom in press); see also Scott and Goldstein’s (2005) analysis of shifting and sharing responsibility for crime prevention. Other public or private stakeholders with an interest in user experiences, and area reputations and images, are those responsible for the local economy and tourism.

The Grippa Clip’s Security Niche The Grippa clip, at face value, is a security product. That is, its principal purpose on which all the above builds is to reduce the risk of crime targeted on other entities and the people who own them. There is, however, some debate within the research team even now whether the Grippa clip is fully a security product or a securing product. This issue turns on the emphasis to be placed on security versus safety (antitrip), tidiness, and keeping handbags off the floor and thus clean as part of a customer care approach. And indeed, different stakeholders may have different uses for and visions of the same object as described above. But this tension as to intent has to be lived with: purpose is not a straightforward matter. Being a security product means that every aspect of the Grippa clip’s design becomes relevant for security purposes, even desire properties such as aesthetics and hygiene properties such as sustainability. If neglected, these security inhibitors could frustrate the security purpose as effectively as a failure of design of the primary security function itself. Clips of inappropriate style would not be purchased and installed and, hence, could not reduce crime—unless the unopened boxes of clips happened to fall on passing handbag thieves. To go further, the Grippa clip is a fitted product rather than a portable one. And it is designed to be retrofitted, although it could readily be factory fitted or even evolve into a security component of furniture. For marketing considerations, the clip is designed to be versatile and adaptable in fitting a wide range of furniture shapes and styles rather than highly adapted to a single niche. It does this, as all security products do, in conjunction with other physical entities and human agents in its intended working context described below.

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It is possible to take a wider perspective. Tables fitted with Grippa clips could be considered securing products whose primary purpose is somewhere to sit at and whose secondary (security) purpose is as described in the previous section. The bars in which the fitted tables are situated could be considered as securing enclosures, particularly if the clips are combined with security communications and securing practices of bar staff. Other products have occupied the same niche as the Grippa clip.7 The Chelsea clip (Figure 9.2) is an earlier, police-designed equivalent, which in fact stimulated the development of the Grippa clip through its manifest failure to be used and limitations of design. Failure to be used was evidenced by observations that, in an entire street (Upper Street, Islington, London) containing many bars that had been intensively fitted with Chelsea clips in a police initiative, hardly any were in use. A similar picture emerged in more recent observations in a venue at London’s Victoria Station.8 Over the 3 months and 62 sessions of on-site observations conducted by the research team (before and after installation), only one of the Chelsea clips was observed in use by customers, compared with 246 handbags hung on Grippa clips over the 2 months of postinstallation observation. Design limitations centered on weakness and breakage of the Chelsea clip’s jaws; its limited gape; and, Figure 9.2 The Chelsea Clip

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because it was positioned right beneath the tabletop and set back from the edge, invisibility to users. Portable security products such as the prize-winning KeepSafe designed by Central Saint Martins College student Sara Bellini9 serve an equivalent purpose and work via similar direct preventive mechanisms as the Grippa clip. However, they are carried by the handbag owner who slides them onto the edge of the tabletop.10 The advantage is that they empower already alert, informed, and motivated users so they are more likely to be used in the first place and used as the designer intended. The disadvantage from a societal perspective is the limitation to the security coverage of tables and bars—unless such products become popular, most handbags will remain unprotected.

Mechanisms and Technicality: How the Grippa Clip Works and How It Is Made and Operated We now shift perspective from the Grippa clip’s purpose and security niche to how it is intended to work (mechanisms of prevention with purpose, together known as the security function) and how it is made and operated (technicality). As noted earlier, the preventive mechanisms and their technical realizations are described together for convenience and economy, but other arrangements could be adopted. In this respect, it should be noted that SFF is more of a language for articulating ideas than a rigid structure. Before describing the preventive mechanisms by which Grippa clips intervene in the causes of criminal events, we must first describe what these mechanisms work on; in other words, handbag theft itself. The focus here is on patterns of theft, the nature and unfolding of the theft events, and the causal mechanisms that underlie them. Preventive mechanisms themselves broadly fall into two categories. There are those that directly underlie the intervention (how the Grippa clip and associated communication materials, once deployed and used, influence and constrain offenders); and those that act indirectly, through involvement, specifically mobilization, of other people and organizations to undertake crime prevention tasks and roles. Some of these tasks and roles amount to implementing and sustaining the intervention—it is people like bar managers who choose to install the Grippa clips and handbag owners who may use them to thwart thieves. On technicality, this relates to how the causal properties of the Grippa clip, which enable

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the above physical and social mechanisms, are realized through materials and structural features, and via manufacture, deployment, and operation in service. The Nature and Causes of the Theft Problem in Bars Here we summarize empirical findings and other knowledge on handbag theft in bars. We derived it from three sources: an analysis of police records; a review of handbag theft problems and solutions; and practitioners’ knowledge of criminals and their techniques gleaned mainly from police crime prevention design advisers familiar with the problem. Our own practical experience in designing and testing the Grippa clips also involved some thinking, and role-playing, thief (abuser-centered design), which provided additional insight. We begin this description with the basic nature and patterns of the handbag theft problem; then move to coverage of perpetrator techniques and scripts; then to script clashes between thieves and handbag owners; and, finally, to wider consideration of the situational factors conducive to theft that the techniques and scripts have coevolved to exploit and to cope with. A more extensive analysis would go on to explore the wider opportunity structure (e.g., Clarke and Newman 2006) of handbag theft in bars (covering, e.g., the factors that make for availability of handbags full of rich pickings, and inattentive owners in crowded places). From the point of view of the Grippa clip’s designers, focusing on the immediate circumstances of theft, opportunity structure is part of the background. However, it becomes important when contemplating marketing issues for eventual production models of the Grippa clip (e.g., how many bars are high risk and in what kinds and clusters of location?) and any future changes in the structure (e.g., will counterterrorism pressures cause good quality CCTV to be installed in most city center bars?). The pattern of handbag theft in bars. Sidebottom and Bowers

(2010) describe the pattern of handbag theft in the bars that were the subject of this case study; the findings were fed into the design of the Grippa clip and the strategy for their placement. (More generic material on the problem is provided in an associated Center for ProblemOriented Policing paper [Johnson et al. 2010] and at www.inthebag .org.uk.) This was based on analysis of police records of 1,023 handbag theft incidents during 2005–2006 in 26 bars from the one bar company

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in central London and 317 customer surveys conducted in 14 bars of the same chain. For design-related considerations, a major aspect of the analysis was the indexing of crime risks within venues by appropriate denominators: number of seats, number of customers, or number of handbags per bar; and identification of where within bars that the handbags were at greatest risk. Among crime pattern findings of interest here are that bags were most at risk when placed over a chairback or on the floor; hence, the importance of clips keeping handbags to the front, off the floor, and close to personal defensible and surveillance space. Also of relevance were the findings regarding handbag owners’ failure to undertake an effective crime preventer role. While the surveys indicated that the public knew which handbag-stowing locations were risky, their handbag-stowing behavior seemed at odds with this, indicating that alerting, informing, motivating, and empowering customers would be an important part of the preventive design strategy. Perpetrator techniques and scripts. Theft is about illegal possession

of property and the often stealthy transfer from legitimate owner to thief by which this is accomplished. In the case of theft of handbags from people seated at tables in bars and similar venues, the handbag or its contents are the loot and the transfer is accomplished by various perpetrator techniques. The sequence of tasks that the offender must successfully accomplish in the course of applying the technique is the script. Various additional resources, such as tools, props (including coats or maps used to obscure the handbag owner’s view), or skills, may be deployed. For the purposes of this study, knowledge of these techniques was obtained mainly by interviews with police officers and reading of other research; crime reports rarely contained sufficient detail and, in this instance, offenders were not interviewed directly. The perpetrator techniques that we are aware of center on stealthily removing either the handbag or its contents when the bag is not actually on the owner’s person (where presumably it is safest). The thief may creep up to the table where the victim is seated and surreptitiously slide or hook the handbag, often with a foot. The handbag is moved until it is out of the view of the owner or at least so it is in a position where the owner (wrongly assuming it is someone else’s) will pay no attention if the thief reaches down and picks it up. The thief must also avoid attracting the attention of other customers or staff who might detect what is happening and warn the target handbag owner or challenge the thief. As part of the wider script, the thief obviously must:

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• Select a promising bar. • Enter and quickly assess whether this is a good or bad venue for theft. • If good, blend in with customers to avoid attracting attention (which may be further complicated by having to find ways to plausibly avoid buying drinks every time they enter a bar for criminal reasons). • Scan for attractive handbags and handbag owner combinations (attractive handbag can be understood in terms of the perceived ratio of desirable items to unwanted bycatch such as unsalable clutter within the handbag). • Approach, displace the handbag, pick up the handbag, carry off the handbag to the restroom where it is plundered and dumped; or directly leave the bar with the handbag or its contents; or, alternatively, steal from the handbag in place on the floor or, more likely, on the side or back of the chair. • All this should preferably remain undetected until a safe period of time has passed. • Leave the bar. The script is likely to differ in detail, if not in main sequence, depending on how busy the bar is. Handbag owners’ scripts. Handbag owners also have scripts, which

may or may not have an explicit crime prevention aspect. Our knowledge of these came from our own experience as handbag owners in bars, plus informal observation of others supplemented with information from the customer surveys. The basic script is about: • Finding a suitable bar. • Entering and scanning for attractiveness of venue and customers, and for space to sit. • Deciding to stay. • Perhaps locating a table and reserving it with clothing or even the handbag while buying a drink or food. • Sitting down, perhaps with company. • Placing the handbag in a convenient location. • Occasionally leaving the seat (buying a drink, visiting the restroom) and eventually leaving the bar, hopefully with the handbag and its contents.

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The handbag owner may consider handbag security at some time, whether in selecting a table or seat or in placement of the bag, although our customer surveys found crime prevention to be a comparatively low priority. The detailed placement of the handbag may be at the owner’s feet, on their lap, on the table, or on the side or back of the chair (Sidebottom and Bowers 2010).11 In both table selection and handbag placement, security is but one of many considerations and constraints of physical configuration and crowding may limit choices. Script clashes. Script clashes between thief and handbag owner in this

situation are the pivots on which interventions operate where the designer seeks to favor the users, surveillers, and so forth, over the offender. Clashes include: • Surveillance vs. stealth during approach of thief, taking of the handbag, and leaving the bar. • Challenge at the point of theft (“Hey, what are you doing with my bag?”) vs. plausible excuse (“Sorry, it just caught on my foot; not much room here with all these people”). • Pursuit vs. escape once the intention or act of theft has been detected. Immediate factors conducive to theft. Various immediate causal fac-

tors, relating to offender and crime situation, contribute to the conjunction of criminal opportunity (Ekblom 2010, 2011a)12 for this kind of theft. On the offender’s side: • The thief will be predisposed to offend and ready to do so either in advance, or by prompts from seeing vulnerably placed or attractive handbags, or items visible within them. • There will be plenty of bars within easy traveling distance of the offender’s presence (otherwise, the bars will have no legitimate customers, let alone criminal visitors). • The offender will have various resources, especially perpetrator techniques and scripts, and also courage. Other emotional resources might serve to maintain inward and outward professional cool. Still other resources and techniques may include dressing to blend into the clientele of the facility (e.g., city banker types), thus minimizing suspicion. (Offenders may work in pairs or groups, which is not specifically taken into account here.)

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• The offender’s perception of opportunity relates to risk of harmful events (arrest, embarrassment, getting beaten up), effort and cost (emerging empty-handed, wasting time or opportunity cost), and reward (rich pickings from handbags). The situational factors tilt the balance of the script clashes in the thief’s favor: • The target property that the Grippa clip is intended to secure is of course the handbag of the customer. The handbag is usually only the container for the ultimate target—cash, phones, keys, laptops, and other personal hot products (Clarke 1999) that are attractive to thieves— though thieves often take the entire handbag and pick over the contents in a safe place. • The target persons are the handbag owners. They are usually unable, unaware, or unwilling to effectively perform the task of protecting their property well; in many cases, they act more as crime promoters than preventers (we could at least consider them diminished preventers). The owner either: (1) leaves their own handbag in a place where they physically cannot guard it by sight or touch (e.g., under the table, hanging on the back of the chair); or (2) if guardianship is technically possible, their surveillance capacity is diminished in various ways. This could be by distraction from conversing with friends, watching sports on TV, participating in bar quizzes; by generally losing vigilance due to fatigue, cognitive overload of noise, music, and alcohol; or by slipping into a “here’s a place where I can relax” mindset. Handbag owners may be uninformed about the degree of risk and not empowered to recognize criminal attempts (e.g., unaware of perpetrator techniques such as hooking). They may find it embarrassing to challenge a potential offender in ambiguous circumstances. They may be tourists with limited command of English and, hence, perhaps relatively ineffectual at detecting or responding to crime when it happens. Third-party customers and bar staff might also act as preventers by looking out for, and responding to, the theft of someone else’s handbag. But mostly, they are constrained and incapacitated in ways similar to the target handbag owners. To the extent that the facility benefits from social cohesion (e.g., a local pub where regular customers know one another and might undertake collective protection), they will be motivated to intervene. This could be before the event (pointing out an insecure handbag), during (shouting a warning, supporting a challenge), or after (giving chase). In the venues studied, there was notable variation

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between and within bars (depending on the staff) as to whether staff routinely intervened to alert owners that their handbags were placed in risky positions. The enclosure often has many criminogenic properties, often functional ones from the offender’s perspective (note the “-ables and -ibles”; see Ekblom [2011d] for new ways of describing environments relating to CPTED principles). These properties include that the enclosure is publicly accessible, giving offenders easy entry whether as planned crime sweeps or casual visits where crime opportunities sometimes present themselves. The conditions are often unfavorable to surveillance by any party who might act as preventer—owner, other customer, or bar staff—because it may at times be obscured by crowding or barriers and unevenly lit. Crowding supports the plausible excuses of offenders already described. Crowding may diminish the handbag owner’s scope to challenge invasions of space because people must stand close to tables. Keeping track of who is coming and going, and what their intentions may be, is difficult. The enclosure may be entered and exited by multiple street doors, without access control; hence, escape may be easy. An analysis of seating positions hardest hit by handbag theft in one bar (C. Smith, Bowers, and Johnson 2006) showed these were along the interior path from one street door to the other, and not concentrated (as customers interviewed had predicted), right beside each door (ready for a quick entry, grabbing of the handbag, and equally quick exit). In some cases, the bar tables may be outside—either in an outdoor enclosure or on the street in the wider environment. From a practical implementation perspective, it is not possible to economize by targeting only high-risk tables for installation of Grippa clips, deterring thieves from only the most favorable locations to attack. This is because bar furniture is often moved around (e.g., to accommodate dancing) so that the tables fitted with clips could find themselves next deployed in a low-risk position, leaving the high-risk positions deprived of protection. The sample of London bars studied demonstrated the classic “J-curve” distribution of “risky facilities” (Eck, Clarke, and Guerette 2007); a few of the bars accounted for much of the total crime. Overall, the rich pickings contents of the enclosure and any deficient security levels may cause any one bar to become a crime attractor, a location that offenders actively seek out because of the opportunity it provides in terms of limited risk of harm, limited effort, and good reward (Brantingham and Brantingham 2008; Clarke and Eck 2003). Even the routine presence of many people passing through a busy facility for

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mainly noncriminal purposes may act as a crime generator due to the casual conjunctions of opportunity it engenders. The Security Function of the Grippa Clip Function is a mechanism with purpose. Having described the nature and causes of handbag theft, we now set out the security function of the Grippa clip that is designed to prevent it by interrupting, weakening, or diverting mechanisms of crime causation. We first cover the basic function—how the Grippa clip is intended to work—in terms of intervention mechanisms that work directly, and those that work by mobilizing handbag owners and others to use the clip or otherwise support its use. In both cases, we consider the issue of minimizing any criminal harms that emanate from the clip itself or from mobilization strategies. We then consider the supportive security functions that protect and extend the basic one; meeting hygiene requirements; and meeting the desire purposes and requirements of bar owners. Basic security function. The Grippa clip is fundamentally intended to work by preventing removal of the handbag by anchoring it through the handbag handle(s) to a table that, through weight and bulk, is itself difficult to remove or cut. The design requirements for this are simple and obvious. But consideration of the detailed mechanisms reveals greater complexity and a common characteristic of preventive methods (Tilley 1993; Ekblom 2002)—parallel possibilities. The Grippa clip is intended especially to make stealthy removal difficult or dangerous for the offender by requiring hand movements that are visible to the owner and to other people and that are unambiguous in revealing their intent to release and remove the handbag. The thief’s attempt to disarm the accusation with an excuse is itself disarmed. Also, requiring those movements to be made close to the handbag owner, which in turn violates the owner’s personal defensible space, makes it psychologically uncomfortable for the thief and more likely that the owner will spot and see enough of what is happening to feel comfortable in challenging the move. And finally, this requires a fiddly, hence slow, movement that deters and discourages snatching of handbags. These are real-time preventive mechanisms, albeit dependent on advance installation and use of the Grippa clip. But they are only part of the story because they have to work differentially (i.e., discriminate between thief and legitimate owner in terms of their scripts and require-

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ments). Simply blocking the removal of the handbag directly would render the Grippa clip unusable by the owner. Such discrimination must rely on some difference between handbag owners and thieves. It operates in two ways, biasing the script clashes noted in the previous section, to favor the handbag owner by (1) making it physically difficult for the thief to release the handbag from its anchorage but physically easy for the owner to both secure and release it; and (2) making movement, and intention of movement, obvious to all onlookers—which is dangerous for the thief, but of no consequence for the owner. Both are realized through a simple difference in position relative to the anchor release action of the Grippa clip. The clip’s design and its installation are together arranged so the handbag owner occupies the only position from which successful release can be easily achieved. How far this discrimination can be blunted by the thief’s acquiring skills or developing tools is unclear. Besides making handbags secure in real-time terms, the Grippa clip has to send deterrent or discouraging messages to the thief in advance of the attempt. These have the advantage that the criminal attempt does not proceed as far as potential damage and confrontation. The messages may work at different stages of the thief’s script: seeking and entering bars; upon entry, deciding to abort or stay; seeking likely tables and targets; and moving in on the target selected. Grippa clips may act by their presence alone, suggesting the bar is a security conscious venue. This may deter and discourage the thief from entry while attracting (or at least having no influence on) the legitimate handbag owner. This may be achieved by the salient visibility of the clip, the configuration, and the wider security system centered on the handbag owner. However, deliberate semiotic mechanisms and designs can be important here (Whitehead et al. 2008). The clip must look physically robust in its grasp and its anchorage as well as be difficult to release handbags from at angles other than those available to the owner. It must also appear to be obviously within the owner’s personal space and visual field. The bar as a whole must look as though staff are paying attention to who is coming in and out. Adjunct communications (e.g., on posters) can supplement this message to thieves. Simultaneously, they can gain attention, acceptance, and trust of customers while reassuring and mobilizing them (see below). In technical terms, various prototype clips were developed to realize the basic anchorage to the table and support of the handbag, the differential difficulty of release, and the visible, unambiguously criminal

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hand movements rendered necessary.13 In all cases, obviously, the clip had to be fixed to the table. The material had to be strong enough for a fairly compact clip, and any individual parts, to take the load of a heavy handbag.14 Metal was therefore used in the Grippa clip rather than the plastic of the Chelsea clip. Other advantages of metal to set against its greater cost include that it is more robust looking and more durable. Two physical configurations for discrimination were created, which differed in operation. One used a simple, one-piece convoluted path through which the owner had to thread the handbag to get it on and off the Grippa clip. The other was a hinged gate that was easily pushed into the interior space of the clip by the handbag handle. The handle having passed beyond it, the gate fell back to the closed position where it was held by a spring or gravity against the body of the clip (gravity was preferred due to fewer components to manufacture and assemble, greater durability, and lower cost). Together, the gate and static part of the clip formed a closed loop. To release the handbag, the gate was manually lifted while the handbag handle was maneuvered out. In both cases, the release of the handbag handle was intended to be easier to accomplish and more noticeable when the user was close to the clip and sitting or standing in the legitimate owner’s position; and harder to do so stealthily, or at all, when attempted from any other position. Two hands were usually required. Minimizing criminal harm from the Grippa clip itself by avoiding inadvertent increased risk of handbag or contents theft. It is not

impossible that well-meaning crime prevention designs can unintentionally increase the risk of the crime that they are intended to prevent. This could happen with the Grippa clip, for example, if it held the handbag in an upright position where it was easier for the thief to scan the bar for likely targets and also to dip the handbag’s contents (like pickpocketing, but from a handbag). Placing handbags in a more standard configuration rather than willy-nilly on the floor or the handbag owner’s lap could facilitate the development of a particular script and even tools such as hooked wires. As already suggested, in some circumstances the Grippa clip might lead owners to stop using their laps, which may be the safest place of all. At another level, if the Grippa clips in a bar seem to be ignored and unused, and communication materials lie discarded on the floor, this could encourage thieves by indicating that neither handbag owners nor bar staff believe in the value of the clips or care greatly about security,

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or alternatively they believe that natural security is adequate. So perhaps having clips that are not used could be worse than having none at all. The mobilization dimension—working with the handbag owner as crime preventer. The diverse motives for the mobilization of hand-

bag owners, bar management, and manufacturers and marketers were already covered above by listing these agents’ purposes and requirements for design. The focus in this section is on mobilization—how, through design, the Grippa clip itself, and adjunct security communications, influence the people immediately involved in the crime situation to act as crime preventers. This is important because the clip is not an install and forget kind of design, like the immobilizer in cars, which locks the engine management computer. For the above preventive mechanisms to work successfully, they almost all require the handbag owner to use the clip and to use it properly. (The exception is deterrence of the thief through mere perception that the bar is security oriented.) The handbag owner is therefore a necessary functioning element of a security system; mobilizing the owner to assume that function is a vital action in which design plays an important part. Yet use of Grippa clips is not mandated by the bar. In Chapter 10, this is referred to as a discretionary intervention, a term that also applies to the supermarket cart safe product described therein. More broadly viewed, the handbag owner’s tasks that Grippa clips are intended to mobilize include: • • • •

• • • •

Possibly seeking or choosing a bar fitted with Grippa clips. Seeking table or seat with an unused Grippa clip. Deciding to affix the handbag to the Grippa clip. Affixing handbag to the Grippa clip and arranging the handbag so it is out of the way and unlikely to spill its contents, gape open, or trail on floor. Possibly arranging owner’s body to limit angles of approach available to thieves and facilitate surveillance. Watching handbag and any movements toward it. Responding if required (protectively grasping handbag and challenging possible thief). Remembering and deciding to release and take the handbag on temporary departure (e.g., to bar, restroom, outdoors to smoke— possible conflicts with convenience and with desire to mark possession of seat) and permanent departure.

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• Releasing the handbag and not forgetting to take it on permanent departure. The process of mobilization, as Chapter 2 described, can be characterized by the CLAIMED framework. Once the preventive tasks or roles are clarified, and appropriate people located to take them on, those preventers (here, the bar customers or handbag owners) have to be alerted, informed, motivated, empowered, and directed to use the Grippa clip. Likewise, the bar staff need to support the use of the clip by the handbag owners. Prevention tasks may also be undertaken by other customers, bar staff, and the installers of the clips. The Grippa clip’s design must support these tasks. In a sense, under “direct” in particular, the clip can be said to have its own script for the intended user. As a corollary, it must not demobilize—lull, confuse, deter or discourage, inhibit, or misdirect the handbag owner. Each of the above tasks has a failure mode that may be influenced by other designable properties of the clip or of the context. Alerting and informing the handbag owner. Our observations and interviews concerning the lack of use by handbag owners of the Chelsea clip strongly suggested that a major mobilization requirement was simply that the Grippa clips be visible from sitting or standing positions. (Chelsea clips tend to be placed several inches in from the table edge, not only rendering them invisible but subjecting the handbag owner’s fumbling fingers to possible encounters with deposits of chewing gum or worse.) Grippa clips were therefore designed, where the position of table legs allowed, to be installed at the very edge of the table. An alternative high-visibility position considered was on the tabletop, but this was rejected as interfering with desirability requirements of bar management, including stacking, cleaning, not irreversibly affecting the appearance of the tabletop, and avoiding spilling drinks. The color of the clip was also considered in an issue we called blend or bling. In other words, should the clip aim to match completely the style of the bar furnishings (e.g., brass in a traditional environment), or should it be colored to deliberately stand out (e.g., fire engine red, which also connotes risk)? In the end, both variants were produced, which would facilitate adaptation to market preferences. Given the importance of the awareness issue we considered it necessary to supplement the Grippa clip’s own elementary self-alerting and -directing property (the script it calls forth from handbag owners)15 with

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communications products, including posters and handbag-shaped cardboard hangers containing use me messages to fit on the clips (Figures 9.3 and 9.4). Motivating the handbag owner. The main motivator was intended to be the handbag owner’s concern to protect their own property. A robust appearance for the Grippa clip was considered necessary beyond what was adequate for a robust performance and, technically, this was achieved by sturdy-looking hinges and closely fitting gates. To some degree, we attempted to make the clip a physical pleasure, even fun, to play with. Much design effort was devoted to minimizing any inherent disincentives to handbag owners to use the Grippa clip, such as awkwardness to use, as described under the purpose and desirability requirements above. One concern was not to make it look too gendered (i.e., indicating a feminine or masculine kind of thing to use). Another issue raised by some customers interviewed was that of forgetting one’s handbag when leaving the bar. Whether this risk would be made more likely by hanging handbags on the Grippa clip rather than leaving them on the floor is only testable in the field and under different conditions of crowding. But requiring the owner to take positive action to secure Figure 9.3 Poster Advertising the Grippa Clip

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Figure 9.4 Card Hanger for the Grippa Clip

the handbag, then having it raised up in view and in many cases pressed against their leg, were felt to be more conducive to remembering. However, in the final analysis, this was a matter of the handbag owner’s perception rather than what the designer knew to be true. Empowering the handbag owner. The Grippa clip in its entirety was intended to empower handbag owners to guard and retain their property. The idea was to work with the handbag owners and their existing security practices rather than to entirely supplant these and make the entire security system totally product dependent. This issue reappears below under mismobilization. The Grippa clip was designed to be as self-evident in purpose and utilization as possible; making it mountable side on to the user was thought to better reveal its workings without reducing its direct preventive function. Nonetheless, for versatility, all models were designed to fit either pointing sideways or outward from the table corner. Self-evidentiality was however supplemented by use of the card hangers, as described, in the shape of a handbag hanging from the Grippa clip. Unfortunately, these were so often dropped on the floor by customers that the bar staff ceased to deploy them. The final design of the clip was therefore given the option of a raised hanging handbag silhouette on the body of the clip itself (Figure 9.5).

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Figure 9.5 The Grippa Clip with the Handbag Logo

Directing the handbag owner. There was no intention forcibly to direct the handbag owner to use the Grippa clip, or to use it in a specific way, beyond the simple constraints of its securing action (the handbag owner simply had to use the gate or convoluted track in the way intended, no alternative action was possible). Minimizing criminal harm from the Grippa clip itself by avoiding mismobilization of already alert handbag owners. Some of the

handbag owners observed and interviewed were highly alert to the risk of handbag theft and, consequently, held their handbag on their lap or hugged it to their body. In our opinion, this actually offered a better security solution to those individuals than did the Grippa clip; analyses of recorded crime data in our sample of bars found incidents of handbag snatching from customers to be rare. Therefore, we were careful not to make the messages in the posters too single-mindedly directive.16 Mobilizing other customers. Although they may not have as good a view as the handbag owner, and may or may not be motivated to attend and respond, the unpredictability and the observation-from-manyangles-at-once considerations may influence the offender’s decision to steal. As said, this mechanism is more likely motivated and empowered in a context of good social cohesion such as a bar with regulars. Mobilizing bar staff and management. Bar staff in particular may

or may not have the incentives to protect the property of their cus-

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tomers. This will depend on the policy, supervisory practices, and reward structure operated by management at all levels. They may otherwise simply not have the time or attention space. They may or may not be alerted and informed about, or empowered to tackle, the handbag theft problem—its extent, nature, and how to respond. This may be exacerbated by poor English and a rapid rate of turnover that allows individuals little time to familiarize themselves with the bar layout or to be specifically briefed about handbag theft and handbag security. Ideally the Grippa clips, in the right managerial context, might serve as a focus for bar staff to undertake surveillance and to give preventive advice to handbag owners, including pointing out the theft risk and indicating the presence and use of the clips themselves. In terms of being designed to motivate company management, apart from avoidance of undesirable properties, little that is positive can be achieved by design of the clips. One exception was ensuring that the clips could be reused (both in terms of versatility of fitting and style, durability, and ease of removal and reinstallation), which also had a sustainability benefit. Again though, it is conceivable that in the right climate set by police, politicians, media, and so forth, the Grippa clip can act as a focus for management to take an active interest in the security of their customers and to help alleviate a national crime problem. In Barcelona, where staff routinely alerted handbag owners when their belongings were placed in risky locations, Grippa clip usage rates were found to be much higher. This relates to favorable conditions to activate the causal mechanisms described above. Mobilizing the installer. In the commercial context of the bar, one assumes that alerting, informing, and motivating are not issues for the installer who is likely to be working at the behest of the bar management. Empowerment and direction remain relevant. In the Grippa clip trials, all clips were installed by our own team members using drills and screwdrivers; we have no direct experience in the task of guiding and directing other installers. But accurate positioning relative to the inside or underside corner where the table leg met the tabletop was easy and, in theory, easily communicated. Mobilization failure. In this chapter, we have not focused on what actually happened with the Grippa clips. But for the record, there were several notable failures of mobilization, climate setting, and partnership (all tasks under involvement in the 5Is process model of crime preven-

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tion; Ekblom 2011a). In the trial bars, few handbag owners used the clips (facilitated by their design being discretionary rather than mandatory in use); the bar staff were not supportive; and, for reasons connected to the 2008 financial crisis, more than halfway through the study the bar company ceased to collaborate. Such failures were not inevitable as they did not occur in pilot trials in Barcelona. And more recently, handbag owners are using the clips, and staff are supportive, in a branch of a major café chain at a major London railway station. These failures and successes are described in Ekblom (in press). Supportive security functions. Chapter 2 stated that security prod-

ucts have to be viewed in two ways: as object as well as in function. The latter covers possible events where the product is doing what it was designed to do—protect some other person or entity. Here, designers seek to protect against some inherent failure of that function; for example, due to the handbag jamming in the clip or the offender somehow disabling it. The former covers possible events where something entirely incidental to its security function (e.g., accident, wear and tear, and criminal misdeeds like theft of Grippa clips for scrap metal) causes that function to be lost, other costs to be incurred (e.g., repair, replacement, or reinstallation costs of the security product), or other crimes to be facilitated. We cover these dimensions in turn. Grippa clips as object: basic self-protection against accidental damage and wear and incidental criminal offenses. No specific design responses were made for these purposes. With mishaps (which could include accidental detachment from the underside of the table or crushing during stacking of tables), the Grippa clip’s robustness in supporting heavy handbags was assumed to give sufficient protection. Likewise, the surface coating of the clip was robust enough to tolerate frequent scuffing and cleaning. With criminal misdeeds targeting the Grippa clip for misappropriation (e.g., theft of materials) or mistreatment (e.g., scratching or bending out of shape), its location in a protected environment was thought to make this unlikely. With Grippa clips on outdoor tables, brass versions could be at greater risk from theft for scrap metal value, so screws requiring specialist tools to unscrew them might be worth considering. Another crime that the Grippa clip might facilitate could be terrorism where a handbag containing a bomb could be left hitched to the clip. This possibility of misuse was again judged unlikely and the extra

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facilitation of the crime was felt to be little or none. After all, it would be easy enough to leave a handbag on the floor in the absence of a Grippa clip. Risks of misbehavior might just about be envisaged in bars with younger clientele (e.g., stag party pranks involving tying people’s belts to the Grippa clip), but these possibilities we judged would be neither more likely nor more harmful than alternative misdeeds in the absence of the clips. Grippa clip in function: self-protection against unintentional damage in intended use. Such damage could happen, for example, through overload from a heavy handbag or in forcing open the Grippa clip to take wider handbag handles than it had been designed for. Robust construction of the body and, where relevant, the gate and hinge of the clip was the obvious remedy. However, this had to be traded off against economy and sustainability in terms of cost and use of materials. Grippa clip in function: advanced protection against criminal countermoves aimed at disabling or bypassing the clip’s security function. Countermoves disabling the Grippa clip seemed unlikely. The intrinsically simple construction and operation of the clip leaves little scope for this. This would involve cutting, bending, or jamming it open, actions unlikely in the relatively secure enclosure of the bar and indeed likely to be more obvious than moves to release the handbags themselves. And where such disabling was done in advance of handbag owner’s use rather than in the immediate course of theft, the owners would surely be unable or unwilling to hitch their handbag handles to the clips in the first place. Failure of, or tampering with, the security function would be fairly obvious to the handbag owner if it ever happened. This would mean at the very worst the loss of protective capability rather than the more serious risk of owners trusting their handbags to something that offered only a false sense of security. Incorporation of special tamper-evident properties was therefore not considered necessary. A tactical displacement shift by the thief, from removing the entire handbag to dipping its contents in situ, might be possible: the hanging position might facilitate entry (e.g., by bracing the mouth of the handbag against hand movements so that fingers could slide in more easily). These actions would theoretically be possible, but would require thieves to undertake a great deal of close searching and scanning activity to identify handbags in suitable positions. Relative to the rather straightforward perpetrator technique of simply hooking or sliding the loose

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handbag along the floor, this alternative method would likely reduce the reward rate and increase the risk that the thieves are spotted. However, who knows what skilled professional dips might achieve? Ultimately, only prolonged field experience would tell but, in immediate practical terms, caution is recommended in locating Grippa clips on standing-atthe-bar positions. Countermoves attacking other parts of the secure system might be more likely. Cutting handbag handles might be contemplated, but (weak plastic handbags apart) offenders would have to carry a sharp blade that holds various legal risks. They would have to find means of cutting stealthily, close to the handbag owner’s legs and lap, which would be just as intrusive as unhitching the handle. They would also have to have a hand available to catch the handbag in case it dropped or slumped to the floor. The chances of doing this without radiating suspicious sights and sounds seem minimal, and the possibility of development of skills and tools to cut the large variety of handbag handles, which are mostly designed to be tough, are limited. Pruning shears would be concealable and might possibly work, but if challenged there would be few excuses with which thieves could respond.17 Countermoves could also attempt to obscure or distract surveillance by trailing clothing over the table or even spreading a map on the table when asking for directions. This could also serve to acquire permission to enter personal space. Other means of distraction might be employed, especially if a co-offender is involved. Counter-countermoves to these might include using sound—making the Grippa clip emit a noise such as a mechanical squeak or click when the handbag is being released— though this is unlikely to work well in a noisy bar. More strategically, if there were significant possibilities of displacement to other forms of theft within bars and similar facilities, there would be little point in bars investing in Grippa clips to close off this particular opportunity alone. To a large extent this possibility could only be tested by field trials. But it is worth noting that pickpocketing techniques are probably more demanding than handbag sliding and hooking, where there is no personal contact, so switching theft methods from the latter to the former is uphill in terms of skill transfer. Displacement to other bars unprotected by clips or equivalent protection might be thought not to be the Grippa clip’s problem. But design and marketing can have a role even here because designs with a broader appeal to different contexts and purchasers may well achieve greater area-level coverage of bars within displacement distance.

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Grippa Clip Technicality: Meeting Hygiene Requirements Basic health-and-safety-type hygiene requirements addressed included, technically speaking, avoiding allergenic materials such as nickel, rough finishes, and risk of pinching or trapping fingers in the mechanism. The Grippa clips were arranged with the manufacturers working to the International Organization for Standardization 9001 quality standard. Damage to the clips from accidents, wear, or criminal intent could conceivably leave projecting ends, maybe even sharp ones if the metal fractured. This was considered no more risky than any accident to other furnishings so fail-safe modes were not explicitly designed in. Grippa Clip Technicality: Meeting Bar Management Purposes and Requirements As-object requirements already listed included safety, the cleansability and stackability of tables, the matching with decor and brand identity, and not irreversibly damaging visible surfaces on installation. Designing the Grippa clips to fit snugly beneath tables rather than awkwardly on top of them helped in most cases; safety was covered immediately above under hygiene. In-function requirements were more challenging since potential negatives of crime prevention for bar owners were finely balanced with positives. Solutions were as follows: • Technically, installation and anchorage to the table were by just two screws, minimizing damage to the table and making the fitting reversible. • Placement and orientation beneath the tables were, as mentioned under mobilization, easily communicable to fitters and requiring no detailed instructions, although guidance on principles would be needed to cope with the widest range of furniture styles and construction. Technically, drilling and fitting was a quick and relatively undemanding task well within the capability of the kinds of maintenance staff normally employed or contracted by bar companies. Each clip took no more than 2 minutes to affix, with up to four per table. • What the Grippa clip and any adjunct media (such as hanging cards and posters) communicated to bar customers was understandably of some concern to bar management. Too prominent an emphasis on

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crime risk and the need to guard valuables was felt to be likely to deter customers, although the balance of concern (and the balance of pressure from the police) could shift in bars that were especially heavily targeted by thieves. One approach as said was to emphasize the tidiness and safety benefits of securing handbags where other customers and staff would not trip on them or accidentally damage them. The message developed for posters was therefore a low-key one; for example, “Handbag hooks provided,” “Where’s your handbag? Keep it close.”

Summary SFF Statement for the Grippa Clip A summary SFF statement for Grippa clip is as follows: The Grippa is (1, purpose) designed to reduce the risk of theft of customers’ handbags in places like bars and restaurants. (2, security niche) It is a fitted security product. (3, mechanism) It works by physical anchorage of the target handbag in a configuration that is differentially easier to release by the handbag owner; by mobilizing usage of the product, and the surveillance and reaction that it favors by the user and others acting as preventers; and by deterrence through increasing the offender’s perception of risk of being detected and caught in the act. These mechanisms are achieved (4, technicality) by installation of a strong metal clip—the Grippa clip—on the underside edge of the table next to the leg whose position, orientation, and operating action enable the handbag owner to hitch and unhitch bags of a range of sizes, shapes, and weights to the table while remaining close to their body and within their visual field and that exposes the action to view. The Grippa clip is affixed to the table by screws, and operates (in the case of the spiral configuration) by requiring the handbag handles to be threaded through an open gap or (with the loop) by pushing the handles against a hinged gate that slips open to admit the handles and falls back under gravity to close the loop and retain them. Release with the spiral is a matter of back-tracking the hitching action; with the loop, the handbag owner has to lift the hinged gate while sliding the handles off the fixed part and out of the nowopen gap of the loop. In both cases, the clip and its positioning is such as to make operation differentially easy for the handbag owner seated or standing at the side of the table where the handbag is hitched, and difficult and with visible movement and obvious intent from other positions. The mobilization of the handbag owner is attempted by the highly visible position; bright color; simple, convenient operation; and

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indication of function in the shape of an embossed hanging handbag symbol. It’s interesting to compare the above summary rationale with the earlier one of the Stop Thief Chair (Chapter 2). Although there are considerable and obvious differences in technicality, and linked differences also in niche and purpose, the underlying similarity of security function (purpose and mechanism) between such physically different products is quite striking. This ability to hold commonality and difference in structured tension is a strength of SFF. The SFF summary is compact and reasonably self-explanatory, but in knowledge management and transfer terms it is adequate only for basic search and retrieval by designers and operational users such as crime prevention practitioners or security staff. It does leave out a lot of detail and the research, analysis, reasoning, and trade-offs behind the final design. So in that sense it is adequate only for building a minimum of innovative capacity. But it does act as a retrieval document for the detail and gives us an association method for connecting, on any one of the four dimensions, with other crime prevention design problems and solutions.

Conclusion Purpose, niche, mechanism, and technicality have all been revealed as concepts that are simple in essence, but complex in detail. This in some ways parallels the story of the Grippa clip itself, which is a simple concept, nevertheless needing to be realized as a high-performance design through a rather demanding design process. A more generic point is that, even with this apparently simple instance of crime prevention, we seem to be getting into the realm of complex adaptive systems where different agents, with diverse purposes, each perceive and adjust to changing states of the world they are in and to interdependence and interaction with each other. Intervention within such systems can lead to unforeseen outcomes, posing a particular challenge for designers to create security products that are capable of operating successfully in a range of poorly envisaged or hard-topredict circumstances. SFF is not a checklist to be followed in a rigid, slavish fashion, but instead demonstrably appears to offer a vehicle for capturing, organizing, and retrieving a rich combination of knowledge from crime science and design practice as well as a platform on which to tease out what are quite

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tangled issues. As the Grippa case study has demonstrated, there is an enormous amount that can be extracted and articulated from a systematic, in-depth account of the security function of a given product or system. From a practical design and crime prevention perspective, the framework and the material it seems able to capture and organize both promise to help develop and build innovative capacity. For example, SFF could: • Give would-be clip designers the capacity to get smart quick about their own designs, created to match their own, differing, contexts; likewise for theft preventers in general. • Give the designers of security products in general a model and examples for undertaking design. • In combination with the framework set out in Chapter 2, give a more generalized transfer of knowledge on how to research, think about, and undertake the design of products, in the widest sense, with a security function. This could take the form of guidance for professionally mature designers or educational material for design students. The conceptual framework for supporting these applications is, arguably, on its way to being fit for purpose. The remaining, and major, challenge is to find language, formats, and media that can transfer this knowledge in an efficient and appealing way and that structures, focuses, and supports the vital design freedom rather than choking it. The quantity and complexity of the content is such as to pose a considerable obstacle both in terms of how most designers think and the time and effort they are willing, or can afford, to put into acquiring the necessary knowledge and competence. This is a task for communications and graphic design. One strategy is to develop a sliding scale of materials—simple, perhaps heuristic, guidance at one extreme, leading progressively to subtle, sophisticated approaches at the other—aimed at designers who specialize in security especially, but not exclusively, in the rapidly evolving high end of security as in cyberspace. Although the language in this case study has veered toward the crime science side, rather than the design side, we hope that the intimate connection between these approaches demonstrates a clear move toward interdisciplinarity.

Notes This research was funded by the award Turning the Tables on Crime from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The views expressed here are solely

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those of the authors. They thank the Metropolitan, City of London, and British Transport Police services for access to crime data and police colleagues and bar staff for contributing to the design process. 1. See also www.stopthiefchair.com (accessed March 3, 2011). 2. www.grippaclip.com/wp-content/uploads/Grippa-Prototypes.pdf (accessed March 3, 2011). 3. http://issuu.com/designagainstcrime/docs/6_grippa_bcn_english_1 (accessed March 3, 2011). 4. www.grippaclip.com/wp-content/uploads/Changes-In-CustomerOpinion.pdf (accessed March 3, 2011). 5. Strictly speaking, not all of these positive and negative desires were expressed by customers. But it can be assumed from putting ourselves in their places to articulate unconscious needs that they do not want, for example, the table to tip on them spilling beer on their laps. 6. UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/ security/design-out-crime/the-alliance (accessed December 4, 2011). 7. Reviewed at www.inthebag.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/bag_ clip_market_review.pdf (accessed May 31, 2011). 8. UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/ security/design-out-crime/case-studies1/stop-thief-chair-and-grippa-clips (accessed March 3, 2011). 9. UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, www.ahrc.ac.uk/About/ Publications/Documents/DAC%20Brochure.pdf (accessed March 3, 2011). 10. A range of such portable clips is reviewed at www.inthebag .org.uk/what-can-you-do/bag-holding-clips (accessed March 3, 2011). 11. See also www.grippaclip.com/the-process-2/user-and-abuser-analysis/ (accessed March 3, 2011). 12. www.designagainstcrime.com/lists/conjunction-of-criminal-opportunity -classic-know-about-and-know-what/ (accessed March 3, 2011). 13. See www.grippaclip.com/the-process-2/design-evolution (accessed March 3, 2011). 14. Paul Ekblom’s infamous laptop backpack, fully loaded. 15. See the Conclusion of Chapter 2 on persuasive technology. 16. See www.grippaclip.com/design-outputs-2/communicatio-graphics (accessed March 3, 2011). 17. Perhaps they could claim to have come to tend the bar’s window boxes.

10 Supermarket Carts to Reduce Handbag Theft Aiden Sidebottom, Peter Guillaume, and Tony Archer

PROBLEM-ORIENTED POLICING (POP) IS AN APPROACH FOR

improving police effectiveness through shifting attention to patterned problems instead of single, often isolated incidents and responding with bespoke, appropriate strategies instead of routine, default options (H. Goldstein 1979). It emerged in light of growing concerns at what was seen as a predominantly reactive and administrative approach to policing (Weisburd and Eck 2004) that failed to identify and intervene in the causes that give rise to crime and disorder. It highlights that the capacity to reduce crime should not be limited to the police and traditional criminal justice mechanisms, and recognizes that relevant and motivated stakeholders can make significant contributions to crime control. Central to POP is conducting in-depth analysis to uncover the patterns and nature of local problems, and developing tailored preventive strategies attuned to the explanations for why a problem recurs. Since its inception, POP has been widely implemented in Europe and the United States to address myriad crime and disorder problems (see Scott 2000). A tool often employed to guide the problem-oriented process is the SARA problem-solving model (Eck and Spelman 1987), which attempts to formulate H. Goldstein’s (1979) initial suggestions on how to structure and carry out POP.1 SARA is an acronym that describes the four stages deemed necessary for effective problem solving, namely: scanning of relevant data to identify and define a given problem, and better understand the contributory factors that underlie it; analysis of data with the aim of eliciting the exploitable characteristics of a problem, or pinch points, for intervention; response in terms 201

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of the formulation and implementation of an intervention to reduce the levels of and harm caused by the identified problem(s); and assessment, concerned with measuring the impact of the response(s) on the target area or group. In practice, SARA-led problem solving is a nonlinear process (Laycock 2005); the problem-solving path will be littered with various feedback loops where, say, analysis findings may prompt a respecification of the original problem and a return to scanning. Our aim in this chapter is to provide a case study of problem solving in practice, and more generally to report on the capacity of various stakeholders to work jointly as part of a problem-solving project. This is considered important in light of the noted difficulties encountered when police agencies have sought to implement a problem-oriented approach (Scott 2000). Moreover, the response that we describe in this study is a design-based intervention. To our knowledge, none of the entries to the Tilley or Goldstein awards for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing—POP projects carried out by practitioners using the SARA model—have (re)designed a product as a preventive response to an identified problem. This is not unexpected: (re)designing a product is a complex and challenging task, one that requires law enforcement agencies to work alongside unfamiliar stakeholders, primarily prevention-minded designers (Ekblom 2008a). Consequently, we hope to offer some useful insight by describing the lessons learned from formulating and implementing a design-based preventive response developed during a problem-solving project.

Background of the Project As part of a problem-solving short course run by the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science—designed to introduce crime prevention practitioners to the material described in the Clarke and Eck (2003) problem-solving guide—delegates were required to apply the SARA model to a problem relevant to their current role. Peter Guillaume, business crime prevention manager  at Warwickshire Police, England, and Tony Archer of the Community Safety Team, Warwickshire County Council, focused on the problem of business crime and began by looking at all crimes committed in or against retail establishments in Warwickshire during 2006. Preliminary analysis of recorded crime data indicated that 13 percent of offenses were classified as

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“other thefts.” While many of the offenses recorded at retail establishments are self-evident, as with shoplifting or robbery, what constituted the other thefts category remained unclear and required further probing. Analysis revealed that a large proportion (40 percent) of other theft offenses were theft of handbags (and their contents) from customers shopping at supermarkets.2 On the grounds of these initial findings, Guillaume and Archer decided that handbag thefts from supermarket customers—defined as the unlawful taking of a handbag or its contents from an individual by covert means—should be the focus of a problem-solving project. To our knowledge, no published studies are available on the problem of handbag theft in supermarkets. Most of the research on crime at retail establishments focuses on retailers as the victims of crime such as burglary (Clarke 2002; Laycock 1984; Hakim and Shachmurove 1996), employee theft (Payne and Gainey 2004), shoplifting (Farrington 1999; Kajalo and Lindblom 2010), and robbery (Ekblom 1987; Gill 2000; van Koppen and Jansen 1999), with fewer studies concentrating on retail establishments as the location for crime against third parties (customers). Research that is available on handbag theft has analyzed handbag theft in bars (C. Smith, Bowers, and Johnson 2006; Sidebottom and Bowers 2010), cafés (Johnson et al. 2010), or from open-air shopping markets (Poyner and Webb 1997). This absence is surprising given the British Crime Survey 2006/2007 finding that 19 percent (the highest proportion) of all theft from person offenses occurred inside a shop or supermarket (Nicholas, Kershaw, and Walker 2007). Moreover, a handbag theft will likely increase the risk of various related consequences—an example of a crime multiplier in terms of, for example, identity theft or burglary and car theft with stolen keys. Developing effective ways to reduce handbag theft may therefore usefully serve to lower levels of other concomitant crimes. The project was practitioner led (Guillaume and Archer) with one of us (Sidebottom) introduced at the implementation stage to provide assistance with data collection, analysis, and evaluation. This fits the recommendations of Knutsson (2009), among others, on the value of researchers supporting police agencies during POP endeavors. In the remainder of this chapter, we describe the problem-solving project, beginning with the analysis of recorded crime data in order to obtain a richer understanding of handbag theft in Warwickshire supermarkets.3

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The Nature and Scope of Handbag Theft in Supermarkets Recorded Crime Data Recorded crime data comprising all theft from businesses in Warwickshire was made available from November 2006 to October 2008. Warwickshire is a county in the West Midlands covering an area of 1,975 square kilometers. Extracting only handbag thefts from supermarkets was a multitiered process: first, we sorted data by the type of retail establishment in which the theft occurred, with only thefts from supermarkets, as opposed to other retail establishments such as clothing or music stores, being selected. Second, we used a geographic information system to capture all incidents occurring within a circular 100-meter buffer zone surrounding each identified supermarket. This was done to avoid missing incidents that were falsely geocoded. Next, and to extract only handbag thefts from supermarkets (as opposed to, say, theft of trolleys4 from supermarkets), we conducted analysis of the free-text field for information relating to the theft of and theft from handbags. We then checked highlighted handbag theft incidents against the information in the property stolen category. The final dataset comprised 151 handbag thefts between November 2006 and October 2008 across 27 supermarkets in Warwickshire. Of course, this does not mean that there are only 27 supermarkets in Warwickshire: in some supermarkets there may have been no incidents and in others none of the incidents may have been reported to or recorded by the police. Handbag Theft in Supermarkets Figure 10.1 shows the number of recorded handbag thefts at Warwickshire supermarkets for November 2006 to October 2008. It is clear that handbag theft displays a general downward trajectory over this period. Like many crime types (see Hird and Ruparel 2007) a distinct seasonal pattern is also observed, with peaks in the British winter months of November and December and drops in the summer. Disaggregated across the 27 Warwickshire supermarkets, the data reveal substantial variation in the distribution of handbag thefts. Figure 10.2 indicates that, over the 2-year period, handbag theft levels per supermarket ranged from 31 incidents to only 1. Portrayed graphically this pattern conforms to the ubiquitous J-curve (Eck, Clarke, and

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Figure 10.1 Monthly Distribution of Recorded Handbag Theft Incidents Across Warwickshire Supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008 18

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-0 D 6 ec -0 6 Ja n07 Fe b0 M 7 ar -0 A 7 pr -0 M 7 ay -0 7 Ju n07 Ju l-0 A 7 ug -0 Se 7 p0 O 7 ct -0 N 7 ov -0 D 7 ec -0 7 Ja n0 Fe 8 b0 M 8 ar -0 A 8 pr -0 M 8 ay -0 8 Ju n08 Ju l-0 A 8 ug -0 Se 8 p0 O 8 ct -0 8

0

Note: n = 151.

Guerette 2007), whereby in this case a minority of supermarkets are found to experience the majority of handbag thefts within the analyzed locale. Supermarket A, for example, accounts for 21 percent of the total number of handbag thefts observed across the 2-year period. Moreover, the top five supermarkets in terms of handbag theft volume (Supermarkets A to E) account for 60 percent of all recorded incidents.5 Who Are the Victims of Handbag Theft in Supermarkets? Eighteen (12 percent) of the 151 recorded handbag thefts from supermarkets did not include the age of the victim. Of the remaining 133 incidents, Figure 10.3 shows older shoppers to be more frequently victimized. For example, those between the ages of 70 and 79 years accounted for 23 percent of the total handbag theft problem. Moreover, victims aged 60 years and older made up 56 percent of all handbag theft incidents. It is plausible that this finding could reflect increased risk exposure if older shoppers visit supermarkets more often than other age groups.

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Figure 10.2 Distribution of Recorded Handbag Theft Incidents Across 27 Warwickshire Supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008 35

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The ideal denominator of supermarket visit data by age was not available to test this hypothesis. However, we can calculate the rate of handbag theft in supermarkets using residential population figures for Warwickshire. Table 10.1 shows that once standardized by the population figures, the risk of handbag theft in supermarkets per 1,000 residents between the ages of 70 and 79 years and 80 and 89 years is dramatically higher than that of other age groups. Compared with those aged 20–29 years, for example, individuals aged 80–89 are over five times more at risk of having their handbag stolen in a supermarket. This finding was considered important for tailoring the handbag theft intervention and supports the conclusions of Tilley et al. (2004) that members of this age group are chronic victims of handbag theft. There were also marked sex differences in the victims of handbag theft with 134 (89 percent) being female. Again this may reflect some lurking variable for which relevant data were not available, such as a higher proportion of women visiting supermarkets or carrying more attractive or accessible handbags.

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Figure 10.3 Handbag Theft Victimization by Age Group Across 27 Warwickshire Supermarkets

35

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0 10-19

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Note: n = 133.

Table 10.1

Handbag Theft in Supermarkets, Rates per 1,000 Warwickshire Residents

Age Group (years) 10–19 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 70–79 80–89 90–99 Total Note: n = 133.

Handbag Theft Count 1 14 9 10 24 21 30 23 1 133

Residential Population 66,100 63,800 77,000 77,600 71,800 56,400 38,400 19,800 3,600 474,500

Handbag Theft Rate per 1,000 Residents 0.0 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.4 0.8 1.2 0.3

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How Are Handbags Stolen in Supermarkets? Understanding how crimes are committed can shed light on the opportunity structure that influences crime levels and signatures in particular settings, which in turn can help guide and attune crime prevention responses. For handbag theft in bars, for example, C. Smith, Bowers, and Johnson (2006) found significant variation in the modus operandi reported across nine bars in central London, where some experienced a greater proportion of distraction thefts while others experienced the majority of handbag thefts through dipping (like pickpocketing but from a bag). In this study, analysis was conducted on the free text field of the recorded crime data. This field included comments about where the handbag was located (i.e., in the trolley or on the floor), whether it was attended or unattended, and whether an offender was seen or not. As often found with such data, the level of detail varied considerably between incidents. Various terms were used to describe the recorded handbag theft events. Table 10.2 presents the frequency of offense descriptions in ranked descending order. In contrast with the MO patterns found in bars (Sidebottom and Bowers 2010), few incidents reported the entire handbag being stolen, with 74 percent of handbag thefts from Warwickshire supermarkets involving the handbag being dipped and the property inside being taken—either directly from a handbag located on the person (37 percent) or from a handbag that had been placed in or hung from a Table 10.2

Victim-Reported Handbag Theft Description

Offense Description Dip Trolley, dip Trolley, whole handbag Unattended Unknown Distraction Trolley, coin purse Whole handbag Snatch Total Note: n = 151.

Number of Mentions

Percentage of Mentions

56 56 16 8 7 3 2 2 1 151

37.1 37.1 10.6 5.3 4.6 2.0 1.3 1.3 0.7 100.0

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trolley (37 percent). While aware of the potential fallacies borne of drawing inferences about individual offender tendencies from aggregatelevel data, it is possible that this finding may reflect a preferred targeting strategy if handbag thieves look to steal specific attractive or available items from handbags, without the bycatch that may result from stealing entire handbags containing items of no value (either inherent or monetary) to the offender (Ekblom and Sidebottom 2008). However, a high proportion of dips may also reflect situational determinants, (i.e., opportunities to steal entire bags from supermarkets are perceived as being too risky or involve too much effort). Importantly, and specific to supermarkets, the trolley was identified as the area in which a handbag was stowed in nearly half of the recorded incidents (49 percent). Furthermore, only 5 percent of victims reported their handbag or items within their handbag being stolen while the handbag was left unattended. It is possible that this may, however, represent a reporting bias if victims wish to avoid looking careless by leaving their handbags or if such behavior would prevent them from filing insurance claims on stolen items. Three factors were identified as salient areas of relevance to preventing handbag theft in supermarkets: (1) older victims, particularly women, showed a disproportionately high rate of victimization; (2) the majority of handbag thefts from supermarkets were dips from attended handbags; and (3) the trolley was identified as a recurrent area from where handbags were stolen.

Developing a Response to Reduce Handbag Theft Based on the findings of scanning and crime analysis, we decided that a response was required that would reduce the opportunities for stealing handbags in supermarkets, particularly geared toward older supermarket shoppers. Given the prominence of trolleys in the MO field (mentioned in 49 percent of cases) and their presence at the majority of supermarkets, we felt that an appropriate response was to focus on the trolley as a potential design solution. Understanding the Target Audience POP stresses the importance of attuning an intervention to the local crime problem. In keeping with this, authors Guillaume and Archer carried out

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some preliminary observations in Warwickshire supermarkets and held discussions with various members of supermarket staff on the use of supermarket trolleys, particularly among older customers. Both exercises suggested that older shoppers tended to prefer shallow rather than deep trolleys. This finding is consistent with the literature concerning the behavioral patterns of older supermarket shoppers. Over the past decade, such research has attracted increased attention. This is attributed to the high consumer implications given that those aged 60 years and older represent one of the fastest growing segments of the population (United Nations 2007). Tongren (1988) describes how identifying factors to improve the experience of older shoppers is important because shopping provides valuable exercise and entertainment. Experience of theft could cause avoidance of such venues and may contribute to an unhealthy retreat from public places. In terms of decisionmaking over which store to frequent, Gruca and Schewe (1992) and Moschis (1994) highlight that older consumers place great importance on the function, convenience, and risk reduction of supermarket facilities. Critically in terms of this project, research finds that older shoppers tend to use shallow trolleys rather than the larger, deep alternatives because they are easier to maneuver and do not require users to bend as far when filling and emptying their trolley (Pettigrew, Mizerski, and Donovan 2005). For example, interviews with food retailers in Northern Ireland identified the popularity of smaller, shallow trolleys among older customers (Meneely, Burns, and Strugnell 2008). Kelly and Parker (2005) also describe how increasing the number of shallow trolleys is an important move by retailers to facilitate shopping by older customers and ensure their patronage. We therefore decided that the current crime prevention response should focus on altering only shallow trolleys. This also had the advantage of economy in that only a proportion of a supermarket’s trolley stock would need to be replaced. Designing the Response A large trolley manufacturer was consulted regarding redesigning a shallow trolley to reduce opportunities for handbag theft. The design brief was derived from the local crime analysis described above and the principles of situational crime prevention more generally (see Clarke 1997). It centered on the following design conflict: how to reduce the

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opportunities for handbag theft through altering the design of shallow trolleys without stifling the current experience of shallow trolley users, which is itself a multilayered metric comprising ease of use, inclusiveness, and safety. After consultation, we generated a prototype trolley safe. This comprised a red basket that could be attached to the underside of existing shallow trolleys and provide a secure place to store a customer’s handbag while shopping (Figure 10.4). In terms of preventive mechanisms, this sought to reduce the opportunities for handbag theft by securing handbags in the latchable basket attached underneath the trolley, thereby increasing the effort and risk involved in stealing handbags. A victim-oriented sign was also present on the basket providing a diagram as to the appropriate use of the trolley safe. This matches the suggestions of Ekblom (2011a) on the importance of mobilizing individuals and institutions to act as crime preventers; in our context, this relates to alerting and informing shoppers of the risk of handbag theft, motivating them to do something about it, and empowering them by demonstrating how to operate the device correctly to avoid victimization. In developing the trolley safe, two design-based issues arose that warrant discussion. First, the trolley safe was deliberately molded in red to improve its chances of recognition by customers, thereby reducing the possibility that the trolley safe would not be used because shoppers failed to notice it. This was considered important because the trolley safe intervention is discretionary: users (shoppers) are provided with Figure 10.4 A Trolley Safe Fitted to a Shallow Trolley

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only the option of placing their handbag in the basket while shopping. This also relates to previous research that finds that other discretionary interventions—such as the antitheft chairs described by Bowers and Johnson (2006)—failed to yield significant reductions in crime due to a simple lack of usage. The second issue was the design conflict regarding the positioning of the trolley safe on the trolley. It is possible, perhaps even preferable from a usability perspective, to integrate the intervention feature in the trolley basket itself. This would avoid users having to stoop down in order to place their handbag in the trolley safe positioned underneath the trolley. However the decision to fit the intervention in this location was based on two factors: first, the participating trolley manufacturer stated that a recurrent finding when analyzing consumer shopping behavior is that there is a positive relationship between the size of a trolley basket and the amount spent per customer visit. Consequently, retailers are reluctant to reduce trolley volume and, thus, potentially reduce customer expenditures. For the purposes of this project, and to ensure retailer endorsement of this type of intervention, we therefore decided to place the trolley safe underneath the trolley and hence not reduce trolley volume. Second, and for more practical reasons, we sought an intervention that was easy to implement and did not require trolleys to be taken out of service (as would happen if entirely new trolleys were proposed), thus incurring further monetary and time costs. In addition to increasing the chances of gathering supermarket management support, this was predicated on lessening the probability of implementation failure (see Knutsson and Clarke 2006) through reducing the complexity and logistics of fitting the trolley safes. Securing Retailer Support Failing to secure the support and cooperation of relevant stakeholders is recognized as an obstacle to effectively implementing crime reduction measures (Laycock 2005). In this project, once prototyped, funding was required to produce and test the trolley safes in the supermarket setting. One major supermarket chain was approached to see whether they would be interested in testing the trial intervention. The particular supermarket chain was selected for four reasons: (1) previous good relationships between it and Warwickshire Police; (2) one of its stores (site A of Figure 10.2) had been identified as experiencing a comparatively large amount of handbag theft; (3) the store displayed patterns similar

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to those found at the aggregate level in terms of age-related victimization rates and MO; and (4) from a practical evaluation perspective, the store was large enough in terms of floor space and number of trolleys to provide a suitable test site. The selected chain agreed to provide funding to install trolley safes on all of its 285 in-store shallow trolleys at one site (site A) for a 3-month trial period. In consultation with the evaluation team, the trial was set to start at the end of October 2008 to coincide with the peaks for handbag theft usually experienced around the holidays in the UK (see Figure 10.1). After securing a test site, a control site was then selected (site B in Figure 10.2), matched on similar levels and trajectory of handbag theft. Other variables might have been considered for the matching process such as the size of store or the average number of customers. However, recorded crime data were readily available, and we considered handbag theft count to be the principal variable on which to select a control site. To remove the possibility that employees in the control store would act differently in response to being part of this study through, say, increasing security surrounding handbag theft, they were not informed about their selection as a control site. For the same reason, we decided that the control site should not be selected from the same supermarket chain as the test site. We acknowledge, however, that selecting a control and test site from the same chain would likely increase the similarity in design features and store procedures and, therefore, make a more suitable control if such factors are found to be conducive to the crime of handbag theft or influence offender targeting strategies (for a related example, see Ashton et al. 1998).

Design of the Evaluation To summarize, in this study we used a quasi-experimental design with one test site and one control site. The trial was scheduled to last 3 months, beginning on October 28, 2008, in which all 285 shallow trolleys at the test supermarket were fitted with the trolley safe intervention. We noted at the outset that the use of one test site over 3 months is likely too short a period, in statistical terms, to reliably assess the impact of intervention on handbag theft. However, due to the limited funds and time available, and the desires of the participating retailer, this was unavoidable. While regrettable, Eck (2006) describes how

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stunted evaluations due to practical and budgetary constraints are common in crime prevention and, while limited in terms of causal inferences regarding the impact of intervention, still offer value in relation to informing and improving policy and practice. Furthermore, because this is the first test of the trolley safe intervention, our primary interest was to see if the trolley safe could influence shoppers’ behavior in a positive manner. If it could not, and the intervention was not being used (or it was being misused), then there would be little point in pursuing this or similar types of intervention further. Consequently, in addition to analyzing handbag theft at the test site following intervention (ultimate outcome measure), we also collected data on the usage of the trolley safes as an intermediate outcome measure of evaluation to suggest whether this form of intervention could work to reduce handbag theft opportunities. Data and Methods We collected multiple forms of data: (1) recorded handbag theft data, (2) customer observations at the test site to assess usage and customer feedback, and (3) surveys administered to those customers observed using the trolley safe. While theft data refer to the recorded crime statistics described earlier, the remaining data types were gathered using original instruments. Before describing the results of each section, we briefly outline these two instruments and how they were applied. Customer Observations Systematic social observations have long been viewed as an important criminological research tool. In this study, observations served two purposes. The first was to assess the condition and functionality of the trolley safe. This was considered important because defective baskets could reduce the opportunities for customers to use them. A second purpose relates to our intermediate outcome measure: to assess whether the trolley safes were being used by supermarket customers, especially older shoppers, and whether they were being used correctly. We developed a recording sheet to systematically log trolley safe usage and capture contextual details such as customer gender, estimated age, and the type of handbag they possessed. In addition, the observation sheet contained a free text field so we could record any pertinent information we encountered (e.g., basket damage). Finally, the observa-

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tion forms contained a question asking customers why they were or were not using the trolley safe. This was included because it was important that data be gathered from trolley safe nonusers as well as users. Observations were conducted once a week for the evaluation period (13 weeks) at the test site by one of the authors. To reduce bias through duplicating observation periods, site visits were systematically decided before implementation to ensure observations took place on different days and at different times. Each observer used the same process: starting at one end of the supermarket, we proceeded up and down all the shopping aisles logging the information about each customer we passed who was in possession of a handbag and was using a shallow trolley with the intervention fitted. The observed customer was then asked why they were or were not using the trolley safe. At the request of the test site manager, we wore clear visitor badges to inform customers that our presence was permitted. It is possible that this may have inadvertently introduced an observer effect: our presence as observers may have increased offenders’ perceived likelihood of apprehension, thereby deterring them from stealing handbags and reducing handbag theft independent of any intervention. However, in this trial, using unobtrusive measures so that shoppers (and thieves) were unaware of our presence was not permitted. Finally, it is likely that shoppers using the deep trolleys may have also provided useful data related to the intervention, but observing and surveying everyone was beyond the scope of this study. A total of 231 observations were made (range of 9 to 25 observations) with an average duration of 67 minutes per observation visit (35–100 minutes). Differences in the duration and number of observations per visit reflect differences in the frequency of encounters with customers using shallow trolleys.

User Surveys We distributed surveys to all customers observed using the intervention, or those who stated to us that they would use the trolley safe in future. The survey sought to capture richer data on customers’ perceptions of the design and functionality of the trolley safe, asking questions that were considered too time consuming for shoppers to answer in situ. Surveys were provided along with a letter from Warwickshire Police informing participants of the aim of the trolley safe project and the purpose of the survey. Customers were also provided with a stamped self-addressed envelope so they could return the completed survey at no cost.

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Results The results section is divided into three parts: (1) a comparison of recorded handbag theft incidents in which trolleys are mentioned at the test and control sites, (2) analyses of customer observations and feedback, and (3) findings from the customer surveys.

Recorded Crime Data: Theft from Trolleys As the current intervention was fitted to only shallow trolleys, if successful, we would expect to see a reduction in theft from shallow trolleys where handbags were stored in the trolley safe. The recorded crime data available for analysis is a composite of both trolley types and offenses cannot be separated into thefts from deep trolleys and thefts from shallow ones. We can, however, assess changes in the level of handbag theft from all trolleys before and after intervention. Figure 10.5 shows the number of handbag thefts at the treatment and control sites from November 2006 to January 2009 in which “trolley” was cited in the free text MO field. Selecting only those thefts in which trolley is cited substantially reduces the handbag theft count over the tracked period (treatment = 16, control = 13); so to aid interpretation, the timescale (the x axis of Figure 10.5) is aggregated to 3-month periods. Similar to the trend in Figure 10.1, theft of handbags from trolleys at the test sites also displays a general downward trend since November 2006. It can also be seen that a reduction in handbag theft predates the intervention, and that from May 2008 to December 2008 no incidents were recorded in which handbags were stolen from a trolley. This low base rate over the evaluation period means that a reduction is impossible to observe at the treatment site and we therefore cannot assess the impact of the trolley safe on handbag theft. We consider potential explanations for this finding and improvements to future evaluation designs in the Conclusion. Customer Observations We observed 203 customers in possession of a handbag using shallow trolleys with the trolley safe attached. Of those, 39 were observed using the trolley safe, producing a mean usage rate of 19 percent across the observation period. Compared to other design-based interventions, this

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Figure 10.5 Recorded Handbag Thefts from Trolleys at the Treatment and Control Sites Before and After Intervention, November 2006–January 2009 5 Treatment site Control site

Number of bag thefts

4

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Intervention

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usage rate is encouraging. Sidebottom et al. (2008) found a 2 percent usage rate for Chelsea clips across 14 bars across central London;6 C. Smith, Bowers, and Johnson (2005) report an 18 percent usage rate for an antitheft coffee shop chair albeit with a smaller sample size of 72. Moreover, of those customers observed using the trolley safe, 95 percent were using it correctly. User and Nonuser Profiles Of the customers observed using the trolley safe for which gender was recorded, 72 percent were female. In terms of the estimated age of the user, those aged 35–60 years constituted 43 percent of those observed using the intervention and 33 percent were aged 60 years and older. We also recorded data for those customers using shallow trolleys, but not putting their handbag in the trolley safe. Of those, the majority (40 percent) kept their handbag on their shoulder. Despite the introduction of the trolley safe, many still placed their handbag in (28 percent) or hung it from the trolley (18 percent)—both insecure positions.

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Customer Comments The most common responses from customers (both using and not using the intervention) when asked to comment on the trolley safe are displayed in Figure 10.6. Three main findings emerged. The most common response (31 percent) was that customers’ handbags were too large to fit in the trolley safe. This is important for future designs as it indicates that nearly one-third of all customers observed at the test site were unable to use the intervention because their handbag was too large to fit within the current dimensions of the trolley safe. Ideally, the trolley safe would be large enough to accommodate handbags of all sizes and, thus, avoid excluding some members of the target population. In practice, however, because of the decision to place it underneath the trolley, this meant the size of the trolley safe was limited so as not to affect the stacking procedure of the trolleys—an example of what Ekblom (2005a) calls a troublesome trade-off. The second most frequent response was that the trolley safe was a good idea (27 percent), suggesting that the measure was well received and did not reduce customer satisfaction. Importantly, this response was elicited from both users (45 percent) and nonusers (55 percent) of the trolley safe, indicating that the usage rate may have been higher if the trolley safe were able to store all sizes of handbags. The third response Figure 10.6 Customer Comments on the Trolley Safes 35

30

% Comments

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0 Bag would not fit

Note: n = 156.

Good idea

Keep bag on Trolley safe Didn't know Difficult to Didn't notice Didn't know person defective how to use it operate the trolley what it was safe for

Difficult to access

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(24 percent) was that customers preferred to keep handbags on their person. This was the most common response from those not using the trolley safe (24 percent). However, what underpins this finding cannot be discerned from the current data; that is, whether this is a decision made in light of the trolley safe intervention (i.e., “I don’t want to use it because I view it as insecure/impractical”) or is a product of habit (i.e., “I always do this so why change”) or is the result of handbagcarrying routines that are already used to reduce risk of theft (i.e., “I always keep my bag about my person because I can best keep an eye on it in that way”). From a functionality and visibility perspective, few respondents indicated that they had trouble noticing, accessing, or operating the trolley safe. Researcher Observations Figure 10.7 indicates that the usage rate for the trolley safes gradually declined over time. In week 1, half of all customers using a shallow trolley placed their handbag in the trolley safe. By week 12, no customers were observed using the trolley safe. This corresponded with our observations that noted that the trolley safes were progressively becoming Figure 10.7 Observations on Trolley Safe Usage Over Time, October 2008–January 2009 0.6

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unhinged over the course of the project, rendering the intervention unusable. This was raised as a concern because retailers are understandably reluctant to endorse an intervention that requires considerable maintenance and might risk causing some kind of unintended harm (e.g., if customers slip while attempting to fix the hinge themselves). In an attempt to understand the origin of the problem, we called a meeting with the participating stakeholders toward the end of the project. Observations by the trolley manufacturers found that the problem stemmed from the stacking procedure of the trolleys. Briefly, supermarkets differ in whether they use trolleys with coin-operated locks. Coinoperated trolleys contain locks with a pin and chain mechanism that fastens one trolley to another and can be released through inserting a coin. Trolley locks are generally used because they reduce the staff time spent retrieving and stacking trolleys; a coin-operated system provides an incentive for customers to return the trolleys and stack them appropriately (both in the right place and with similar trolleys) in order to retrieve their money. Other supermarkets do not employ this system because they feel that having to possess the correct coin to use a trolley is an additional burden on customers that may dissuade some from using the store. The test site in which the trolley safes were implemented did not employ coin-operated trolley locks. Consequently, trolleys were often stacked incorrectly, (i.e., not with similar trolleys). In the case of the trolley safe, we found that when people attempted to incorrectly stack large trolleys into the back of the shallow trolleys fitted with the intervention, or merely ran the large trolleys into the back of the shallow trolleys, the impact often unhinged the trolley safes from the trolley. This occurred because the current placement of the trolley safe left a slight overhang at the back of the trolley that bore the force of the impact. Consultation with the trolley manufacturers indicated that this flaw could be remedied in future designs by moving the trolley safe forward a small distance, thereby removing the overhang that bore the impact. A further possibility, albeit one that would incur greater financial costs, would be to strengthen the trolley safe to withstand greater impact. Both alternatives offer solutions to the observed design-related problem of unhinged trolley safes. Customer Surveys We distributed 47 questionnaires to shoppers who were either observed using the trolley safe or who said they would use the intervention in future and would be happy to complete the survey at that time. Of those,

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28 questionnaires were returned representing a response rate of 60 percent. Encouragingly, given the target audience for intervention, 61 percent of the respondents were aged 60 years and older. Customer observations indicated a mean usage rate of 19 percent across the observation period. In terms of finding ways to improve this rate, it is useful to gauge how customers were made aware of the trolley safe intervention. Survey respondents were therefore asked whether they saw the intervention before meeting one of the authors and, if so, what drew their attention to it (Table 10.3). Eighty-nine percent indicated that they saw the trolley safe without any prompting by us. Of those, 54 percent reported that they instantly noticed the trolley safe on taking their shallow trolley. This is important because it suggests that the intervention was successful in terms of communicating its presence to potential users. Seventeen percent reported that they were alerted to the trolley safe by supermarket staff. This finding reinforces the benefits of working alongside stakeholders and managers who support the crime prevention scheme under study. In terms of realistic evaluation practices (Pawson and Tilley 1997), this relates to ensuring that the given context for intervention provides the necessary preconditions to stimulate the mechanism(s) (in this case, the decision to use the trolley safe) required to bring about the sought-after outcome. Eighty-five percent of respondents reported that they would use the trolley safe again. This implies that the intervention was well received and did not affect the shopping experience of respondents. Rating the Trolley Safe Customers were also asked to rate the trolley safe on various designbased criteria using a series of 5-point Likert scales, ranging from 1 Table 10.3

What Drew Your Attention to the Trolley Safe?

Alert Method I noticed it directly as I took my trolley Supermarket staff pointed it out Other I read the sign on the trolley Another customer was using one A police officer pointed it out Total

Frequency

Percentage

19 6 4 3 2 1 35

54.3 17.1 11.4 8.6 5.7 2.9 100.0

Note: n = 35 (some respondents gave more than one answer).

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(most positive) to 5 (most negative). The response across all measurements was encouraging. The median for ease of use, practicality, maintenance, and visibility was 1 and the remaining category, appearance and design, was 2. Future Shopping Trips? Customers were finally asked if the availability of the trolley safe would affect their choice over which supermarket they visited. This is important from a retail perspective as a means of attracting or retaining customers in a competitive market. Thirty-nine percent reported that the presence of the trolley safes would affect their choice of supermarket. If generalizable, this suggests that over one-third of patrons may be influenced in their consumer behavior by the availability of trolley safes. When asked why, the majority replied that the trolley safe increased their perceived security against handbag theft while shopping. Those who said it would not influence them justified this by stating they always shopped at a particular store.

Conclusion The trolley safe intervention was formulated during a problem-solving project on the problem of handbag theft in supermarkets. Informed by crime analysis and situational crime prevention more generally, the trolley safe sought to reduce handbag theft from shallow trolleys by increasing the perceived or actual risk and effort associated with this type of crime when a customer’s handbag is stored in the trolley safe. Our aim in this study was to provide the first test of intervention and gather knowledge on implementing a design-based intervention in the supermarket setting. Several conclusions can be drawn. First, and acknowledging the small sample size, the data indicated that the trolley safe was immediately noticed and used by a modest, but not insignificant, proportion of shoppers. This suggests that the intervention was successful in terms of positively altering the handbag placement behavior of some customers. While the risk of handbag theft is likely influenced by more than handbag placement alone, such as the type of handbag a person owns or the supermarket they frequent, this finding is interpreted as a positive intermediate outcome measure representing a reduction in opportunities for

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handbag theft. Of those using the intervention, many used it correctly with few reporting any difficulties in operating the device. When asked to rate the trolley safe on various criteria, the responses were largely positive with many claiming that they would continue to use the trolley safe in future. With respect to customer patronage, and in awareness that “might” does not equal “will,” a small number of users indicated that the intervention might affect what supermarket they decided to visit because its presence increased their awareness of the security of their handbag. The obvious next question is how to increase the number of people using the intervention. This relates to the issues concerning the design of the trolley safe. Many customers reported that they could not use the intervention as it was too small to accommodate their handbag. This meant that a considerable segment of the target population was excluded from using the trolley safes. Future iterations therefore need to increase the size of the basket, likely through making the basket deeper (closer to the floor) as opposed to longer so as not to interfere with the trolley stacking procedure. Furthermore, and very much in the POP fashion, it is important to understand the trolleys on which the intervention is to be fitted: different supermarkets tend to use different types of trolleys and decisions regarding the materials and dimensions of trolley safes need to consider and adapt to this diversity in trolley design. This has implications more generally for design against crime; namely, the consequences of designing universal versus specific anticrime products. For the trolley safes, this relates to the design of either a versatile intervention or trolley-adapted safes designed to fit specific trolleys. Each option offers different benefits: trolley-specific safes may be more functional and aesthetically pleasing as a result of being specifically tailored to a given type of trolley; in contrast, a degree of versatility in being able to fit to various trolley designs increases the adaptability capacity of the intervention and avoids premature obsolescence should, say, a given supermarket suddenly decide to change their current trolley designs. A further noteworthy finding was that, over the course of the project, many of the trolley safes became progressively damaged. This was put forward as a possible explanation for the observed reduction in usage over time. In crime prevention, the maintainability of an intervention— the necessary level of investment required to sustain an intervention in order to deliver the sought-after results—is an important aspect to consider. Bowers, Sidebottom, and Ekblom (2009, 60) describe how follow-

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ing an initial excitement period many crime prevention programs often see diminishing returns whereby impact declines because measures are forgotten or not maintained well. Consequently, it is often desirable to select those interventions that require lower investment levels (in terms of costs, resources, implementation, etc.) relative to achieving and sustaining sought-after results. With respect to the trolley safe, consultation with the trolley manufacturers highlighted that the problem of unhinged baskets could be avoided through simply moving the trolley safe slightly from its current position on the trolley. Both design-based alterations— increased basket size and moving its position—will likely increase the usage figures reported above. In terms of the impact of the intervention, as expected the trolley safes failed to produce any noticeable reductions in handbag theft. This is attributed to the limitations of this research design in relation to the number of test sites used and the inadequate evaluation period. Briefly, because the intervention was tested at one supermarket over a short time period, the number of handbag thefts (particularly when reduced to thefts only from trolleys) was too small to provide a reliable test of intervention. While not explicitly computed here, the result was a lack of statistical power (see Brown 1989; see also, more generally, J. Cohen 1977). In practice, this meant the trial was unable to detect a reduction in handbag theft, if one occurred, at an acceptable level of statistical significance. The weak research design was compounded by the observation that handbag thefts in supermarkets (both in general and at the test and control sites) were already following a downward trajectory when the trolley safes were implemented. While no evidence is available to discern the cause of this decline, two possible explanations exist. First is regression to the mean and the implications of working with supermarkets with high handbag theft levels (see Farrington and Welsh 2006). In other words, the levels of handbag theft at the test and control sites may have been artificially high when first analyzed and therefore were likely to decline over time (revert to the average) independent of any intervention. A second explanation is that the project itself may have stimulated greater and more targeted (police and manager) attention to the problem of handbag theft in supermarkets, which could have contributed to its reduction. A critic may question why the evaluation proceeded when it was noted at the outset that the research design was unlikely to provide a measurable impact on crime. In response, first, the evaluation was

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restricted for practical reasons; namely, the limited funds available and the desires of the participating supermarket chain regarding the number of stores and the time frame available. Second, because this was the first trial of the trolley safe, we felt that sacrificing the ability to provide a robust impact evaluation was justified in favor of completing a thorough process and intermediate outcome evaluation. We considered this important so that issues concerning the implementation, design, and customer response to the intervention could be identified and addressed before potentially rolling out the trolley safe scheme more widely. In this respect, this study is much like the first phase of a medical trial in which the primary objective is to determine the harms and benefits of a treatment on a small sample before investing greater resources on providing a more robust impact assessment on a larger representative sample. While this situation, of course, limits the degree to which one can interpret our findings as suggestive of a positive impact on handbag theft levels, the various design-based issues that we found can improve subsequent trolley safe iterations and suggest that the decision was warranted. The principal result of this study is an intermediate outcome measure (i.e., trolley safe usage). Further research should determine whether positive changes in customer handbag placement (i.e., using the trolley safe) lead to reductions in handbag theft. This can be achieved through increasing the number of supermarkets receiving the intervention and through conducting the evaluation over a suitably long time period to ensure that the research design is of sufficient statistical power (ideally, analyzed prospectively) to allow for a robust statistical analysis of impact on handbag theft. With a longer time period, some additional data would also improve the evaluation. First needed are data on the number of handbag thefts from only shallow trolleys as opposed to handbag thefts per se. Though this would require a change in current police recording practices, it would produce a more accurate assessment of impact through analyzing changes in theft from only shallow trolleys before and after intervention. Data of handbag thefts by trolley type would also provide the opportunity to test for target displacement. This analysis can be informed through thinking thief in terms of a hierarchy of ease for stealing handbags in supermarkets. For example, it is unlikely that offenders would respond to blocked opportunities by switching to steal bags from inside deep trolleys as, all things being equal, this is a more complicated and risky MO with obvious intentional movements required. However,

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theft of bags hanging from deep trolleys (not fitted with the intervention) may increase after implementation as handbag thieves are deflected to perceived easier targets. Another possibility is that theft of trolleys (fitted with intervention) may increase, if offenders switch to stealing entire trolleys to circumvent blocked opportunities for accessing handbags. Though the literature is consistent in finding that displacement is neither inevitable nor absolute in the wake of a situational crime prevention initiative (Guerette and Bowers 2009; Hesseling 1994), testing for its presence in the supermarket setting would be informative. A further improvement would be to supplement recorded crime data by producing a recording form (for both treatment and control sites) and encouraging staff and victims to record details of any handbag theft incidents. In addition to providing data on underreporting rates, this would allow for more in-depth questions to be asked, which might improve the understanding of the problem and inform crime prevention responses (i.e., where was the victim’s actual location within the supermarket at the time of theft). Finally, in this study limited resources precluded the collection of some forms of preintervention data. It would be instructive to collect observational data on the usage rate of shallow and deep trolleys before as well as after intervention. This would permit an assessment of whether the usage ratio of shallow to deep trolleys changes following intervention. If customers are found to be deliberately choosing the shallow trolleys instead of the larger alternatives in order to use the intervention, then this may suggest that a trolley safe device is also required for deep trolleys.

Notes The authors would like to thank Doug Chipperfield and Steve Storey for their involvement in this project. They also thank Gloria Laycock, Johannes Knutsson, Paul Ekblom, Simone Pettigrew, and Nick Tilley for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1. While SARA is by far the most common problem-solving model, it is not the only one. For a review of problem-solving models, see Sidebottom and Tilley (2011). 2. In this chapter (and throughout this book), the term handbag is used to refer to all bags—purses, backpacks, computer bags, etc. 3. The analysis reported in this chapter was carried out by one of the authors (Sidebottom) using the most recent data available at the time of writing. This extends work carried out by authors Guillaume and Archer who used

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data for only 2006. Similarly, while the chapter is roughly structured around the SARA model that Guillaume and Archer followed, it does not describe the exact way that the project unfolded in practice. 4. In this chapter, the term trolley is used instead of supermarket cart. 5. Of course the rate of handbag theft per supermarket, computed using an appropriate denominator, may differ from the patterns shown in Figure 10.2. For example, those supermarkets currently toward the left on the x-axis may be the larger or busier stores and their position may change once handbag theft levels are standardized using, for example, number of customers. Regrettably, such data were not available at the time of writing. 6. The Chelsea clip, found in many bars and restaurants in the United Kingdom, is a commercially available product in the form of a clip designed to provide an attachment underneath tables for customers to securely hang their handbag. See Figure 9.2.

11 Slowing Thefts of Fast-Moving Goods Martin Gill and Ronald V. Clarke

IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT CERTAIN KINDS OF FAST-MOVING CON-

sumer goods (FMCG) are more likely to be stolen by thieves (Bamfield 2011; Beck 2010). Thus, the Global Retail Theft Barometer reports that the most commonly stolen products of this kind are, in order: (1) razor blades and other shaving items; (2) cosmetics such as face creams; and (3) perfumes, alcohol, fresh meat and other costly foodstuffs, infant formula, and DVDs and CDs (Bamfield 2008). In more recent surveys, Bamfield has collected more data on what is stolen, and found that fastmoving consumer goods of many types are common theft items around the world (Bamfield 2011). Yet relatively little is known from research about the reasons why these, or indeed, any other products are preferred by thieves. The lack of research could be because the choices of what to steal seem obvious; for example, items of high value, that are easy to sell on, are generally more likely to be taken by thieves. But what is stolen also depends on a variety of other factors, including the kind of theft, the specific motives of the thieves, and the resources available to them. Thus, unlike shop thieves who normally take small and easily concealed items, burglars rarely take disposable razors. Instead, they can take larger and more valuable items (depending, e.g., on whether they use a vehicle), and what they choose depends on whether they steal for their own use or for sale. Understanding their lives and their craft depends on acquiring insight into these matters. This is also important for prevention, as Sutton (1998) argued in making the case for his market reduction approach. In the initial formulation of the routine activities approach, Cohen and Felson (1979) briefly discuss the essential elements of a suitable 229

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target, whether a person or an inanimate object, which they encapsulate in the acronym VIVA—value, inertia (how easily moved), visible (how obvious and abundant), and access. Working from the rational choice perspective, Cornish and Clarke (1987) discuss the choice structuring properties of different forms of crime. For theft, these include the risks and difficulty of the act in question and the rewards provided by the stolen object. Clarke (1999) proposes a general model of theft preferences, which he calls CRAVED—items that are more likely to be stolen are concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, and disposable. Clarke (1999) shows that CRAVED could help explain theft preferences for some common forms of theft, including shop theft, residential burglary, and car theft. Others posit that CRAVED provides a useful starting point for explaining patterns of timber theft in the Appalachians (Baker 2003); handbag theft in licensed premises (C. Smith, Bowers, and Johnson 2006; Sidebottom and Bowers 2010); suspected stolen goods in pawn shops (Fass and Francis 2004); and changing patterns of domestic burglary (Wellsmith and Burrell 2005). Most recently, Pires and Clarke (in press) show that CRAVED helps to explain which species of Mexican parrots are targeted by poachers and why these choices point to villagers as the culprits rather than organized criminals. While these findings attest to the versatility of CRAVED, it has become clear that it is best seen as a useful starting point for understanding theft choices, but one that must often be refined and expanded to fit the circumstances of the form of theft in question. In some cases, this has led to a new mnemonic. For example, Pires and Clarke (in press) suggest that CRAAVED (with the two As representing abundance and accessibility) provides a better explanation of parrot poaching than CRAVED, with the A representing only accessibility. More radically, Whitehead et al. (2008) propose on the basis of their detailed analysis of theft risks for different mobile phone models that designers could reduce these risks if they sought to meet the guidelines encapsulated by IN SAFE HANDS—identifiable, neutral, seen, attached, findable, executable, hidden, automatic, necessary, detectable, and secure. Our study that examines the varied theft risks of FMCG also begins with CRAVED and concludes by proposing a new mnemonic. Fast-moving consumer goods are branded consumable goods that are produced on a large scale and that usually are price sensitive. Examples include shampoo, perfumes, and toothpaste that are commonly sold in a variety of outlets on the high street. There is a lot of competition around such products and their mass appeal encourages dedicated promotional campaigns to further stimulate that appeal. That FMCG are in

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demand means they are likely to be of interest to offenders; if they can undercut legitimate outlets on price, offenders know there is a strong likelihood there will be a buyer somewhere. FMCG fit the CRAVED model in that they are attractive to thieves in a variety of ways. One estimate based on figures for 2003 calculated global losses related to “misappropriation” of FMCG to be more than US$56 billion (see Ekblom 2005b, 36), yet there has been little research on FMCG. Our broader aim in the study was to better understand the impact of illicit markets (specifically the stolen goods market, but also to a lesser extent counterfeiting) on the sales of FMCG and then to identify intervention options. In the event, our research also revealed that in some cases goods find their way onto the illicit market because of poor business practices and corrupt business people. Sometimes genuinely purchased stock is mixed with illicitly obtained stock to mask the level of illicit activity. Generally, the response to illicit market activities is uncoordinated.

Research It was against this background that we conducted our study. It involved research in 16 countries (including countries in Europe as well as North America and Latin America). In each we undertook a similar research process, which we categorize as rapid appraisal (Beebe 1995). While this sacrifices some of the scholarly rigor usually associated with criminological inquiries, it is well suited to the applied work of crime prevention (Clarke 2004), especially in the fast-moving world of retailing. Perhaps there will always be an exploratory leading edge that precedes formal validation, but this should not be kept back from practitioners who may benefit from applying knowledge that is currently only at the plausible stage. Indeed, we present our findings very much in this context. We began this research with a review of whatever data existed about the theft of FMCG, although this was generally limited and always partial. Then in each country, we sought interviews with experts in different parts of the retail supply chain and law enforcement. Where possible, we made visits to relevant locales to observe behaviors and to interview those present about the characteristics of illicit markets. Examples include a manufacturing plant in Germany, a flea market in Chile, a packing center in Malaysia, and a wholesaler in Canada. In addition we interviewed those with an expertise in different aspects of retailing, including academics who have studied retail supply

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and loss as well as practitioners engaged in delivering FMCG and involved in different ways of protecting them. We also sought interviews with those involved in different aspects of law enforcement, and this was interpreted widely to include not just the police, but also representatives from customs or border control agencies, trading standards, and others such as those who regulate flea markets. During the course of the study, we organized a seminar with retailers in the United States to gain their insights on theft as well as a 3-day workshop with experts from one company closely involved with the supply of FMCG to gain insight into how goods were supplied and how they were diverted illegally from the supply chain. The extent of access to personnel (and, for that matter, data) varied by country, although most often our visits were supplemented by e-mail correspondence and telephone interviews. The aim was not to conduct a comparison by country, but rather to understand the global nature of the theft of FMCG. Elsewhere, we report on the broader findings of both the problem and potential solutions (Gill et al. 2004). Here, we elaborate on one aspect of the study: the characteristics of FMCGs that make them attractive to thieves.

Findings As noted above, FMCG are a good example of hot products and they often contain many of the features of CRAVED. While the first three attributes of CRAVED relate to stealability (the effort needed to take something while keeping risk at acceptable levels), the last three relate to worth (the rewards attached to doing so) and so are especially important in the context of retail theft such as shoplifting. No matter how stealable an item is, no one will take it unless it is something people want for themselves or is easily convertible to cash or some more attractive commodity such as drugs. In the context of FMCG, one of the attributes listed in CRAVED—disposability—appeared to account more than the others for attractiveness to thieves. Indeed during the research, we found that Gillette MACH3 razors were often referred to as good for thieves, and this product closely fits the elements of CRAVED. In retail outlets, MACH3 razors are available, removable, and concealable. Add to this their high value (premium price), enjoyability (heavily promoted in advertising), and disposability, and all six elements of CRAVED are present.

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As far as the disposable element is concerned, the MACH3 shaving system commands a premium price that makes it easy for illegitimate sellers to undercut the legitimate price while still generating a profit. Furthermore, MACH3 is manufactured by a company with a strong brand image; it is not uncommon to see the items sold at street and market locations; and they are used by young men who are the most likely population group to steal or purchase the proceeds of theft. The razors are expensive relative to what might be seen as their real value. This might enable offenders to neutralize their guilt in stealing the product or knowingly buying stolen products, assuming of course that they have any guilt in the first place. Some FMCG are more disposable than others. For example, cat litter is less disposable than, say, DVDs and appears to be stolen less. Perhaps the kinds of people who buy cat litter are unlikely to buy illicit goods? For this type of reason, we sought to understand the characteristics of the disposable element. By better understanding what makes goods disposable, we are better placed to focus preventive efforts. What emerged from our research were 11 characteristics of disposable that might in different ways determine its attractiveness to thieves. First, we outline these characteristics and then we explain how these may help inform further prevention efforts.

AT CUT PRICES Further exploring the D of the CRAVED model generates another acronym, AT CUT PRICES. This enables us to better consider the characteristics of products that are attractive to thieves. The first characteristic is affordability. In some cases, stolen goods are bought and sold at the street level—including at market stalls—and the price therefore needs to be within the means of buyers who purchase from these places, many of whom might have limited disposable incomes. In our study, it was not necessarily the case that illicitly obtained goods needed to be sold much below the typical retail price. Often they were not and some merchants selling goods obtained from the illicit market felt they might attract adverse attention if the price of these goods was unusually low. The disposability of a product is increased if it is transportable. Much here depends on how the illicit product is to be sold but, if this is by means of door–to-door sales, then portability is an important issue.

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Similarly, an item that is more easily concealable is more attractive to offenders because it potentially reduces their risk. Illicitly obtained goods are easier to sell if they are untraceable. An item known to be missing because of, say, good stock control procedures is only a problem to an offender if that leads to follow-up action that involves trying to trace the goods (or leads to them being less easy to steal in the future). This is greatly aided where there are features on the product that mean its disappearance from the supply chain can be shown to be an instance of theft. Being untraceable is important for the buyer, but it also brings reassurance to the thief. Another feature of being disposable is that a product can be tradeable. Most FMCG can be traded, which means that they can either be sold for cash or exchanged for other goods because the purchaser will be assured that a market always exists and invariably one in which they can realize a profit. Sometimes fences will be used and sometimes goods will be stolen to order—another example of where there is a ready market. Indeed, this is another feature of goods that are disposable: they can be profitable. Branded goods are reputable, which means that they can be purchased with confidence and this too renders them more easily disposable. Goods that are imperishable appeal to buyers because this reduces the pressure to sell them speedily. Sellers often prefer goods that are imperishable for similar reasons. At the same time, products that are consumable offer advantages because they need replacement and that helps to establish an ongoing relationship between buyer and seller. Products such as cigarettes and cosmetics fit this description. Because those buying illicit goods are sometimes concerned that they might be buying counterfeit products, the value can be greater when they can be authenticated, what we have termed evaluable.1 As discussed below, store stickers applied to goods to note the point of sale may inadvertently help to authenticate the product for the thief. Goods that are sold regularly, and are easily shiftable, appeal to thieves because they facilitate ongoing income. In Table 11.1, we provide examples to show how the mnemonic can be applied to examples of FMCG. Product features may possess more than one of the AT CUT PRICES elements (e.g., cigarettes are transportable and concealable). Discussion As explained above, AT CUT PRICES derives from earlier work on CRAVED. Both mnemonics are designed to assist analysis of theft

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Table 11.1

Feature Affordable Transportable Concealable Untraceable Tradeable Profitable Reputable Imperishable Consumable Evaluable Shiftable

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AT CUT PRICES: Characteristics That Make FMCG Attractive to Thieves Examples of Items that Would Be Included

Examples of Items that Would Not Be Included

Batteries Cigarettes Cosmetics Most fast-moving consumer goods CDs Branded goods Viagra Razor blade cartridges Pain relievers Perfumes with store stickers Bottles of alcohol

Computers Canned food VCRs Burglarized household goods Few FMCG fail this test Unbranded goods Generic Viagra Fresh meat CDs and DVDs Opaque packages Foodstuffs

choices, but CRAVED was intended to serve as a general guide to assist analysis of all forms of theft. Since CRAVED was first proposed, a number of studies have illustrated ways in which it can be refined and adapted to cover specific kinds of theft as well as specific features of the circumstances in which these thefts occur. In other words, while it is a useful starting point for analysis, deeper understanding of specific kinds of theft choices demand more complexity than CRAVED provides. Because most FMCG are relatively easy to steal, AT CUT PRICES focuses not on the first three elements of CRAVED, which relate to an item’s stealability, but to the final three elements (particularly, disposability), which we believe are more important in explaining theft choices for these products. Even at the stage of disposing of stolen items, however, there is some advantage in their being more concealable and removable, and these elements of CRAVED are incorporated in the new mnemonic. To be clear, therefore, we are not proposing that AT CUT PRICES should replace CRAVED, but only that it conveniently summarizes some additional elements needed to explain theft choices for the huge and important market in stolen FMCG. It may not always be necessary to derive mnemonics to capture this complexity, but their value should not be underestimated. They are useful teaching aids and they greatly assist in helping practitioners, such as retail loss prevention officers, understand that careful analysis of a problem is not merely an academic indulgence, but can be of considerable practical value. Understanding how goods are sold on the illicit

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market and the characteristics of them that help thieves offer clues to prevention. Each element of AT CUT PRICES affords an opportunity to assess how thefts might be prevented without adversely affecting sales. For example, goods have been made less concealable with the use of bulky packaging. Similarly, some stolen FMCG have been made less tradeable by attaching an ink tag that breaks when it is not properly removed by store staff (or carefully removed by offenders). Understanding the characteristics of goods that makes them attractive to thieves will not provide all the preventive answers. But it is important to take thieves’ accounts seriously. After all, some thieves say that the reason they commit offenses is because they find it easy and that the situational measures they confront are not a serious impediment (Gill 2005). They argue that some measures work in their favor. For example, stickers that are sometimes attached to products stating words to the effect that the good is “Only sold in (name of store),” help to prove the origin of goods. Some thieves note that the real problem in selling goods is not the concern by the buyer that they may be stolen, but that they may be counterfeit. A sticker helps to prove their authenticity. Validating AT CUT PRICES The above section begs the question of the validity of AT CUT PRICES. So far, the mnemonic represents only our conclusions as a research team that studied the illegal market for FMCG by employing rapid appraisal methods. If it is to gain any academic respectability, further research is needed. We propose two lines of relevant research to develop AT CUT PRICES in different ways. First, it would be helpful to test AT CUT PRICES by systematically interviewing retail thieves, especially shoplifters, to see if their choices reflect the elements of the mnemonic and which of the elements seem to be most salient in their decisions. Perhaps the best method to employ would be that adopted by Macintyre (2001) in studying the decisions of burglars about which houses to enter. Following a method pioneered by Wilkins and Chandler (1965) in studying decisionmaking in an entirely different context, Macintyre (2001) presents convicted burglars with categories of information that they would like to acquire when selecting a house to enter. By noting which categories they selected, and in which order, he was able to build a detailed model of their decisions. In principle, this method could easily be adapted to shop theft. A second line of research—to test the relative importance of the different components—would not have been possible a few years ago but,

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with the advent of advanced bar coding and other product identification techniques, might now be achievable. It would involve: (1) matching a detailed record of stolen goods against a detailed inventory of all the goods held by a specific store such as a convenience store or a drug store; and (2) developing specific measures of each of the AT CUT PRICES components. Correlating the theft risks for a sample of different products with their scores on the AT CUT PRICES components should permit the relative importance of the components to be determined.

Conclusion A broader finding of the research on which AT CUT PRICES is based was that across countries law enforcement has done relatively little to tackle illicit markets generally and FMCG specifically (Gill et al. 2004). Indeed, big business has done little to engage law enforcement, and law enforcement in turn has been largely content to let business deal with its own crime problems (see Gill, Owen, and Lawson 2010). The findings from this study suggest that law enforcement agencies need to be incentivized to respond to the threats posed by the illicit market in a more coordinated way. After all, law enforcement involves a wide group of agencies including not only the police, but trading standards, market inspectors, customs and excise or revenue collectors, border control, and local and state authorities. A prerequisite for generating their interest is to provide frameworks that facilitate a better understanding of what the problems are and how ameliorative efforts may best be targeted. Indeed, systematically identifying criminogenic or criminocclusive properties of products (see Ekblom and Sidebottom 2008) may help sharpen designers’ thinking in handling the inevitable conflicting requirements of product design. CRAVED has long established a foundation for framing our thinking and, in this chapter, we have attempted to show how one aspect—disposability—may be further refined.

Notes The authors would like to thank Tony Burns-Howell, Jerry Hart, Read Hayes, Martin Hemming, Ken Livingstone, Colin Peacock, and Andi Wright for their help and advice. 1. Different from reputable because the goods may not be branded.

12 Conclusion Paul Ekblom

IN THIS BRIEF CONCLUSION, I ADDRESS ONLY ONE KEY ISSUE.

The chapters in this book have certainly demonstrated the multidisciplinary nature of the evolving field of designing out crime from and with products. Designers and crime scientists have shown that they can productively work together and with crime prevention practitioners to deliver more than the sum of their individual approaches. But the question remains whether design against crime and crime science (centering more specifically on situational crime prevention and problem-oriented approaches) are moving toward true interdisciplinarity and whether that destination is to be sought or shunned. This was to have been the cue for a short diversion to explore what is meant by the term interdisciplinarity. Chettiparamb (2007) rightly notes that this requires us first to understand discipline, and then distinguishes three approaches to this task: the scientific-epistemological, the social, and the organizational. She then identifies two main threads in interdisciplinarity. Normative orientations fill the gaps that disciplinarity leaves vacant; alternatively, we can seek a more theory-based “transcendence surpassing what disciplinarity can ever hope to achieve” (13). Paradigmatic arguments for interdisciplinarity consider it from a more phenomenological perspective in the sense that it emanates from observations of practice. All of these facets are self-evidently relevant to the interdisciplinarity of crime science and design. But it was at this point, readers, that I realized that a proper treatment of the issue would require another full chapter or even a book (indeed, full understanding of interdisciplinarity seems to demand a discipline of its own!). So let us merely note that definitive pronouncements on our progress toward 239

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interdisciplinarity are likely to be inadequate and will probably stir up a hornet’s nest of argument. But it is useful, and possible, in an impressionistic kind of way, to identify some indicators and to stir up some issues for further debate in a way that, despite the chapter heading, will certainly not be conclusive. Chapters 2 and 9 show how concepts and perspectives of theory and causal mechanism from crime science can be brought together with the practicalities of design in a single framework. Chapter 4 shows how advance appraisal of the crime risks attendant on particular classes or instances of product can be undertaken at the design stage, and Chapter 11 instantiates this with fast-moving products. Chapter 3 gives a wider connection with new product development literature. Chapters 3, 6, and 10 illustrate how the statistical, social research–based process of evaluation can be brought together with the iterative, improvement-based approach within design. Connections with hard science and engineering start to creep in, with the technicality dimension of the security function framework, and the specific technical issues of domestic electronic items in Chapter 4. But in this respect, the pace will be forced by the changing nature of what is a product—as Chapter 2 notes, pervasive computing and Wi-Fi are steadily diminishing the distinction between a product, a place, and a system. The action research and operations research origins of situational crime prevention (Wilkins 1997) mean that crime science has always had a strong doing-things-in-the-real-world orientation; this is not such a huge leap to the making-things of design practice, so they are natural partners in this respect. Good partnerships should be more than the sum of their partners and this is true in this instance. Crime science has plenty of theory, preventive principles, and generic practical methods for guiding preventive interventions based on understanding of the crime problem and causes (although classic situational crime prevention can be improved) and employment of rigorous social research procedures. But in itself, it does not have the capacity to convert these principles and generic methods into a reality that is practical, durable, and appealing, and adapted to context in a way that resolves complex trade-offs and serves multiple drivers well beyond the crime, security, and community safety domain. Design of course does have such capacity, and potentially in a highly generative and adaptive way that is vital for handling changing social and technological contexts and new targets or evolving perpetrator techniques. More generally it brings the design way of thinking that,

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among other things, challenges assumptions about the nature of the problem as initially put by managers and stakeholders to the designers. Reframing, as well described in Chapter 7, is a powerful contrast to the intense focus of crime science on proximal or immediate causes of criminal events, encouraging the watchmaker to look up from the bench and the magnifying glass to see whether better time management rather than more accurate timekeeping is actually the problem. This said, however, seasoned practitioners of problem-oriented policing are familiar with that stage where the analyst has to go back to question the validity of the original demand for action and who among the stakeholders are making it. The ability to flip perspectives, between the narrow and the wide, the working within assumptions and the questioning of assumptions, is a strength of both crime science and design, though design does it better and more systematically.1 In Chapter 7 the argument is also put forward that, in a sense, the designers did not use and did not need the crime science to generate their ideas of the counterterrorism trash bin and that crime science perhaps contributes only in its ability to describe, articulate, and document what was done. This is quite a challenge because one then has to ask—of what use is the crime science if it cannot feed anything helpful back to the designers? So I think it falls to me in this conclusion to make some response. The aim is not to arrive at some sort of definitive answer, but to further the debate that is at the heart of the interdisciplinarity issue. Nobody would deny that designers have to consider, say, the laws of physics and the physics and chemistry of materials in coming up with high-performance products (or even simply products that do not break, short-circuit, or poison their users). Does that mean there is something lacking in crime science in particular? The challenge is perhaps not as strong as it might be because CPTED, the main focus of their critique, is acknowledged to be conceptually and theoretically weak in many respects (e.g., Ekblom 2011d, unpublished manuscript). Other approaches, embodied within situational prevention more generally and the causal mechanism dimension of the security function framework more particularly, are arguably worthier adversaries. Much of situational prevention is a refinement of the commonsense practical approach to crime (did the burglars get through the back door? then strengthen it and improve the layout for informal surveillance by neighbors) that remains when the fixation with cops, courts, and corrections is surgically removed. Therefore, it may well be that the designers of the counterterrorism trash bin were using lay crime science in their

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thinking and this can get them a long way, much as can a lay appreciation of the physics of materials. But there comes a point when lay understandings are wrong or misleading, and not using a scientifically validated approach will lead to poorer designs. Norman (2010) argues forcefully that even the best design schools do not currently prepare designers for the necessary understanding of hard and behavioral science required in today’s complex world. The question, then, should become one of whether crime science is reliable, valid science and whether it is articulated in a form that designers can use, as Norman doubts. The analysis of crime problems from surveys, statistical patterns and maps, descriptions of perpetrator techniques, and more qualitative data is a refined practice (e.g., Clarke and Eck 2003) whose results can be drawn on by designers or whose methods can be used during the research phase of a design project. The benefits of a focus on causal mechanisms (whether or not these are specifically covered by crime science) are stated in Chapter 2 and illustrated in Chapter 9. The articulation of a problem in mechanism terms can help generate and focus plausible ideas, reflectively articulate what a prototype design is attempting to do, and indicate what the designer should be looking out for during trials (e.g., Has the deterrent mechanism been triggered? Has the intermediate outcome been achieved?). The benefits of rigorous, sensitive evaluations, although logistically and methodologically challenging, are another benefit from crime science (although we are not without our internal debates). But do frameworks strangle creativity? The whole issue of creativity within constraint is important. It may be harder to be creative in a world without the constraints of physics on the one side and client or stakeholder requirements on the other. The challenge is to attempt to convey, and present, the theoretical and empirical knowledge of crime science in ways that make sense to designers and that they can use. One attempt at guidance is the Design Council’s guide to designing out crime, written by the authors of Chapter 3.2 Thinking thief is my own attempt, in a rather long and hastily assembled slide presentation, to set out the kinds of crime science knowledge and understanding that designers need in a series of progressively more structured frameworks spanning the gap between problem and solution.3 That this guidance is not yet right for all designers (which sometimes becomes uncomfortably obvious) is not a fault of the underlying science, but of the opportunity to design, test, and improve the communication method, media, and content itself.

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Some may claim that genius-level, insightful designers could, and should, be able to produce the necessary goods with minimal assistance. In view of the above discussion, this is debatable. And the trouble with genius is that it is by definition in short supply. The theoretical demand for innovative capacity in design against crime is vast. Consider all those millions of products, systems, places, services, and so forth being invented, designed, manufactured, and deployed—all with some potential to be misappropriated, mistreated, mishandled, misused, and misbehaved with—and conventional approaches to crime through cops, courts, and corrections being of limited capacity and great expense. In many cases, this risk is in principle reducible by design. We may need geniuses to inspire and lead the design against crime field, but we also need to scale up the response by mobilizing the everyday cadre of designers to routinely and effectively fit crime within their working practice. We may, as I stated in Chapter 1, want to spread the design capacity even further by getting everyday crime prevention practitioners to draw on design. The necessary volume of innovative capacity can be delivered only by a sustained attempt to develop that capacity and then build and maintain it among everyday designers and crime prevention practitioners. There we must leave the debate—but I hope it will go on. Whether close partners in multidisciplinarity embrace or fuse together as a true interdiscipline, crime science and product design have much to offer one another and society. They have the potential to significantly address the problem of crime while making minimal adverse impacts on the activities and other values and needs of everyday life. Designers, and the design space within which they navigate and create, cannot be the sole focus of action to increase the amount and quality of design against crime work that is undertaken. The report commissioned by the Home Office and Design Council on the state of design against crime at the end of the past millennium (Design Council 2000; Learmont 2005) identified a wide range of enablers and constraints that needed to be addressed (see also Clarke and Newman [2005b] and Chapter 4 in this volume) in the career structure and organizational reward of designers, and among manufacturers and marketers who act as design decisionmakers, consumers, diverse government departments, and national and international bodies that set the climate and the terms of competition. These issues also exercised the Home Office’s Design and Technology Alliance against crime.4 The operating environment of design against crime itself badly needs redesigning.

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In the meantime, as practitioners of crime prevention and design you should variously think thief; draw on design; clarify your rationale; sprinkle design against crime on your food; be user friendly and abuser unfriendly in that order; innovate openly; package things carefully; be socially inclusive, responsive, and responsible; prepare to reframe the problem; evaluate rigorously; be brave . . . and mind how you go!

Notes 1. See Ekblom (2011b) for a description of the TRIZ system of inventive principles. Among its many uses, TRIZ processes help designers of a particular product to jump up and out of the immediate problem to address wider systems and down and in to tackle subsystems and components. 2. UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/ Security/Design-out-crime/Design-out-crime-guide/ (accessed May 30, 2011). 3. www.bikeoff.org/design_resource/dr_PDF/Thinking_Thief_Crime _Frameworks_PE_DAC.doc (accessed May 30, 2011). 4. UK Design Council, www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/challenges/ Security/Design-out-crime/The-Alliance/ (accessed May 30, 2011).

Acronyms and Abbreviations

5Is framework

intelligence, intervention, implementation, involvement, impact ABI Association of British Insurers ACPO Association of Chief Police Officers (UK) AHRC Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) AT CUT PRICES affordable, transportable, concealable, untraceable, tradeable, profitable, reputable, imperishable, consumable, evaluable, shiftable ATM automated teller machine (cash machine) BIOS basic input/output system BSI British Standards Institution CCO conjunction of criminal opportunity framework CCTV closed circuit television CEN European Committee for Normalisation CENELEC European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation CLAIMED clarify role, locate individuals and organizations, alert, inform, motivate, empower, direct CNP card not present COBRA Cabinet Office briefing room (UK) CPTED crime prevention through environmental design

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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

CRAVED

concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, disposable CSR corporate social responsibility CT counterterrorism CVV card verification value DAC design against crime DACRC Design Against Crime Research Centre (London) DOC denomination of controlled origin DOC Designing Out Crime Research Centre (Sydney) DOCA Designing Out Crime Association DOP denomination of protected origin DTI Department of Trade and Industry (UK) ECCA International Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis Seminar EPC electronic product code ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute EU European Union FDA US Food and Drug Administration FMCG fast-moving consumer goods ESOs European standardization organizations ICVS International Crime Vicitimisation Survey IMPACT International Medical Products AntiCounterfeiting Taskforce IN SAFE HANDS identifiable, neutral, seen, attached, findable, executable, hidden, automatic, necessary, detectable, and secure IPR intellectual property rights ISO International Organization for Standardization MARC mechanisms for assessing the risk of crime MC Monte Carlo MO modus operandi NPD new product development NSAI National Standards Authority of Ireland

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

NSW OPDM

OVD PDA PIN POP RETRA RFID SARA SCP SFF SMART SMS TRIZ UCL UNICRI UTS VIVA WAP

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New South Wales Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (former name of UK government department, now Department for Communities and Local Government) optical variable device personal digital assistant personal identification number problem-oriented policing Radio, Electrical and Television Retailers’ Association (UK) radio frequency identification scanning, analysis, response, and assessment situational crime prevention security function framework specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based short message service theory of inventive principles (translated from Russian) University College London United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute University of Technology Sydney value, inertia (how easily moved), visible (how obvious and abundant), and access wireless application protocol

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The Contributors

Tony Archer, a former police officer, is a community safety support officer with the Warwickshire County Council. Rachel Armitage is reader and deputy director, Applied Criminology Centre, University of Huddersfield. Kate Bowers is reader, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, University College London. Olga Camacho Duarte is research fellow, Designing Out Crime Research Centre, Faculty of Design, Architecture, and Building, University of Technology, Sydney. Ronald V. Clarke is professor, Rutgers University, and visiting professor, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, University College London. Caroline L. Davey is reader in design, innovation, and society and director, Design Against Crime Solution Centre, University of Salford. Kees Dorst is professor of design, associate dean of research, and director, Designing Out Crime Research Centre, Faculty of Design, Architecture, and Building, University of Technology, Sydney. Paul Ekblom is professor of design against crime, Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts, London, and 269

270

THE CONTRIBUTORS

visiting professor, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, University College London, and Applied Criminology Centre, University of Huddersfield. Lorraine Gamman is professor of design and director, Design Against Crime Research Centre, Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts, London. Martin Gill is director of Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International (PRCI) and formerly professor of criminology, University of Leicester. Peter Guillaume, a former police officer, is the Warwickshire business crime prevention manager for a program jointly funded by Warwickshire Police and the County Community Safety Partnership. Shane D. Johnson is professor of security and crime science and deputy director, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, University College London. Lucy Kaldor is research officer, Designing Out Crime Research Centre, Faculty of Design, Architecture, and Building, University of Technology, Sydney. Rohan Lulham is research fellow, Designing Out Crime Research Centre, Faculty of Design, Architecture, and Building, University of Technology, Sydney. Graeme R. Newman is distinguished teaching professor, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York. Lorenzo Segato is director of RISCC, Research Centre on Security and Crime, in Vicenza, Italy. Aiden Sidebottom is a doctoral student, UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, University College London. Chris Thomas is lecturer in industrial design, Swansea Metropolitan University, Wales.

THE CONTRIBUTORS

271

Adam Thorpe is reader in socially responsive design and creative director, Design Against Crime Research Centre, Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts, London. Marcus Willcocks is designer and research fellow, Design Against Crime Research Centre, Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts, London. Andrew B. Wootton is senior research fellow and director, Design Against Crime Solution Centre, University of Salford.

Index

Acid Rain Program, 90 ACPO. See Association of Chief Police Officers Activity areas of design life cycle that make up framework, 47fig Adaptability, 28–29, 223 Aesthetics, 22, 112, 137, 157, 173 Affordability, 160, 233, 235 Affordable, transportable, concealable, untraceable, tradeable, profitable, reputable, imperishable, consumable, evaluable, shiftable (AT CUT PRICES), 4, 233–237; characteristics that make FMCG attractive to thieves, 235tab Aftersale services, 32 AHRC. See Arts and Humanities Research Council Akrich, M., 35 Alert methods, to trolley safes, 221tab Ambience, 170 Amplification, in design, 15–16

Antislash wire mesh, 23 Antivirus protection, 88 Applied Criminology Centre, 2 Archer, Tony, 202–203, 209–210, 226n3 Architectural Liaison Officers, 81 Architecture, 37–38, 45 Armitage, Rachel, 68, 72 Arsenic contamination, 148 Articulation: of action, 11–12; of design thinking, 14–15 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 129, 199 Association of British Insurers, 72 Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), 70 AT CUT PRICES. See Affordable, transportable, concealable, untraceable, tradeable, profitable, reputable, imperishable, consumable, evaluable, shiftable ATMs. See Automated teller machines Attack testing, 37

273

274

INDEX

Attractors, of crime, 183 Authentication stickers, 234, 236 Automated teller machines (ATMs), 31, 92, 94 Automatic lockdown, 18 Backpacks, 167, 200n14, 226n2 Backup systems, 18 Bait bikes, 110 Bali bombings (2002), 133 Bar codes, 161, 163, 237 Bars, theft in, 178–179 Baseline measures, 41, 115 Basic input/output system (BIOS), 76tab BCS. See British Crime Survey Bech, M. J. H., 110 Before and after measures, 40 Bellini, Sara, 177 Berry, Geoff, 42 Beware posters, 23 Bias: dispositional, 93, 102; personal, 39, 50; political, 39; in reporting, 209; selfselection, 127 Bicycle locking, 108, 111–114; changes over time, 121–123, 125; locking behaviors, 116–120; locking practices for prototype bicycle parking stands compared to control Sheffield stands, 124tab; locking practices for Sheffield stands and each prototype bicycle parking stand, 123fig; locking practices for Sheffield stands vs. prototype bicycle parking stands as single group, 122fig

Bicycle parking stands: fraction of time observed as unused, 121fig; Johnson, S., on, 109, 110, 111, 114, 120, 126; locking practices for prototypes compared to control Sheffield stands, 124tab; locking practices for Sheffield stands and each prototype, 123fig; locking practices for Sheffield stands vs. prototypes as single group, 122fig; prototypes, 119fig, 122fig, 123–128, 123fig, 124tab; Sheffield stands, 113–118, 120–127, 129, 130n3; Sidebottom on, 109, 110, 111, 114, 120 Bicycle theft, 10, 11, 61; design against, 107, 112–116; interventions to reduce, 110–112, 114; research on, 108–110; victims of, 107–110 Bikeoff project, 10, 129, 244n3 BIOS. See Basic input/output system Bluetooth, 34 Bomb threats, 135–137, 139 Boot camps, 39, 40–41 Boslaugh, S., 108 Bowers, Kate J., 26, 126, 168, 178, 208, 212, 223–224 British Crime Survey (BCS), 109, 113, 167, 203 British Standards Institution (BSI), 70 British Telecom, 70, 72 Broken bicycle effect, 116 BSI. See British Standards Institution

INDEX

Budget, 49, 58, 79, 214 Built environments, 38, 68 Burglary, 16, 61, 110; commercial, 51, 203; residential, 51, 230 Burrell, A., 77, 79 Business strategies, 56 Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBRA), 1 Cadmium contamination, 148 CaMden bicycle stand, 29, 31, 173 Cap-and-trade model: for carbon reduction, 3, 90–91, 99–100, 102–103; for credit card fraud reduction, 95–99; for credit card fraud reduction, simplified, 97tab; for crime reduction, 91–99 Carbon emissions reduction, 84, 87–89; cap-and-trade model for, 3, 90–91, 95–96, 99–100, 102–103 Card hanger for Grippa clip, 190fig Card not present (CNP) fraud, 94 Card Verification Value (CVV), 104n9 Cars: immobilizer feature in, 187; theft, 61, 68, 92, 109 Carter, Mike, 42 Case studies, 2–3; in packaging, 159–162. See also Bicycle parking stands; Counterterrorism trash bin; Grippa clip; Trolley safes Causal mechanisms, 19–20, 24–26, 29, 240–242; identifying, 40

275

CCO. See Conjunction of criminal opportunity CCTV. See Closed-circuit television CDs, 150, 159, 229, 235 Cell phone service design, 3 CEN. See European Committee for Normalisation CENELEC. See European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation Certilogo, 156tab, 161–162 Chandler, A., 236 Chelsea clip, 169–170, 176fig, 186, 188, 227n6 Chettiparamb, A., 239 Clarify, locate, alert, inform, motivate, empower, direct (CLAIMED), 30–31, 188 Clarke, Ronald V., 3, 6, 9, 17; problem-solving guide of, 202; rational choice theory and, 141, 230; risk and, 72–73, 78 Clean Air Act (1963), 90, 95 Client/customer relationships, 56 Closed-circuit television (CCTV), 24, 39, 40, 59, 178 CNP. See Card not present fraud COBRA. See Cabinet Office Briefing Room Codesign, 4 Cohen, L., 229 Color shifting logo, 161 Commercial burglary, 51 Commercial fraud, 161 Community safety, 17, 18–19 Community Safety Team, 202 Computers: desktop, 88; laptop, 1, 20, 29, 74, 83, 182; self-

276

INDEX

reporting as stolen, over Internet, 20; viruses on, 88 Concealability, 20, 25, 234, 236 Concealable, removable, abundant, accessible, valuable, enjoyable, disposable (CRAAVED), 48 Concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, disposable (CRAVED), 48, 72, 76–77, 109, 230–235 Conflicting requirements, 12, 237 Conjunction of criminal opportunity (CCO), 21 Constructional standards, 15 Consultation process, 51, 53, 54, 71–73, 78–82 Consumer Association, 69 Consumers: groups of, 68–69, 82; health and safety of, 147–148, 158–160; secure products and, 78, 81, 83. See also Fastmoving consumer goods Contamination, prevention of, 16 Context dependence, 14, 40; national and local, 48 Contradiction principles, 27 Convenience, 19 Cornish, Derek B., 141, 230 Corporate crime, 89, 93 Corporate social responsibility (CSR), 171–172, 174 Cost-benefit analyses, 39, 41, 98; social costs and benefits, 91, 92tab Counterfeiting, 22; of food and drink, 152; global scale of, 149–152; of medicines, 150–151; packaging against, 147–149, 157–159; packaging

solutions and technologies against, 156tab; SCP and, 159; of Viagra, 149, 160, 165n14; victims of, 158 Counterterrorism (CT), 17, 27 Counterterrorism trash bin (CT bin): analysis of, 139–142; characteristics of, 137–139; CPTED and, 131, 140–141; design of, 131–134, 241; reframing of problem, 131–132, 134–136, 145, 241; SCP and, 131, 141–142; SFF and, 139–140; sketch of early version of, 132fig; on Sydney railway platform, 138fig CPTED. See Crime prevention through environmental design CRAAVED. See Concealable, removable, abundant, accessible, valuable, enjoyable, disposable CRAVED. See Concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable, disposable Credit cards, 25, 31; fraud, 94–102; fraud reduction, capand-trade model for, 95–99; simplified cap-and-trade model, for fraud reduction, 97tab; simplified direct regulatory model, for fraud reduction, 96tab Crime: attractors of, 183; corporate, 89, 93; defined, 16–17; incentives for, 83; life cycle of, 157–159; multiplier of, 203; offender-oriented theories of, 21; organized, 151, 158, 230; pollution and,

INDEX

87–90; seasonal patterns in, 41, 204; situational theories of, 21; technology and, 65, 95. See also Cybercrime Crime and Disorder Act (1998), 59, 66, 67 Crime life cycle model, 52, 63n10 Crime preventers, 19–20, 23, 25–26, 28–31, 36; diminished, 182; Ekblom on, 211, 218, 223–224 Crime prevention, 17; design for, 13, 52, 54, 59, 178; market approach to, 87, 100–103; packaging and, 152–157; partnerships for, 42. See also Situational crime prevention Crime Prevention Design Advisors, 81 Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), 4; CT bin and, 131, 140–141; limitations of, 143–145, 241; SCP and, 142–143, 146 Crime promoters, 20, 30–31, 89, 182 Crime rates, 40 Crime reduction: cap-and-trade model for, 91–99; incentivization of, 3 Crime Reduction Programme, UK, 1, 30 Crime science, 9, 240–243; design and, 11, 198–199, 239 Crime victims, 69, 83; of bicycle theft, 107–110; of counterfeiting, 158; of handbag theft, 205–209, 226;

277

of identity theft, 104n13; theft victimization by age group across 27 Warwickshire supermarkets, 207fig; victimreported handbag theft description, 208tab Crime-free products and services, 68–69; laptops and mobile phones, 1 Criminal harm, 184, 186, 191 Criminal justice system, 18, 89, 201 Criminal opportunity model, 52 Criminocclusive products, 3, 237 Criminogenic interventions, 40, 68 Criminologists, 38, 90, 231; radical, 89, 93 Cross-functional teams, 44 CSR. See Corporate social responsibility CT. See Counterterrorism CT bin. See Counterterrorism trash bin Cultural issues, 18, 144 Curtis, D., 123 Customer comments, on trolley safes, 214–215, 218fig Customer feedback, 214 Cutting Crime strategy, 68–69, 84 CVV. See Card Verification Value Cybercrime, 87–88, 100–101; e-crime levels, 66; as externality, 93–94; Internet scams, 31, 88, 151 Cyberspace: cyberenvironment, 100–101; e-crime levels in, 66; security in, 34 Cycling lanes, 107

278

INDEX

DAC. See Design against crime DACRC. See Design Against Crime Research Centre Dales, John, 90 Davey, Caroline L., 47, 52, 60 Denomination of controlled origin (DOC), 162 Denomination of protected origin (DOP), 162 Department for Business, Industry and Science, 84n1 Department of Justice, US, 90 Department of Trade and Industry, UK (DTI), 37, 65–66, 70 Design: amplification in, 15–16; against bicycle theft, 107, 112–116; coevolution of, with offenders, 28; for crime prevention, 13, 52, 54, 59, 178; crime science and, 11, 198–199, 239; of CT bin, 131–134, 241; detailed, 53; high-risk, 48; for interventions, 24–25, 32, 39; of landscapes, 38, 45; requirements for, 27, 34, 184; of secure products, 65, 81; of trolley safes, 210–212 Design against crime (DAC), 1, 37; DAC Evaluation Framework, 38, 43–46, 47fig, 58fig, 60; development of, as discipline, 12 Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC), 2, 10, 13, 168, 173 Design Against Crime Solution Centre, 2, 43, 45, 61 Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime, 2, 69, 243 Design Council, UK, 37–38, 61, 68, 242, 243, 244n2

Design Out Crime Research Centre, 2 Design Policy Partnership, 38 Design thinking: articulation of, 14–15; framework for, 12 Designing Out Crime Association (DOCA), 69 Designing Out Crime Research Centre (DOC), 2, 6n7, 131, 133–135, 146 Designing Out Crime Working Group, 69 Desire requirements, 22, 26, 32, 169, 172–175, 184 Desktop computers, 88 Detailed design, 53 Deterrence, 102 Development cycle, 44 Digital DNA, 161–162 Dill, J., 107 Diminished crime preventers, 182 Dipping, from handbags, 194, 208 Direct blocking, 28 Discretionary interventions, 187 Disposability, 72, 76–77, 109, 229–230, 232–235 Dispositional bias, 93, 102 Distribution of recorded handbag theft incidents across 27 Warwickshire supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008, 206fig DNA, digital, 161–162 DOC. See Denomination of controlled origin; Designing Out Crime Research Centre DOCA. See Designing Out Crime Association DOP. See Denomination of protected origin

INDEX

DTI. See Department of Trade and Industry, UK DVDs, 149–150, 159, 229, 233, 235 eBay, 94 ECCA. See Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis Eck, John E., 14, 108, 202, 213–214 e-crime levels, 66 Ekblom, Paul, 10, 25, 34; on crime preventers, 211, 218, 223–224; criminal opportunity model of, 52; on packaging, 157; risk and, 78, 81 Electronic product code (EPC), 156tab, 160 Electronic products, 3, 65–68, 70–75, 81–84 Electronic waste, 32 Employee theft, 203 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, 2, 66, 129 Entrepreneurship, 5 Entry phone system, 32 Environment: built, 38, 68; interacting with, 19–20; pollution of, 91, 93, 100–101, 103n1, 104n11, 105n16; of risk, 24, 170, 183. See also Crime prevention through environmental design Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis (ECCA), 35 Environmental Protection Agency, US, 90 EPC. See Electronic product code Ergonomics, 37

279

ESOs. See European standardization organizations Ethnic issues, 18 ETSI. See European Telecommunications Standards Institute EU. See European Union European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC), 70 European Committee for Normalisation (CEN), 70 European International Emissions Trading Scheme, 99–100 European law enforcement agency (EUROPOL), 78 European Standard for Reduction of Crime, 48, 59 European standardization organizations (ESOs), 70 European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), 70 European Union (EU): funding by, 2; Kyoto protocol and, 87, 91 EUROPOL. See European law enforcement agency Evacuations, public, 135, 137 Evaluations: DAC Evaluation Framework, 38, 43–46, 47fig, 58fig, 60; ongoing, 55–56; process, 42; scientific, 40, 59–60, 242; scoring, 45; specific, 41–43 Everson, S., 68 Evidence-based policy, 40 Example of page from the DAC Evaluation Framework publication, 58fig

280

INDEX

Externalities: cybercrime as, 93–94; positive and negative, 92tab; social efficiency and, 91–93 Fail-safe features, 28, 196 Failure modes, 27–28 Fair trade products, 100 Fakes. See Counterfeiting False alarms, 136, 139 Farrell, Graham, 67 Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), 229–232; characteristics that make FMCG attractive to thieves, 235tab; AT CUT PRICES and, 4, 233–237 FDA. See Food and Drug Administration Feasibility testing, 52 Feedback: customer, 214; loops, 202 Felson, M., 110, 229 Fencing, 154, 234 Final version of Grippa clip, 168fig Financial penalties, 67 Fitness, and SFF, 15 5Is framework. See Intelligence, intervention, implementation, involvement, impact Flea markets, 231–232 Flexibility, 72 Flyparking, 113 FMCG. See Fast-moving consumer goods Food and drink, counterfeiting of, 152 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US, 148, 160, 164n1

Food labeling, 71 Food Standards Agency, UK, 71 Foresight Crime Panel, 65–66, 68, 70 Fraction of time bicycle parking stands were observed as unused, 121fig Frameworks: DAC Evaluation Framework, 38, 43–46, 47fig, 58fig, 60; for design thinking, 12; fit-for-purpose, 13; 5Is framework, 12, 36n14, 130n1, 192. See also Security function framework Fraud: card not present, 94; commercial, 161; credit card, 94–102; simplified cap-andtrade model for credit card fraud reduction, 97tab; simplified direct regulatory model for credit card fraud reduction, 96tab Fraunhofer Institut, 70 Free-rider problem, 100 Front wheel enclosure stand, 119fig, 127 Front-end activities, 43 Function: of products, 16; purpose and, 19, 184; security function, 15–16 Gamman, Lorraine, 25, 26, 109 Gendered products, 189 Geocoding, 128, 204 Geographical spread, of interview participants, 74tab Global Retail Theft Barometer, 229 Globalization, 147; global scale of counterfeiting, 149–152

INDEX

Glycol contamination, 151 Goal-directed offenders, 17, 20, 25 Goldstein, H., 201 Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing, 202 Google, 94 Government-manufactured selfinterest, 3 Great Recession, of 2008–2009, 101, 103n6 Green products, 91, 100, 155 Greenpeace, 90, 100, 102, 103n3 Grippa clip, 10, 13, 34; card hanger for, 190fig; color of, 188; customer’s perspective on, 169–171; final version of, 168fig; with handbag logo, 191fig; management’s perspective on, 171–173; manufacturing and marketing perspective on, 173–174; mechanism of, 177–197; poster advertising, 189fig; security niche of, 175–177, 198; SFF statement for, 197–198; terrorism and, 193–194 Gruca, T., 210 Guillaume, Peter, 202–203, 209–210, 226n3 Haddon matrix, 17 Handbags, 10; dipping from, 194, 208; distribution of recorded theft incidents across 27 Warwickshire supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008, 206fig; Grippa clip with

281

handbag logo, 191fig; Karrysafe handbag range, 10; monthly distribution of recorded theft incidents across Warwickshire supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008, 205fig; recorded thefts from trolleys at treatment and control sites before and after intervention, November 2006–January 2009, 217fig; script perspective of handbag owners, 180–181, 188; security of, 23–24; theft of, in supermarkets, 204–209; theft of, in supermarkets, rates per 1,000 Warwickshire residents, 207tab; theft victimization by age group across 27 Warwickshire supermarkets, 207fig; victim-reported theft description, 208tab; victims of handbag theft, 205–209, 226. See also Grippa clip Handover activities, 54 Handy, S., 107 Harm, 17; criminal, 184, 186, 191; mitigation of, 18; reduction of, 22, 148, 163, 170 Hawthorne effect, 128–129 High-level abstraction, 14 High-risk designs, 48 HIV/AIDS, 151 Holograms, 155, 157, 161 Home Office, UK, 37–38, 41, 68, 84, 243 Homeostasis, of risk, 169 Human factor issues, 10 Hygiene requirements, 22, 33, 170, 172, 184, 196

282

INDEX

ICVS. See International Crime Victimisation Survey Identifiable, neutral, seen, attached, findable, executable, hidden, automatic, necessary, detectable, and secure (IN SAFE HANDS), 230 Identity theft, 18, 88, 154, 203; victims of, 104n13 Identity Theft Resource Center, 104n12 Illicit markets, 231, 233, 235–237 Immers, L. H., 110 Immobilizer feature, in cars, 187 IMPACT. See International Medical Products AntiCounterfeiting Taskforce Imperishability, 234–235 IN SAFE HANDS. See Identifiable, neutral, seen, attached, findable, executable, hidden, automatic, necessary, detectable, and secure Incentives, for crime, 83 Inclusivity, 16, 171; social, 4, 22, 244 Industrial Revolution, 88 Information revolution, 88 Innovation, 49–50 Insurance, 68, 75, 104n10 Intellectual property rights (IPR), 147, 149, 161 Intelligence, intervention, implementation, involvement, impact (5Is framework), 12, 36n14, 130n1, 192 Intentional mechanisms, 20 Interdisciplinarity, 6, 13, 199, 239–241

International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS), 61, 109, 110 International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce (IMPACT), 148, 150–151 International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 196 Internet, 93–94; computers, selfreporting as stolen, over, 20; scams on, 31, 88, 151; security on, 34, 161 Interventions, 38–39; for bicycle theft reduction, 110–112, 114; criminogenic, 40; design, 24–25, 32, 39; discretionary, 187; low-tech, 10; preventive, 31; real-time, 29 Interview participants: geographical spread of, 74tab; sectors represented by, 75tab iPod users, 83 IPR. See Intellectual property rights ISO. See International Organization for Standardization Jacobs, J., 140 Jeffery, C. R., 140 Jobs, Steve, 83 Johnson, S., 168, 208, 212; on bicycle parking stands, 109, 110, 111, 114, 120, 126 Joyriding, 61 Karrysafe handbag range, 10 KeepSafe, 177 Kelly, F., 210 Knowledge: generative transfer of, 14; tacit practice, 11, 36n8

INDEX

Knutsson, Johannes, 203 Kyoto protocol, 87, 91 Labeling: food, 71; of secure products, 71–72, 84; traffic light labeling, 65, 71–72, 80 Landscape design, 38, 45 Laptop computers, 1, 20, 29, 74, 83, 182 Latour, B., 35 Launch plans, 54–55 Laycock, Gloria, 68 Levi, M., 98 Lewin, Kurt, 14 Liability issues, product, 174 Life cycle, of crime, 157–159 Lifestyle choices, 144 Liu, J., 109 Lockdown, automatic, 18 Locking practices for prototype bicycle parking stands compared to control Sheffield stands, 124tab Locking practices for Sheffield stands and each prototype bicycle parking stand, 123fig Locking practices for Sheffield stands vs. prototype bicycle parking stands as single group, 122fig Loukaitou-Sideris, A., 108 Low-tech interventions, 10 MACH3 shaving system, 232–233 Macintyre, S., 236 Mages, R., 160 Manufacturers, 83; engaging, 80–81; manufacturing and

283

marketing perspective on Grippa clip, 173–174 MARC. See Project MARC Market approach, to crime prevention, 87, 100–103 Market share, 57 Master Card, 95 Materials, 20 MC. See Monte Carlo permutation test McCain, R., 91 Mechanism: of Grippa clip, 177–197; Project MARC (mechanism for assessing risk of crime), 9–10, 65, 70, 78–79, 82, 85n4; SFF and, 21, 24–25 Medicines, counterfeiting of, 150–151 Melamine contamination, 148, 152, 164n4 Messner, S., 109 Meyer, Sunniva, 34 Mismobilization, 191 Mitigation, of harm, 18 Mobile phones, 14; crime-free, 1; password security for, 32; recycling of, 32; theft risk for, 230 Mobilization, 28–30, 36n14, 187; failure of, 192–193; of installer, 192; mismobilization, 191; of staff, 191–192 Money laundering, 101, 148, 149, 150 Monte Carlo (MC) permutation test, 122–123 Monthly distribution of recorded handbag theft incidents across Warwickshire supermarkets,

284

INDEX

November 2006–October 2008, 205fig Morality, 92 Morris, K., 109 Moschis, G., 210 Motivation, 20, 25, 189 Motorcycle theft, 109 Muggers, 83 Naming and shaming strategy, 67, 78–79 National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI), 70 Natural surveillance, 140, 143 Negative and positive externalities, 92tab New product development (NPD), 38, 44–45 New South Wales railway authority, 133 Newman, Graeme R., 3, 6, 9, 17, 140; on security, 67, 72–73, 78 Niches. See Security niches Nickel allergy, 174 Noise pollution, 107 Noncrime-related drivers, 22 Norman, D. A., 169, 242 North, B., 123 NPD. See New product development NSAI. See National Standards Authority of Ireland Obama, Barack, 91 Observations on trolley safe usage over time, October 2008–January 2009, 219fig Offenders: coevolution of, with design, 28; co-offenders and, 158; goal-directed, 17, 20, 25;

offender-oriented theories, of crime, 21; provocation of, 19–20, 142; script perspective and techniques of, 179–180; sex offender programs, 39 Olympic Games, Sydney (2000), 133 Ongoing evaluations, 55–56 Operation, 25 Optical variable devices (OVD), 156tab Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 147, 149 Organizational approach, 239 Organized crime, 151, 158, 230 OVD. See Optical variable devices Overfishing, 100, 105n14 Packaging: case studies in, 159–162; against counterfeiting, 147–149, 157–159; crime prevention and, 152–157; Ekblom on, 157; solutions and technologies against counterfeiting, 156tab; tamperproof, 24, 148, 154, 157 Pagoda stand, 119fig, 124, 125, 126, 127 Pareto efficiency, 92–93 Parker, A., 210 Partnerships, for crime prevention, 42 Pascoe, 26 Password security, 19; for mobile phones, 32 Payback period, 57

INDEX

PDAs. See Personal digital assistants Pease, Ken, 1, 3, 6, 37, 67, 72 Performance standards, 15 Personal bias, 39, 50 Personal digital assistants (PDAs), 74, 83 Personal identification number (PIN) security, 98, 102; bypass technique, 32; mini PIN, 94–95, 104n9 Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, 151 PIN. See Personal identification number Pires, S., 230 Police Label Secure Housing, 48, 59 Police robots, 137, 139 Policing: problem-oriented, 6, 130n1, 201, 209–210, 223; reactive, 201 Policy, evidence-based, 40 Political bias, 39 “Polluter pays” approach, 3, 103n2 Pollution: crime and, 87–90; environmental, 91, 93, 100–101, 103n1, 104n11, 105n16; noise, 107 POP. See Problem-oriented policing Positive and negative externalities, 92tab Posner, R., 103n4 Poster advertising Grippa clip, 189fig Preventers. See Crime preventers Prevention: of contamination, 16. See also Crime prevention

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Preventive interventions, 31 Problem restructuring, 135 Problem-oriented policing (POP), 6, 130n1, 201, 209–210, 223 Problem-Oriented Policing Center, 48, 178 Process evaluation, 42 Products: criminocclusive, 3, 237; electronic, 3, 65–68, 70–75, 81–84; fair trade, 100; function of, 16; gendered, 189; green, 91, 100, 155; liability issues, 174; life cycle/scope of, 26–27; modification of, SFF and, 6, 15–16; new product development, 38, 44–45; for security, 23–24, 170, 174–177, 193, 198–199; security niches of, 22–24; specifications for, 44; traffic light labeling of, 65, 71–72, 80; undesirable, 84; uninsured, 83. See also Secure products Profitability levels, 57, 234 Project management process, 41–43, 42tab; development, 50–55; learning and business strategy, 56; setup, 48–50; use and performance, 55–56 Project MARC (mechanism for assessing risk of crime), 9–10, 65, 70, 78–79, 82, 85n4 Protect Your Brand project, 161 Prototype bicycle parking stands, 119fig, 122fig, 123–128, 123fig, 124tab Provocation, of offenders, 19–20, 142 Public transportation, 107, 145 Pucher, J., 107

286

INDEX

Purpose, 16; function and, 19, 184; SFF and, 21–22; subsidiary, 22 Radical criminologists, 89, 93 Radio, Electrical and Television Retailers’ Association (RETRA), 69 Radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, 23, 98, 156, 160–161, 163 Rapid appraisal methods, 231, 236 Rational choice theory, of Clarke, 141, 230 Rationale, 11–12 Razor blades, theft of, 229, 232–233 Reactive policing, 201 Real property security, 68 Recorded handbag thefts from trolleys at treatment and control sites before and after intervention, November 2006–January 2009, 217fig Recycling, 155, 173; of mobile phones, 32 Reframing, of CT bin problem, 131–132, 134–136, 145, 241 Regression, to the mean, 224 Regulations, 15, 89, 93; simplified direct regulatory model, for credit card fraud reduction, 96tab Rehabilitation, 39 Reporting bias, 209 Requirements, 16; conflicting, 12, 237; for design, 27, 34, 184; for hygiene, 22, 33, 170, 172, 184, 196

Residential burglary, 51, 230 Resilience, 18 Restorative justice, 105n15 Retail security staff, 11 Retail supply chains, 231–232 RETRA. See Radio, Electrical and Television Retailers’ Association RFID. See Radio frequency identification chips Risk, 17; assessment of, 65; Clarke and, 72–73, 78; Ekblom and, 78, 81; environment of, 24, 170, 183; factors, 4, 52; high-risk design, 48; homeostasis of, 169; increased, 186; reduction of, 18, 149, 210; of theft, for mobile phones, 230. See also Project MARC Rival hypotheses, 41 Robbery, 51, 83, 92, 203 Robot-operated bomb disposal, 137, 139 Roman, J., 67 Rotational leverage, 117 Safety issues, 15; community safety, 17, 18–19; consumer health and safety, 147–148, 158–160; security vs., 175; of trolley safes, 221–222 Sales vs. objectives, 57 Sample sizes, 41 SARA. See Scanning, analysis, response, assessment Saraga, P., 66 Satellite navigation devices, 43 Scams, on Internet, 31, 88, 151

INDEX

Scanning, analysis, response, assessment (SARA), 4, 130n1, 201–202, 226n1 Schewe, C., 210 Scientific evaluations, 40, 59–60, 242 Scientific realist approach, 14 Scientific-epistemological approach, 239 Scoring systems: for evaluations, 45; for security factors, 76tab; for vulnerability factors, 75tab SCP. See Situational crime prevention Script perspectives, 25, 35; clashes between, 181, 185; of handbag owners, 180–181, 188; offender techniques and, 179–180 Seasonal patterns, in crime, 41, 204 Sectors represented, by interview participants, 75tab Secure products, 24, 68–69; consumers and, 78, 81, 83; design of, 65, 81; labeling of, 71–72, 84 Secured By Design, 39, 59, 67 Security: adaptations for, 23; in cyberspace, 34; function of, 15–16; of handbags, 23–24; on Internet, 34, 161; Newman on, 67, 72–73, 78; with passwords, 19, 32; primary, 17; products for, 23–24, 170, 174–177, 193, 198–199; of real property, 68; safety vs., 175; scoring system for, 76tab; secondary, 18; tertiary, 18; trade-offs in, 155–157; vehicle security

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assessments, 56. See also Personal identification number security Security function framework (SFF), 9; adjunct factors of, 26–33; CT bin and, 139–140; fitness and, 15; Grippa clip statement for, 197–198; mechanism and, 21, 24–25; product modification and, 6, 15–16; purpose and, 21–22; security niches and, 21, 22–24; technicality and, 21–22, 25 Security niches: of Grippa clip, 175–177, 198; of products, 22–24; SFF and, 21, 22–24 Selectamark, 70 Self-interest, governmentmanufactured, 3 Self-selection bias, 127 Semiotics, 23, 185 Sensemaking process, 14, 36n8 Sex offender programs, 39 SFF. See Security function framework Sham, P., 123 Sheffield stands, 113–118, 120–127, 129, 130n3; locking practices for prototype bicycle parking stands compared to control Sheffield stands, 124tab; locking practices for Sheffield stands and each prototype bicycle parking stand, 123fig; locking practices for Sheffield stands vs. prototype bicycle parking stands as single group, 122fig

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INDEX

Shoplifting, 11, 89, 203, 236. See also Fast-moving consumer goods Short message service (SMS), 161 Sidebottom, Aiden, 10, 78, 178, 223–224, 226n1; on bicycle parking stands, 109, 110, 111, 114, 120 Simplified cap-and-trade model for credit card fraud reduction, 97tab Simplified direct regulatory model, for credit card fraud reduction, 96tab Situational crime prevention (SCP), 6, 26, 30, 87, 111; counterfeiting and, 159; CPTED and, 142–143, 146; CT bin and, 131, 141–142 Situational theories, of crime, 21 Sketch of early version of CT bin, 132fig SMART. See Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based Smith, C., 168, 208 SMS. See Short message service Smuggling, 22 Social approach, 239 Social costs and benefits, 91, 92tab Social efficiency, and externalities, 91–93 Social inclusivity, 4, 22, 244 Social innovation, 5 Social responsibility, 22 Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based (SMART), 48

Specific evaluations, 41–43 Specifications, for products, 44 Staff: loyalty of, 171; mobilization of, 191–192; in retail security, 11 Stakeholder analysis, 4 Standards, 48, 59, 71, 174; constructional, 15; legislation of, 89; for performance, 15; technical, 33; voluntary, 69–70, 80–81 Statistical significance, 39–40, 122, 130n5, 224 Stealability, 232, 235 Stealth, vs. surveillance, 181 Stop Thief Chair, 10, 23, 26, 28, 33, 173, 200n1 Stress testing, 27 Student Design Awards, 11, 35, 68 Subjectivity, 72 Subsidiary purposes, 22–23 Success rates, 57 Supermarkets: distribution of recorded handbag theft incidents across 27 Warwickshire supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008, 206fig; handbag theft in, 204–209; handbag theft in, rates per 1,000 Warwickshire residents, 207tab; monthly distribution of recorded handbag theft incidents across Warwickshire supermarkets, November 2006–October 2008, 205fig; theft victimization by age group across 27 Warwickshire

INDEX

supermarkets, 207fig; trolley safes in, 201–210, 222–226 Supply chain, 27 Surveillance, 25, 144; natural, 140, 143; stealth vs., 181 Sustainability, 16, 110, 144, 175, 192 Sutton, M., 229 Synergies, 27 Tacit practice knowledge, 11, 36n8 Tamper-evident solutions, 16, 23, 154, 157, 161, 194 Tamper-proof packaging, 24, 148, 154, 157 Tarling, R., 109 Tax evasion, 17–18 Teams, cross-functional, 44 Technical standards, 33 Technicality, and SFF, 21–22, 25 Technology, and crime, 65, 95 Tennessee Valley Authority, 90 Terrorism, 18, 40, 141–142; financing, 101, 148, 149; Grippa clip and, 193–194 Testing, 16, 46; attack testing, 37; feasibility, 52; stress, 27; validation and, 53–54 Thatcham, 56, 61, 63n11 Theft: in bars, 178–179; of cars, 61, 68, 92, 109; by employees, 203; factors conducive to, 181–184; identity, 18, 88, 104n13, 154, 203; motorcycle, 109; of razor blades, 229, 232–233; risk, for mobile phones, 230; of timber, 230. See also Bicycle theft; Fastmoving consumer goods;

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Grippa clip; Handbags; Supermarkets Theory of inventive principles (TRIZ), 14, 27–28, 244n1 Think Crime initiative, 66, 68–69 Think thief perspective, 5, 38, 157, 225, 242 Thorpe, Adam, 23, 109, 110, 111, 114, 120 Tilley, Nick J., 226n1 Tilley Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing, 202 Timber theft, 230 Tokenistic compliance, 172 Tongren, H., 210 Traceability systems, 155 Tradability, 234 Trademark infringement, 152, 153, 158 Trade-offs, in security, 155–157 Traffic light labeling, of products, 65, 71–72, 80 Transportablilty, 233 Trash bins. See Counterterrorism trash bin TRIZ. See Theory of inventive principles Trolley safes: alert methods to, 221tab; customer comments on, 214–215, 218fig; design of, 210–212; evaluation of, 213–216; fitted to shallow trolley, 211fig; observations on usage over time, October 2008–January 2009, 219fig; positioning of, 212; researcher observations on, 219–220; retailer support for, 212–213; safety issues of, 221–222;

290

INDEX

supermarket setting for, 201–210, 222–226; user surveys on, 215–216, 220–221 2D data matrix coding system, 161 Tylenol murders (1982), 148 UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, 2, 10, 168, 202 Unbolting technique, 117 Undesirable products, 84 UNICRI. See United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute Uninsured products, 83 United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), 147, 150 Untraceability, 234 Urban planning, 14 User surveys, on trolley safes, 215–216, 220–221 Validation, and testing, 53–54 Value, inertia, visible, access (VIVA), 230 van Dijk, J., 109 Vandalism, 16, 20, 51, 108, 116 Vehicle crime, 61 Vehicle security assessments, 56 Velcro, 23 Viagra: counterfeit, 149, 160, 165n14; generic, 160; Pfizer’s, 151, 160–161

Victims. See Crime victims Viruses, on computers, 88 Visa, 94, 95 Visibility, 20 Visualizations, 136 VIVA. See Value, inertia, visible, access Voluntary standards, 69–70, 80–81 Vulnerability factors, 78; overestimating, 82; scores for, 71–81; scoring system for, 75tab; underestimating, 82 WAP. See Wireless application protocol Warwickshire Police, 202 Weijers, H., 108 Wellsmith, M., 77, 79 Whitehead, S., 230 Wi-Fi, 240 Wilkins, L., 236 Willcocks, Marcus, 109 Windows of opportunity, 57 Winter School, 134, 136, 138 Wire mesh, antislash, 23 Wireless application protocol (WAP), 161 Wootton, Andrew B., 47, 52, 60 World Health Organization, 148 X-ray machines, 136–137, 139–140, 142, 145 Zhang, L., 109

CRIME PREVENTION STUDIES Ronald V. Clarke, Series Editor Crime Prevention Studies is an international book series dedicated to research on situational crime prevention and other initiatives to reduce opportunities for crime. Most volumes center on particular topics chosen by expert guest editors. The editors of each volume, in consultation with the series editor, commission the chapters to be published and select peer reviewers.

Volume 1, edited by Ronald V. Clarke, 1993. Volume 2, edited by Ronald V. Clarke, 1994. Volume 3, edited by Ronald V. Clarke, 1994. Volume 4, Crime and Place, edited by John E. Eck and David Weisburd, 1995. Volume 5, The Politics and Practice of Situational Crime Prevention, edited by Ross Homel, 1996. Volume 6, Preventing Mass Transit Crime, edited by Ronald V. Clarke, 1996. Volume 7, Policing for Prevention: Reducing Crime, Public Intoxication, and Injury, edited by Ross Homel, 1997. Volume 8, Crime Mapping and Crime Prevention, edited by David Weisburd and J. Thomas McEwen, 1997. Volume 9, Civil Remedies and Crime Prevention, edited by Lorraine Green Mazerolle and Jan Roehl, 1998. Volume 10, Surveillance of Public Space: CCTV, Street Lighting, and Crime Prevention, edited by Kate Painter and Nick Tilley, 1999. Volume 11, Illegal Drug Markets: From Research to Prevention Policy, edited by Mangai Natarajan and Mike Hough, 2000. Volume 12, Repeat Victimization, edited by Graham Farrell and Ken Pease, 2001. Volume 13, Analysis for Crime Prevention, edited by Nick Tilley, 2002.

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BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

Volume 14, Evaluation for Crime Prevention, edited by Nick Tilley, 2002. Volume 15, Problem-Oriented Policing: From Innovation to Mainstream, edited by Johannes Knutsson, 2003. Volume 16, Theory for Practice in Situational Crime Prevention, edited by Martha J. Smith and Derek B. Cornish, 2003. Volume 17, Understanding and Preventing Car Theft, edited by Michael G. Maxfield and Ronald V. Clarke, 2004. Volume 18, Designing Out Crime from Products and Systems, edited by Ronald V. Clarke and Graeme R. Newman, 2005. Volume 19, Situational Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, edited by Richard Wortley and Richard Smallbone, 2006. Volume 20, Putting Theory to Work: Implementing Situational Prevention and Problem-Oriented Policing, edited by Johannes Knutsson and Ronald V. Clarke, 2006. Volume 21, Imagination for Crime Prevention: Essays in Honour of Ken Pease, edited by Graham Farrell, Kate J. Bowers, Shane D. Johnson, and Michael Townsley, 2007. Volume 22, Surveying Crime in the 21st Century, edited by Mike Hough and Mike Maxfield, 2007. Volume 23, Perspectives on Identity Theft, edited by Megan M. McNally and Graeme R. Newman, 2008. Volume 24, Evaluating Crime Reduction Initiatives, edited by Johannes Knutsson and Nick J. Tilley, 2009. Volume 25, Reducing Terrorism Through Situational Crime Prevention, edited by Joshua D. Freilich and Graeme R. Newman, 2009. Volume 26, Preventing Crowd Violence, edited by Tamara D. Madensen and Johannes Knutsson, 2011. Volume 27, Design Against Crime: Crime Proofing Everyday Products, edited by Paul Ekblom, 2012.

About the Book

FROM BICYCLE STANDS CONFIGURED TO PREVENT THEFT TO pharmaceutical packaging that thwarts counterfeiters, the authors fuse crime science and design practice to point the way forward for a new generation of crime-proofed objects used in everyday contexts. Paul Ekblom is professor and associate director of the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts, London.

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