AI and crime prevention: Drawing the ethical line

Transmitted electrons, processed signals, algorithmic pattern recognition
- the quiet machinery of our new AI reality

by Gregory Saville

Over the past two years, I’ve written in this space about the risks and promises of artificial intelligence in community safety. In The Pros and Cons of Using AI to Prevent Crime and Stop, Dave, I’m Afraid: The Latest on AI and CPTED, I explored the tension between innovation and oversight. And in Gambling with the Future, I warned that without guardrails, predictive systems could amplify bias faster than any police algorithm before them.

This month, that conversation moves from theory to substance. I am about to release what may be the first field-ready ethical framework for artificial intelligence in CPTED/crime prevention for the International CPTED Association. 

This new AI and CPTED White Paper is the product of research, discussions and interviews as part of the Praxis/Theory CPTED Committee of the ICA. I solicited feedback from CPTED and artificial intelligence specialists from around the world. The result sets out principles for transparency, accountability, and human-centered design in the age of intelligent machines.

The literature review included reading the latest writers on AI, among those
historian Yuval Noah Harari's exceptional book Nexus

Why now? Because AI technology has already arrived: 

• City cameras now run on neural networks that detect “anomalies” using predictive AI. 
• Drone patrols and risk dashboards mine enormous datasets for facial recognition. 
• Planners and urban designers are using generative AI to digitally simulate community planning scenarios, what is called digital twins. 
• Some futurists are envisioning “smart cities” using a concept developed by Mateja and myself called 3rd Generation CPTED   
• The concept of “smart cities”, a city driven by AI algorithms, already poses enormous challenges for crime and CPTED, a point I made at a 2021 Smart City conference presentation in Sweden  

What has not arrived are the ethical guidelines to match that power.

GENERATIVE AND PREDICTIVE AI

During my research I spoke to Professor Emma Pierson, a brilliant AI ethics scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, who reminds us that public debate around AI often drifts into abstraction. She urges policymakers to start with two foundational forms—predictive and generative AI—because nearly every current application stems from one or both. 

Predictive models infer patterns from data; generative models create new content from learned representations. Everything else including robotic, agentive, or hybrid models of AI builds on those foundations.

Drones are not  AI, but there are many crime prevention and policing 

applications where they lend themselves to AI 

That insight shapes this white paper. We focus first on how predictive systems are reshaping surveillance and resource allocation, and how generative tools could soon influence public messaging, architectural design, or even neighborhood storytelling. Each domain carries profound implications for privacy, accountability, and equity.

In crime prevention, ethical AI isn’t about the gadgets. It’s about governance. A predictive dashboard that flags “high-risk” behavior might block or respond to actions of people without community consent. That violates the very democratic principles of CPTED. A generative model that drafts neighborhood improvement plans without residents’ input is just as misguided. The new framework calls for three essential commitments:

• Transparency: every AI-driven decision in urban safety must be explainable to the public it affects.
• Oversight: humans remain accountable for outcomes; algorithms can advise but never decide.
• Co-creation: residents are partners in design, not passive data points in someone else’s experiment.

This isn’t theoretical. The purpose of a white paper is to generate discussion within the ICA and elsewhere. It forms some of the factual background to launch deliberations. ICA members from Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and North America will have an AI framework to examine real-world cases where technology overstepped its reach.

 

The UN is now publishing ethical guidelines of AI usage

The paper describes some case studies, such as an intelligent lighting system that quietly profiled behavior by race and age. In another example, predictive policing software displaced trust in neighborhood problem-solving teams. These examples remind us that the ethics of AI are not a luxury. They are a public-safety necessity.

In a recent podcast with ICA President Macarena Rau Vargas, we discussed how ethical AI could strengthen community resilience.  

When designed within CPTED’s 1st Gen principles of territorial ownership, 2nd Gen principles of community cohesion, and 3rd Gen principles of sustainability and participation, we discover a version of AI that can illuminate, not dominate, public space.

The white paper concludes with a call to action. It challenges practitioners, researchers, and civic leaders to adopt a human-in-the-loop standard. AI can process information, but it cannot define meaning. That responsibility belongs to us. As Professor Pierson reminds us, the goal is not to slow innovation but to anchor it in accountability.

Next year, we will release our new SafeGrowth® book, co-authored by Mateja Mihinjac, Jason Tudor, Carl Bray, and myself. It offers detailed examples of success, candid lessons from failure, and a full chapter on a smart city initiative in Sweden that points toward the future.

After years of urging that crime prevention needs an ethical compass, we finally have both the foundation and the language to chart one. The next step belongs to everyone — planners, designers, police, community members, and policymakers — to draw the ethical line and keep it visible.

The Beacon - a light in Madison's community safety story

Downtown Madison, Wisconsin - a beautiful city surrounded by lakes.
Site of the 2025 Problem-Oriented Policing conference

 by Greg Saville

In every city, there are places that test the limits of our problem-solving. In Madison, Wisconsin, one of those places in the past was The Beacon — a “daytime drop-in shelter and resource center operated by Catholic Charities”. It provides daily services to more than 200 men, women, and children experiencing homelessness, with the goal of supporting their transition toward stability and greater well-being.

Last week, following our SafeGrowth/CPTED presentation at the annual Problem-Oriented Policing Conference, I had the honor to tour through The Beacon with some SafeGrowth students in a recent course, along with my long-time colleague, retired RCMP Sgt. John Lyons, and meet the new center manager, Chris Watson and program director, Nici Hawkins. 

 

Inside the Beacon property - access control to ensure safety and comfort
for those experiencing homelessness

What we saw was more than a resource center. It was the outcome of a collaborative journey — one that began in a SafeGrowth training class and has since grown into a community success story.  

FROM TRAINING TO REAL-WORLD RESULTS

Last year, when we first introduced SafeGrowth and CPTED in Madison, we used case studies from other cities to show what happens when residents, police, and community partners design solutions together. Class participants used those case studies to form teams and select a Madison project to work on over a few months.

Garden and vegetable/flower growing area inside the Beacon 

One of the SafeGrowth teams picked The Beacon as their project site, knowing the center was experiencing serious challenges: high calls for service, frayed staff–police relationships, and public disorder spilling into the streets. Prior attempts to collaborate had been less than successful and the problems were not improving.

The SafeGrowth team didn’t drop in a pre-packaged answer, like simple CPTED checklists. They started with site visits, interviews, and safety audits. They listened to Beacon staff and clients and eventually, they partnered with them. They mapped the problems: loitering and drug dealing at the rear entrance, unsafe outdoor areas, poor access control, and strained police–staff relationships

Children's safe play area for families suffering homelessness

Common sitting area, lockers for storing property and restrooms

EARLY BREAKTHROUGHS 

Several strategies emerged quickly:

• Closing the rear entrance and welcoming everyone through the front doors for proper check-in, reducing anonymity and disorder.
• Parking changes on the adjacent block to disrupt drug dealing and loitering.
• Weekly walkthroughs and de-escalation training for Beacon staff, helping rebuild trust with police

What made the difference was not just the fixes, but the teamwork: police, Beacon staff, neighbors, and city officials working side by side in a SafeGrowth team. When the Beacon staff attended presentations at the conclusion of the SafeGrowth training, they were able to develop a new kind of partnership that still exists – indeed, it has expanded.

Computer facilities helping people find jobs, resources, and skills training

Laundry facilities along with many social services available

RESULTS THAT MATTER 

The results were dramatic. After SafeGrowth strategies were implemented in August 2024, calls for service dropped by nearly 40% the following year. This means that, not only were those in and around The Beacon safer in their daily lives, but there were financial savings in police resources. 

For Beacon staff and clients, the changes meant safer spaces, clearer boundaries, and stronger trust with the officers who walked their halls. And now, The Beacon is taking further steps: introducing some redesigns to the property, adding staff roles, upgrading security, coordinating with new outreach teams, and even launching volunteer cleanup programs.

Beacon manager Chris Watson describing the many resources and
services to help people transition off the street 

LIGHTING THE PATH FORWARD 

The Beacon’s success isn’t the end of the story. It’s a work in progress — a living example of how SafeGrowth works when ideas move from paper to practice. The center has been providing services for a long time and the SafeGrowth project helped support that tremendous work by establishing partnerships with police and ensuring safety in and around the property. They are still refining operations and building partnerships. But the transformation so far shows the power of collaborative problem-solving.

Our visit to the Beacon, coincided with the annual problem-oriented policing conference, honoring the concept founded by University of Wisconsin/Madison Professor Herman Goldstein. In a time when cities around the world struggle to confront homelessness, this example shines a light on how it can become a collaborative strategy.

As Goldstein warned decades ago, “police have been particularly susceptible to the ‘means over ends’ syndrome” — focusing more on internal systems than on whether they actually reduce harm. 

Our SafeGrowth presentation took place at the 2025 POP conference, just down the street from The Beacon

What the Madison SafeGrowth team showed at The Beacon is that when community, police, and service providers shift focus together on outcomes, real change happens.

A beacon is not the destination. It’s the light that guides the way. In Madison, thanks to the police department, the SafeGrowth team, along with Beacon staff, and their partners, that light is shining a little brighter.

Children and the future of CPTED

Children have a role to play in their own future

by Larry Leach 

“We’re Not Raising Children… We are Raising Adults” was advice I once received as a young parent. In essence, if your children act in ways you wouldn’t accept from an adult, then you need to help correct that behavior.

Whitney Houston captured this beautifully in The Greatest Love of All: “I believe that children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way.”

After reading recent blogs by Greg and Mateja speaking about children and the roots of crime, I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the role of learned behavior and the power of youth to guide us toward safer, healthier communities in both physical and behavioral terms.

Greg’s blog outlined an entire line of crime and learning research in social control theory and blocked opportunity theory. Mateja described how children serve as a catalyst for neighbourhood connections. 

Since 2010, we have featured blogs on youth violence prevention, such as the work of 2nd Gen CPTED co-creator Gerry Cleveland.

THERE IS SOMETHING TO THIS 

When we hear from reformed offenders, their stories often trace back to childhood trauma. Unresolved pain led to alcohol or drug use later in life, used as a mask. Therefore, if many pathways to crime begin in youth, and children lack the tools to process trauma alone, prevention must start there.

School learning at all levels is important for preventing crime - photo woodleywonderworks,
CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

My experience in school politics showed me first-hand how the system tends to measure success. We hear plenty about graduation rates and year-to-year statistics, but not a lot about how the school affects those rates? Were outcomes positive or negative? And what about mental health—rarely measured, though it profoundly shapes students’ lives?

It’s hard to put into numbers the value of mentorship, of a caring adult relationship, or of a community that steps in to support young people. Yet these are the very things that can make a struggling student feel seen and guided.

Research underscores the point. In a paper titled The Impact of Education on Crime: International Evidence, the authors note:

Reductions in crimes leading to an arrest realized from offering better school options to high-risk youth would conservatively produce USD $16,000 in social savings to victims over the next seven years. Because better schools also likely reduce crimes that never lead to an arrest, savings are likely to be substantially higher—especially when factoring in reduced prison and prevention costs.

 

YOUTH CENTRES AND OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES

Add to all of this, the lack of focus on the "whole child" in modern school systems, and we now need outside activities like Youth Centres and sport organizations to help develop a healthy mentality as they move towards adulthood. 

Children from youth centre  

Filling youth tool belts with the necessary life tools - when some families are dealing with their own personal trauma - is another key to prevention that many municipalities are missing. This isn’t a statistic for policymakers, but a hands-on community intervention that’s harder to secure buy-in for.

Graduation rates, while important, don’t tell the whole story. A diploma does not guarantee that a young person has the tools to thrive as an adult. Communities need to fill those gaps intentionally, with adults willing to step in as mentors and guides. This takes effort and buy-in, but it can transform lives.

When we consider Third Generation CPTED and building a healthy community, youth should be at the forefront on building plans to prevent crime. Building healthy, connected communities means placing young people at the center of prevention. 

Teach them well. And then, let them lead the way.