What works and what is right

 

Street views from New York's Highline Park
"Eyes on the Street", literally

by Mateja Mihinjac

In crime prevention, we often categorise strategies as working or not working simply based on measured changes in crime rates. If crime goes down, the intervention is labelled “evidence-based,” and the conversation moves on.

SafeGrowth, as with all evidence-based methods, measures crime rates. However, SafeGrowth also asks a more difficult and penetrating question: Is it the right thing to do? 

It may sound odd to state that crime prevention should not be judged only by what works. Yet, our experience with decades of crime prevention show that it must also consider who it works for and who it works against.

 

WHEN “WHAT WORKS” COMES AT A COST

Many traditional crime prevention strategies rely on target hardening and security measures: locks, gates, fences, barriers, and surveillance systems. These approaches, now subsumed under First-Generation CPTED, can be effective. They reduce opportunities for crime and are relatively easy to measure. From a narrow perspective, they can work. 

They can also fail due to an unintended consequence. 

For example, they reshape the places where they are applied and trigger the application of “hostile or defensive architecture”, now associated with 1st Generation CPTED by some anti-CPTED critics. Says one from the University of Toronto: “Defensive architecture is an outgrowth of a set of design principles known as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.” 

Public walkway single seats and preventing homeless sleeping. No one sits. 

High fences and controlled access points can create environments that feel closed, sterile, and exclusionary. 

Subtle deterrents, such as hostile architecture mentioned earlier,
to devices designed to discourage loitering (mosquito devices),
send clear signals about who belongs and who does not. In these cases, safety may be achieved, but often at the expense of equity, inclusion, and social life. 

Public spaces begin to look and function more like private territory and arguments are emerging to halt the process.

Fencing to control access -  keeping the Geese outside the gates

WHERE THINGS GO WRONG 

First-Generation CPTED traditionally focuses on four core principles: territorial reinforcement, natural surveillance, access control, and maintenance. These are powerful tools and, when applied thoughtfully, can improve safety and reduce opportunities for crime.

But that is problematic when CPTED is reduced to these elements alone and applied as a checklist of physical interventions without considering broader social impacts. I’ve written about the problem of such reductionism in one of my previous blogs.


In practice, this can produce environments that are technically safer but socially problematic. 

Measures based on increased control, exclusion, or surveillance can disproportionately affect already marginalised communities. Critics have shown how such approaches can reinforce spatial inequality and exclusion, including forms of racialised access to public space characterised as anti-blackness.


 

Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village where Jane Jacobs' and community activists prevented destruction from highway expansion in the 1960s. Eyes on the street that care.

Thus, focusing only on measurable outcomes risks overlooking a key question: who bears the burden of those outcomes?

FIXING THE PROBLEM 

The Second- and Third-Generation CPTED are the building blocks of SafeGrowth and they offer a different path. 

Second-Generation CPTED moves beyond physical design to include the social, cultural and ecological dimensions to stabilise neighbourhood conditions. It employs strategies such as social cohesion, community culture, neighbourhood capacity, and connectivity


Third-Generation CPTED expands further, emphasizing safety as a result of thriving, healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods. It employs four strategies including  environmental sustainability, social sustainability, public health sustainability, and  economic sustainability


The regular weekend chess tournament in the park.
An age-old activation and cultural strategy

These approaches recognise that safety is not just about reducing crime opportunities. It is about building places where people feel they belong, participate, and take ownership. Instead of asking how do we keep people out, they ask how do we create places where people want to be and where communities themselves contribute to safety?

 

RETHINKING “EVIDENCE”

Part of the challenge in identifying what works lies in how we define evidence.

Target hardening is often favoured because its impacts are immediate and measurable. We may install a fence or reduce access, and crime may drop. The result is clear and quantifiable. 

Yet broader impacts, such as reduced accessibility, loss of public space, increased exclusion, and hostile architecture, are harder to measure. They unfold over time, often after post-intervention evaluation has been completed, and are frequently overlooked.

 

Modern 'homeless encampment' behind fences and locked gates in Denver, Colorado.
Exclusion, hostile architecture, reduced access. This is not the answer.

Some more comprehensive evaluation frameworks, such as those developed by the European Crime Prevention Network, have begun to move beyond simple crime reduction by examining context, process, and broader outcomes like fear of crime.


However, they still tend to prioritise what is measurable over what is equitable. The question of who benefits and who is excluded remains insufficiently addressed in such evaluations. 

In SafeGrowth we are encouraging expansion in what counts as evidence. This means moving beyond crime reduction and considering inclusivity of space and strength of community ties. It also includes the overall quality of life in the neighbourhood.

 

LOOKING AHEAD

There are many strategies that have been shown to both reduce crime and support equity and community wellbeing. Some are well established. Others are still emerging.

We all want safer places, and we also want better places for everyone. The real task is to reconcile what works with what is right and to recognise that lasting safety depends on both.