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 First-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, emphasising 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.

Do we know enough about crime to prevent it?

Preventing crime has much more to it than cameras

by Gregory Saville

Recently, I was asked whether we know enough about crime to prevent it. Simple enough, you would think. Isn't the study of crime "scientific" and, if so, doesn't that provide a simple answer? Turns out, it isn’t that simple.  

Criminologists are concerned directly with the well-being of everyday people and their families, their property, and their safety. Scientists, of course, are as well – especially medical researchers searching for cures to diseases or meteorologists who want to warn you to stay away from bad weather. 

Yet scientists often study elemental phenomena with seemingly little direct impact on daily life. That is not always true, but the gulf from science theory to practical application can be wide. In criminology, it can be a very narrow gulf from theory-to-effect. Criminology speaks to the lives of everyday people (at least some criminology). In pure science, there are many branches where that is not so, particularly in theoretical research.

Consider titles of scientific studies: Non-Reciprocal Coupling in Photonics, Lightwave-driven electrons in a Floquet topological insulator, or Verification of Toronto temperature and precipitation forecasts for the period 1960-1979. 

[Disclosure: On that last study my name appears as one of eight co-authors. It was my first scientific publication as a young climatology student. I got my academic start in the physical sciences, hence my obsession with the science in social science.] 

Using the scientific method comes with some basics - hypothesis-testing is one

THEORY BASICS

The reason for this gulf is simple – pure sciences start with theoretical basics. What is atomic structure? What is the life cycle of living organisms? Long before science gets to apply anything to the real world, basic theoretical questions must be answered. Laws of nature are identified.

In criminology, that step has been difficult. Consider the most fundamental theoretical question in criminology: What causes crime? That question still remains elusive. There are disagreements about whether the cause of crime is biological, sociological, cultural, economic, psychological, political, or some weird recipe of all of them. 

Imagine an aeronautical engineer without a basic law of flight and aerodynamics? There would be no jets! Imagine a medical doctor without a basic law of biochemistry and anatomy. There would be no medicine. 

How can criminology proceed without such basic laws or answers to theoretical questions? 

What causes crime? Even this simple question does not have a simple answer 

PROCEEDING WITHOUT BASICS

Sometimes criminologists adopt a theoretical position and then test that against research data. Theory testing is a long-proven method of science and there are criminologists who call themselves “crime scientists” who advocate for this. Crime science is a kind of overlap between environmental criminology and experimental criminology.

Crime science aims directly at the crime event itself and those who commit it with the intent of preventing it. It claims the scientific method at its core. 

These are all laudable goals. So if science is at the core, then the scientific method demands theory-testing. That means the very first step in theory-testing is clearly stating a hypothesis, something quite rare in criminological studies. 

The methods of science have some basic steps to follow
Image courtesy of Brian Brondel at English Wikibooks, CC BY-SA 2.5

Unfortunately, when I read a few recent issues of the journal Crime Science, I could not find a single clearly stated hypothesis. Hardly a recipe for science! Science always attempts to measure things, and that usually means statistics and formulas. However, none of that matters if the hypothesis is not based on a logical chain of linked concepts (or not stated at all).

Am I nitpicking by seeking hypotheses with a clearly stated formula? After all, many authors simply write out their hypotheses in more descriptive text, something I’ve done many times. But keep in mind that if scientific veracity is the goal, then stating a clear hypothesis is not a minor quibble.

None of this is meant to take anything away from Crime Science. Read the journal. It has some fascinating studies such as the relationship between lush tree canopies on city streets and nearby crime rates (one of the same predictions we make in our Third Generation CPTED theory).

Biologists classify tree types before posing hypotheses
- a classification method that creates typologies

TYPOLOGIES – CLASSIFY THE DAMN THING

Typologies are the things that basic sciences employ during the founding of any field. Typologies are those things like Darwin’s famous charts of finches in the Galapagos Islands as the foundation of evolution (or tree typologies by botanist Patrick Matthew long before Darwin).

Typologies are the first step to mapping out the different categories of a phenomenon such as crime and that is how you begin to understand it. They are things on which hypotheses are constructed. One building block provides the foundation for the next and eventually, a theory emerges that is tested in experiments. 

Criminology has very few typologies. Some criminologists may take exception to that statement. However, when challenged to produce some, they seldom produce more than whether criminals are abnormal versus normal, expressive versus instrumental or professional, petty, or white collar.

Sometimes criminologists provide their own typologies within their own studies. That’s the beginning. But there is a big difference between typologies shared by an entire field and one made up on the spot. There really are very few overarching, agreed-upon classification typologies within the criminological enterprise. One exception might be the maturation effect (the stoppage of crime as offenders of specific genders age). But that too has fallen from grace in criminological theory. 

Doing science is more than stating hypotheses or conducting random tests

DOING SCIENCE?

Some publications make a valiant effort to classify the phenomena of different crimes. A good example is Martin Andresen’s books on environmental criminology. If you have not read Martin’s latest version of environmental criminology, do yourself a favor. Read it!

Another great effort to create crime typologies is the book I reviewed by crime analyst Deborah Osborne: Elements of Crime Patterns. 

Osborne's book is possibly the first thorough attempt to create a typology of different crime types, modalities, tools, and signature behaviors. Her book was published last year, over a century after the criminological enterprise began, suggesting that existing crime theories are akin to the cart before the horse.

THE EVIDENCE-BASED (EB) CROWD 

Now there is a new crowd on the criminology block – the evidence-based coalition. This is the latest version of the search for crime patterns using science that has always been embedded within criminology. For example, Robert Merton the famous criminologist (and former street gang member), called for scientific thinking in his writing almost a century ago (earlier European criminologists did the same). 

There is now a federal website dedicated to evaluating crime policies with EB methods. The premise is that programs will improve only through the gold standard of scientific testing called the randomized controlled trial (a standard that some criminologists like Malcolm Sparrow consider impractical). So while evidence-based methods wear the crown of the scientific method, they do that to test programs and evaluate strategies. That may not have anything to do with criminological theory. Testing programs is not the same as testing scientific theories. 

Remember the definition of the scientific method:

“the scientific method is critical to the development of scientific theories, which explain empirical laws in a scientifically rational manner… it is the technique used in the construction and testing of a scientific hypothesis.” 

 

"Doing science" in crime prevention means working
with the community, using science, and collaborating with others

WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?

Do all these claims of scientific respectability in criminology mean we truly know enough about crime to prevent it? Are all these efforts enough? 

On one hand, they are probably not enough, but they are a work in progress. On the other hand, they show an emerging field with committed researchers who dedicate themselves to improving this thing we call criminology. I have no idea whether the current state of criminology can be properly termed a “science”, but I applaud the effort to reach that goal. 

What about the prevention of crime? We have known since the ancient Egyptians that ingredients in some tree saps can alleviate pain. When German chemists figured out how to manufacture that into aspirin, it became the pain reliever we know today. Science perfected those ingredients and we learned that too much aspirin can cause stomach ulcers, but the right amount is one of the best pain relievers in history. 

We can prevent many types of crime and improve livability. We know that from our experience and research in SafeGrowth. There is, hopefully, a gradual movement today toward authentic scientific methods – decent evidence, proper typologies, better hypotheses, practical and ethical tests, in collaboration with the very public we are trying to help. Combining that with the experiences and input from those in the community who suffer from crime, will help us refine the aspirin that comprises the crime prevention programs of today. 

This is the path that will allow us to create livable and safe neighborhoods that our kids can inherit. 

Ethics in criminology - avoiding Frankenstein

Frankenstein - a story about over-extended science 

by Mateja Mihinjac

The story of Frankenstein, when a scientist’s experiment runs amok, is a fictional account of science gone wrong. A few weeks ago I attended a criminology conference about crime prevention and communities. The conference targeted academics, police, local councils and groups like Neighbourhood Watch and Police-Citizens Youth Clubs.

The take-home message as it turned out, however, was not an appreciation for cooperative community-driven crime prevention. Instead, the delegates were fascinated by presentations on evidence-based criminal justice showcased through the technical whizz of some presenters and the call for a scientific response to crime.

EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH

The evidence-based mantra is the latest trend in criminal justice and policing, often called the evidence-based approach (EBA) in crime prevention and evidence-based policing.

These academics (they call themselves “scientists”) maintain that criminal justice policies should be driven by scientifically evaluated strategies that have been proven to work, a laudable goal to be sure. But to support these arguments, EBA proponents like to compare the evolution of criminal justice to medical science.

The biological and physical sciences use experiments in controlled labs

They maintain that by applying scientific techniques that allow for objective, comprehensive and rigorous assessments, they will be able to guide public safety professionals with approved solutions and thus eliminate guesswork that had guided their work in the past. It is a proposition long criticized as unrealistic by social research experts like National Academy of Science member Stanley Lieberson, former chair of the Sociological Research Association.

LIMITS OF EBA

Crime is a social problem characterized by complicated causes and interconnected underlying factors. The science that the EBA crowd follows is based on quantitative number crunching and the kind of controlled experiments that are simple to control in the chemistry lab, but far less so on the street where crime occurs.

How likely is it that the same methods in physical science are ideal methods for truly understanding the complexities of crime? How realistic is it to think the multifaceted social factors of social disorder and crime can be extracted, reduced to small components and then tested in experimental designs?

Harvard’s Malcolm Sparrow also warns that relying too much on evidence-based practice is a risky proposition; it risks dependence on a limited pool of validated solutions and dependence on quickly outdated solutions in today’s rapidly changing society. Further, Sparrow says that the excessive time needed to establish a knowledge-base to satisfy evidence-based policing proponents means that results may take too long to be operationally relevant.

Data-driven, computational experiments can take years to complete

One argument for establishing evidence-based practice is to eliminate the disconnect between academics and practitioners. But escalating the evidence-based rhetoric does not help narrow this gap; in fact, it only perpetuates the division between the two.

This is especially true when EBA academics consider themselves as governors of the research that judges policies rather than establishing a mutually beneficial collaborative relationship. There is no worse way to create top-down solutions that exclude those who are affected by these policy decisions — the public.

TOWARDS AN ETHICS-BASED APPROACH

This does not mean, as the saying goes, that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Evidence-based practice has an important role to play, particularly in crime prevention and policing. Evidence-based research provides directional patterns that might support the effectiveness of certain measures.

However, decision makers should not rely solely upon today’s trending EBA promises especially when solutions may infringe upon social equality. Ethics cannot be pushed aside from decisions made too quickly from a complete lack of evidence, or too slowly from a plodding EBA platform in which “scientists” take months or years to conclude anything of value.

Sparrow partially attributes the overwhelming focus of the evidence-based policing movement on place-based interventions such as situational crime prevention, CPTED or hotspot policing. In these cases, ethical questions seem very distant when researchers use secondary data, such as crime statistics collected by police, and their computational calculations do not directly involve people.

It is ultimately still people who will experience the effects of place-based interventions.

"Big Data" does not solve our problems if we have weak connection to
those under study

One example of this vulnerability is evidence-based solutions such as target hardening in situational prevention or CPTED that minimize criminal opportunities (when crimes may not have actually occurred) but may also reduce opportunities for liveability, walkability or socializing. This is why we need to engage communities each step of the way during evidence-based research and practice. Other professions do it — why can’t we?

Schram neatly summarizes the evidence-based versus ethics-based debate:

“we need less top-down research which focuses on a ‘what works’ agenda that serves the management of subordinate populations and more research that provides bottom-up understandings of a ‘what’s right’ agenda tailored to empowering people in particular settings”.