When school safety becomes a tech race

School design matters for safety. International CPTED Association CPTED in Schools Guidebook - photo by Jeremy Bitterman Photography, Lacamas Lake ES/Mahlum Architects 

by Gregory Saville

“In May, 2022, there was a school shooting… as I watched it unfold, having been in law enforcement for 23 years, I saw the mistakes that were being made and I got angry. I got really angry!" – James Fuller, Director of Operations, Northern Star, non-profit school safety coalition.

A few years ago, my friend James Fuller uttered those words when, in response to the tragic Uvalde school shooting in Texas, he worked with other colleagues to launch Northern Star, a non-profit school safety coalition. I was invited to advise and join this group on their search for answers to this ongoing nightmare that is school violence. 

Months later there we sat, in our first leadership workshop on prevention strategies and school safety plans. I looked around the room and was impressed with all the experience: educators, police, ex-military, veterans, mental health experts, school principals, and criminologists.

Here was a volunteer group of passionate and committed souls, community members and parents among them, dedicating their considerable experience to the complex problem of school violence. James wanted answers, not a rush for public safety theatre (the use of high visible security measures with the appearance of safety, regardless of whether they reduce risk).

Their first decision: adopt school safety planning that was evidence-based, community-based and effective! What a breath of fresh air.

Then this week happened.

RISK AND REALITY

On Monday I watched a newsclip from a private school in Colorado that plans to use high-speed mini-drones that fire pepper-spray and strike active shooters. What could go wrong?

Each year, the vast majority of schools in the U.S. will never experience gun violence. Depending on how you measure the problem, there is an average risk of roughly 1 incident per 400 schools that experience a shooting incident, whether or not there is injury. Mass shootings with injuries and fatalities are much rarer at about 1 incident per 10,000 schools. 

Does the low-risk matter if drones help, even slightly? If they help, who can argue with that logic? Not the state of Georgia who has spent $500,000 to pilot the drone system in five public schools. Not Florida who has spent over $550,000 to implement the technology at three high schools. And now, not one Colorado public charter school that decided to pay for its own drones. 

Thats over a million dollars! It is never wise to argue actuarial logic when it comes to the emotional topic of child safety. Still, a million dollars might go a long way with other evidence-based mitigation and prevention strategies. 

Should school safety employ defensive technologies or socially sophisticated prevention solutions?
Photo - Minidrone ZLEA, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s be crystal clear. Schools should prepare for all high-risk tragedies, no matter how rare. And I am not the Luddite in this case because I have not seen the drones up close nor seen evaluation trials on their effectiveness. 

Yet, I cannot ignore the elephant in the room! Are we yet again investing in the latest reaction technology while neglecting other forms prevention? 

Those of us with years working and researching the science of crime prevention wonder if this is a pattern we’ve seen before. SafeGrowth blogs over the past decade tell a cautionary tale about reactive suppression technologies and highly targeted response strategies. Consider:

• Predictive policing
• SQF policing
• K5 security robots, and
• ShotSpotter AI technology.

In SafeGrowth, when it comes to technology, we employ a simple principle learned over the years. Don't discard effective prevention while embracing the latest suppression technology. As the ancient German proverb warns, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Whether intended or not, highly publicized defensive technologies can contribute to the cultural script surrounding rare but highly publicized forms of violence. That doesn't mean the drones cause violence, but it does mean educators and communicators should think carefully about how these technologies are presented alongside what we know about contagion effects. 

Balancing safety - the ying/yang approach

A BALANCED RESPONSE

What if there was another approach? What it we adopted a more balanced covenant between technologically sophisticated reactive solutions and the socially sophisticated preventive solutions with evidence of success? 

Call it the ying/yang for school violence prevention.

What if school leaders decided that every dollar invested in emergency suppression technologies should be matched by equal attention to helping local schools create their own comprehensive safety approach? Like what?

Approaches like those promoted by Northern Star’s methodology for school-based safety plans. Approaches like those the International CPTED Association recommends in their CPTED in Schools Guidebook to build pro-social school cultures, encourage safer environmental designs, strengthen peer networks, and improve self-awareness and conflict management. (NOTE: Those strategies are part of this year’s ICA CPTED Conference in Calgary, Oct. 2-4) 

Perhaps, in addition to drones, there will even be an approach that forges voluntary agreements with media news conglomerates to limit the sensationalizing of tragic shooting events. Limiting crime contagion might also go a long way to prevent school shootings. 

Security technology is attractive because it promises certainty. Communities are difficult because they require patience. School violence prevention is not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. Imagine if spending was more balanced...what a difference that might make! 

Caveat Emptor - When CPTED standards fail the test

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the original evidence-based detective. He understood what professional standards require - verified facts, not confident claims.

by Gregory Saville

Caveat emptor: Let the buyer beware.

That warning exists for a reason. Professional standards are not casual suggestions. Cities rely on them to shape public investment and guide policy. A standard implies established evidence, professional consensus, and independent review. Without those foundations, the word “standard” is meaningless.

For years, I have read and helped create CPTED standards for municipalities and governments. Most recently I came across some "national CPTED standards" though I'm unsure what makes them national or from where they derive their authority. For practitioners and city officials unfamiliar with how standards are developed, such claims may appear credible. The language sounds authoritative. But standards are not created by declaration. Their authority emerges through evidence and multidisciplinary collaboration.

CPTED has a long and well documented history. Since its early development in the 1970s, its principles have evolved through research, application, and field tests and they appear in peer reviewed studies, books, and professional publications.

Standards come from findings; findings come from verified evidence and data

For example, the International CPTED Association (ICA) has published a scientific CPTED bibliography documenting over 600 studies. It also publishes The CPTED Journal, a peer-reviewed journal with the latest research studies on the field.


This is what professional legitimacy looks like. Evidence is published. Methods are documented. Claims are subject to independent review.

GLOBAL ISO STANDARDS 

Most recently, CPTED entered the International Organization for Standardization process. ISO standards are developed through rigorous evaluation by international technical committees representing multiple disciplines and countries. The global CPTED standard is ISO 22341:2021, and ICA experts helped draft the initial framework and later iterations adopted by ISO. For governments around the world, these standards provide developers, planners, and public officials with verified guidance grounded in scientific evidence and international professional consensus.

Standards do not originate from a private consulting firm presenting its own framework or a self-proclaimed expert at a conference. They emerge from broad professional review from experts, academics, and researchers with years of CPTED research and experience. And they do not gain legitimacy through branding or repetition. Their authority comes from the integrity of their development process.

This distinction is not theoretical. It has practical and legal consequences.

The first professional ISO CPTED standard by the International Standards Organization

A GLOBAL CPTED VOICE

The International CPTED Association publishes methodological guidance, including the CPTED Methodology White Paper, to ensure CPTED practice rests on evidence.
 It publishes ICA guidebooks, professional training programs, and ISO standards about evidence via transparent and accountable processes. These resources reflect decades of collective work by practitioners and researchers worldwide.

They also show how CPTED is tested and verified. That is the foundation of any legitimate professional standard.

The stakes are significant. When a municipality or region adopts CPTED standards, it assumes those standards reflect the best available knowledge. But most government attorneys are not trained in CPTED or risk mitigation and cannot assess legitimacy of CPTED standards in their municipal policy. Some might assume their standards are grounded in research and recognized by the professional community, when they are not. That is an error with consequences for public safety, public investment, and public trust.

NASA advisor and astrophysicist Carl Sagan championed the Baloney Detection Kit - facts through evidence and data. Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

THE BALONEY DETECTION KIT

Due diligence matters. Before adopting any CPTED standard, practitioners and clients should ask the simple questions once proposed by famed astrophysicist and NASA advisor, Professor Carl Sagan in his Baloney Detection Kit. They should consider how the standard was developed and tested. They should ask whether the process was objective and independently verified. They should ask who reviewed the work and what evidence exists to support the claims behind each standard. And most important, they should assess whether the standard reflects teh collective knowledge and research in the profession.

CPTED has matured into a global discipline because it remains grounded in evidence and professional accountability. If its standards carry weight, they only do so because they were earned through scientific validation and international recognition.

In CPTED, as in every serious profession, a standard cannot be declared. It must be demonstrated. Most important, a standard is not defined by who publishes it, but by who recognizes it. Caveat emptor still applies.

 

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 Ethics 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, while drones patrol and risk dashboards mine enormous datasets for facial recognition. 

Meanwhile, planners and urban designers are using generative AI to simulate community planning scenarios through digital twins, and some futurists are beginning to imagine AI-driven "Smart Cities" through the lens of 3rd Generation CPTED, a concept development by Mateja Mihinjac and me.

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 so that AI-driven decisions are explained to the public; oversight so that humans remain accountable for outcomes, and; co-creation so that the community is not simply 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.

Let's talk CPTED in the desert surrounded by palm trees

Back in the USA after many years, the International CPTED Association, and the US and Canadian chapters are running an exciting conference on the latest in CPTED 

by Gregory Saville

We end this year with an exciting announcement – following our 2023/24 SafeGrowth training in Palm Springs, California, I am pleased to announce that the international Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design conference will be held in that city on May 11-14, 2025. 

This event was rescheduled from earlier this year and it is now expanded considerably. The theme is COMMUNITY BUILDING AND EMPOWERMENT: A HOLISTIC CPTED APPROACH. The CPTED conference is co-sponsored by CPTED USA, CPTED/PCAM Canada, and the International CPTED Association (ICA). It is the inaugural event for both the Canadian and USA chapters! 

A TIME OF TURBULENCE

This is the first ICA CPTED conference in the United States in many years. It comes at a critical time for CPTED with new discoveries, theories, progress, and threats. Here are just a few that will show up in conference discussions: 

• CPTED has been attacked by those who mistake CPTED for hostile architecture 
• New technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence challenge CPTED in unexpected ways 
• The ICA and the United Nations are in discussions for a new partnership to expand the reach of CPTED
• Resistance to new CPTED theories from traditionalists
• Some jurisdictions have passed mandatory CPTED regulations (Florida)

These are challenging times. There is much to discuss!

 

A desert retreat in the city, the Palm Springs Hilton Hotel
will host the 2025 CPTED conference

THE CONFERENCE

This unique, world-class event will feature training sessions with site visits to nearby neighborhoods, followed by experiential design sessions with some of the world’s top CPTED urban designers.  

The conference will feature training sessions on how you can become CPTED certified and how to access accredited courses.  

The first keynote speaker is Police Chief Andy Mills from the Palm Springs Police Department. He has an impressive background that includes graduating from the FBI National Academy and Indiana Wesleyan University. He played a vital role in introducing CPTED to Palm Springs and will share insights on how CPTED and law enforcement together are tackling today’s challenges.

The second keynote speaker is Shamichael Hallman, director of Civic Health and Economic Opportunity at the Urban Libraries Council in Washington DC. Shamichael will describe the untapped potential of libraries as vibrant community hubs that foster connections and enhance public safety. At a time when neighborhoods face toxic drugs, homelessness, and street crime, Shamichael’s innovative ideas offer CPTED practitioners fresh opportunities for creating assets to cut crime. 

One of the few remaining cities to use the dull glow of
low-pressure sodium lighting for streets in Palm Springs
- a tactic often discouraged by CPTED experts

THE CITY – PALM SPRINGS 

The CPTED conference is held at an outstanding tourist destination, favored by Hollywood celebrities and featuring Mid-Century Modern architecture. It offers stunning desert landscapes, endless sunshine, and options for architectural tours and hiking through breathtaking canyons. 

The conference venue is the Palm Springs Hilton Hotel and it is considered a desert retreat a few minutes walk from downtown shops, restaurants, and entertainment. 

The conference will feature site visits and training design sessions
on areas in Palm Springs - including the Baristo neighborhood park

REGISTER BEFORE DISCOUNTS EXPIRE  

ICA members qualify for a membership discount. Conference registration discounts are available here until February 28.

See the latest in CPTED and community empowerment, and exciting new technologies. Meet CPTED practitioners, researchers, writers, police, security, community members, and urban designers. The extensive list of presenters will soon be posted in the program on the ICA website. 

 

Fake news, CPTED, & the search for authenticity

A fake of the masterpiece painting by brilliant painter, Goya "City on a Rock"
- photo Creative Commons

by Gregory Saville

I recently spoke to some senior administrators about Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and how they might use it to cut crime. They knew a little about the concept, but it was clear that they had been victims of fake news. It brought to mind an old question in philosophy: What does authentic actually mean? Why should you care?

You should care because many of the ingredients that flavor a high-quality life depend on authentic products, systems, and technologies that we now take for granted. Consider food and water. Governments regulate and inspect our food/water supply and require that those who produce or ship it must follow standards of hygiene and public health. 

Millions of deaths throughout history were caused by infected food or unregulated water systems that transmitted diseases like typhoid. Today, mass deaths from food or water are rare in most of the developed world and, thankfully, increasingly rare in the undeveloped world. Authentic public health matters. 

It’s the same in crime prevention. Authenticity matters a great deal for your own livability.

CPTED AND AUTHENTICITY

How does one determine authentic CPTED and effective crime prevention? 

Dictionaries describe authenticity as something supported by unquestionable evidence and verified and accepted as real “because of agreement with known facts or experience.”

The Detroit police "Green Light" crime prevention zone uses
CCTV surveillance to make it safe. Some reports suggest otherwise.  

There is a great Ted Talk by Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist, who describes ways to compare authentic facts from fake news. I have drawn on some tips from Dr. Levitin, and applied them to crime prevention and CPTED: 

“LIES ARE TUCKED INTO THE TRUTH” 

Early writing about CPTED described cutting hedges for better visibility and territorial markers to help residents control their own properties. That was 50 years ago and crime prevention science has learned much since then. CPTED has grown up. It now includes 2nd Generation CPTED to build community cohesion and pro-social activities. CPTED is no longer just surveillance, blight removal or painting murals to enhance community pride. If you want to know the latest, go to the website of the only non-profit, professional and international organization for CPTED – the International CPTED Association (ICA), or the regional affiliate chapters of the ICA.

“WEBSITES MASQUERADE UNDER MISLEADING NAMES” 

When searching online for CPTED expertise or training be careful to locate names, bios and expertise of those behind the website or delivering the course. If you cannot easily find those names, bios, or expertise - in plain view - go elsewhere. Never assume because the website claims it is a “national” center or it provides “certification” that is true. Check to see if they are affiliated with the ICA. Check to see if that site is for-profit, or non-profit. Follow the money! 

Does that website provide the names of a diverse group of experts with a wide variety of experience, because that is how CPTED actually works. Otherwise, you are probably dealing with a small group of for-profit consultants – usually retired police or security. Don’t misunderstand; I have no problem with for-profit consultants with policing, criminology or urban planning expertise (I am one of them!) But, they come with different qualities, experiences and reputations. As they say – caveat emptor.

CPTED target hardeners say this New York bench should have dividers to
prevent homeless sleeping. Really?

“CLAIMS THAT REST ON FALSE SOURCES” 

The problem in CPTED today is “authorities” who do not read the source material or the related scientific research. They make wild claims like “lighting prevents crime”. It doesn’t! With the right research and in the right context, it might help! But that’s far from a done deal. Or they offer inauthentic facts and claim “eyes on the street” cut crime. Strategies like natural surveillance or even CCTV might help in the right location, with the right pre-diagnosis. But that is not a definitive fact. Claiming otherwise is not only inauthentic, it’s wrong. 

If you want authentic expertise, read historical bibliographies of the science, read the latest studies, or ask a formally certified CPTED practitioner who holds a professional certification from the ICA. Embrace authenticity.

A 25-year experiment - the International CPTED Association

A 25-year experiment in crime prevention through environmental design
- photo Wiki Creative Commons

by Gregory Saville

Twenty-five years ago I participated in an experiment. Paul Wong, Barry Davidson, and I decided to sponsor an international conference on crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). We had no idea if it would work, a vague hope that something bigger would come out of it, but no guarantee that anything would occur. 

We met in Calgary with 70 other CPTED acolytes including (among others) Stan and Sherry Carter from Florida, Tim Pascoe from the UK, Tom McKay from Peel Region in Ontario, Patricia and Paul Brantingham from Burnaby, BC, Mike Sheard and Brian Foote from Vancouver. The International CPTED Association (ICA) grew out of that conference.

This year the ICA celebrates its 25th Anniversary with hundreds of members all over the world. The current ICA President is from Chile, the Vice President from South Africa, the Executive Director is from Slovenia, the Secretary, and Treasurer from Canada and Board members from the U.S., Australia, India, Malaysia, Ecuador, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain, Mexico, and New Zealand.

But things were not always so rosy and, like CPTED, the ICA ebbed and flowed with the political currents of the day. The ICA was born following a period of criminological research in the 1980s, some of which led to new ideas like situational crime prevention and environmental criminology, and others that led to the broken windows theory and routine activities theory.

Downtown Calgary, Canada - home of the inaugural ICA conference
- photo Wiki Creative Commons

HOT AND COLD RESEARCH

Some of that research was revolutionary: Situational crime prevention gave us practical prevention strategies; environmental criminology showed how crime clusters along pathways and urban nodes; the geography of crime described crime hotspots.

But not all new theories were helpful. Some were Mr. Potato Head theories – full of holes and bland in taste. Others were saturated with fancy euphemisms that complicated simple ideas. Yet others removed the social aspects of CPTED and replaced them with target hardening. 

Then there was broken windows theory, which some consider CPTED. Broken windows transformed into zero-tolerance enforcement – a controversial police enforcement tactic for anti-social behavior. Broken windows back-fired spectacularly, especially politically. While it cut crime in New York, crime also declined by the same rate in San Diego with zero broken windows tactics. Broken windows tainted the original CPTED message. Even today, unwitting activists still claim broken windows is CPTED. 

Broken windows co-creator, Professor George Kelling, once told me he could not fathom how his theory went so far off track. In my view, broken windows ended in the hands of police managers suffering institutional autism – an inability to communicate outside their profession and themselves. Distortion comes easy to those who do not read history. The same thing happened in CPTED when practitioners, falling victim to slipshod assertions, adopted target hardening and CCTV cameras and ignored the social world where crime actually happens. 

The 2005 joint conference of the ICA and the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers. Loyola Marymount University overlooking Los Angeles.

THE ICA  AS  OCCAM’S RAZOR

Fortunately, the ICA is a practitioner-oriented organization more interested in what works than what sounds good, a kind of self-correcting organizational Occam’s Razor. In the early 2000s, it began introducing more holistic strategies, such as certification programs. ICA conferences travelled from Canada and the U.S. to Australia, the Netherlands, Chile, and Mexico. 

Within a decade the ICA had online training resources and a network of experts around the world. Gerard Cleveland and myself introduced 2nd Generation CPTED at ICA conferences in 1997 and 1998, which brought social factors back into CPTED. Since 2017 the ICA has dramatically expanded with webinars, course accreditation, online masterclasses, newsletters, white papers, and new guidebooks. This past year the International Standards Organization published the first-ever CPTED ISO, which ICA members helped to create. In short, the ICA is flourishing.

Introducing the ICA at the first-ever CPTED conference in Honduras, 2017

AND WHAT ABOUT CPTED...? 

In some places today CPTED remains mired in target hardening – a buffet of lights, locks, and cameras with hedge trimming for flavor. Poorly trained practitioners still use these methods to exclude groups, thereby promoting what is called ‘hostile architecture'. Social activists have caught on and, rather than figure out the true nature of CPTED and how hostile practices deviate, they label all CPTED as racist using the same biased reasoning that they blame on CPTED practitioners. 

In truth, the ICA has a formal code of ethics opposing hostile architecture. Sadly, too many CPTED practitioners are not ICA certified, not all courses are ICA accredited and they are not required to follow the ICA code of ethics. As they say, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

In other places, CPTED has grown into community-planning practices called SafeGrowth. On this blog, you will find a rich history of neighborhood development, community-building with social and economic programs, and personal development through neighborhood programs like Livability Academies. Both 1st and 2nd Generation CPTED play a role in SafeGrowth, but the quality of life (what 3rd Generation CPTED called neighborhood livability) plays a bigger role. 

Happy 25th birthday to the International CPTED Association!

If you want to learn more about the ICA, or attend the 25th Anniversary ICA virtual conference, Nov 2-4, 2021, check out their website.

To certify or not to certify? CPTED today

Good or bad CPTED?
Competent practitioners should know the difference

by Gregory Saville

How do you know if someone knows what they are talking about or whether they are just making stuff up? If an unqualified plumber hooks up your toilet improperly, you’ll know real quick they are not qualified. Ewww. Please…no more leaky toilets!

What about a practitioner in Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design? CPTED has been around for 48 years and there have been many strategies practiced around the world. Do CPTED practitioners know that history and what strategies work best? In the past 23 years hundreds of case studies and presentations have been delivered at the International CPTED Association (ICA) conferences. Do practitioners know that work?

A few years ago, I gave evidence as a CPTED expert in court cases involving homicide and gang shootings. The lawyers asked me to carefully present my credentials. To help courts in the future, I later published “The evolution of spatial forensics into forensic architecture: Applying CPTED and criminal target selection” which outlined some legal criteria for CPTED evidence in court.

CPTED CREDENTIALS?

But what about CPTED consulting? How do you know if someone has basic CPTED competencies? What about “certification”?

What is certification? In some places, it is called professional designation or trade certification. You can be certified in anything from Pilates to architecture – though the differences are vast.

Decent sightlines. Clean bench in plain view. Does the practitioner
truly know why this is terrible CPTED?

Certification means a practitioner has a level of knowledge and expertise in a particular field. It cannot be offered by an individual consultant or a private company (even if that company calls itself a “certifying organization”), since that is hardly a credible or unbiased source. Instead, it means that a person has obtained some formal, third-party acknowledgement of competency. For many years, that was a problem in CPTED. There were no third-party organizations to certify anyone, not until the growth of the International CPTED Association.

As Josh Brown, the former Chair of the ICA certification committee described years ago:

“Certification also serves to lock out charlatans claiming to be trained or certified by merely attending a course or taking a test.Unfortunately, crime prevention practitioners just learning about CPTED may feel the bar raised a bit too far. Certification in the field of one's choosing is a way of indicating to yourself that you have arrived”

Some confuse certification with a professional “license” – such as a license to practice medicine. Governments are responsible for licenses whereas, as Wikipedia states, “certifications are usually awarded by professional societies or educational institutes.”

CPTED CERTIFICATION

This month the International CPTED Association launched its latest program, the CPTED Course Accreditation Program (CAP).

It is a program designed to allow CPTED curricula writers and trainers to submit their programs to ensure they teach and evaluate 11 core CPTED competencies within their course. This program follows the original CPTED Certified Practitioner (ICCP) program for individual practitioners 15 years ago.

ICA Accredited CPTED Courses will bear this logo on the course material

The reason the International CPTED Association chose to launch certification programs is that, unlike engineering or urban planning, CPTED is not a formally recognized profession. While it does have scientific evidence that supports its foundations, much of that evidence emerges from academic criminology and it is not yet quite scientific, despite claims to the contrary. That is why an independent group of third-party, experienced experts in practical CPTED represented the ideal place to start the process of professionalization.

FIRST OF A KIND

The ICA represents the first, and only, international association of practitioners, professionals, and academics dedicated to the advancement of CPTED around the world. Fifteen years ago a few dozen leading CPTED experts spent a few years crafting the parameters of what certification in CPTED actually means. That was the first major step forward.

The launch of CAP in the past month is the next big step. It’s not yet a “license” to practice since only a government can legislate professional licenses through law. But since CPTED is not yet a full profession, that isn’t realistic anyway at this point.

Today, anyone can claim CPTED expertise after a few days of training. The ICA certification programs now lay some firm groundwork for minimal standards that the public should expect when they ask for CPTED advice. It’s a giant leap forward. No more leaky toilets, please!

Yarn bombing as placemaking - Adventure in Adelaide

Mall's Balls - popular meeting place in Adelaide's Rundle Mall

GUEST BLOG – Mateja Mihinjac is a criminologist at Griffith University, Australia completing her doctoral research on CPTED implementation. She is a member of the International CPTED Association. She recently attended the Asia-Pacific ICA CPTED Forum and kindly submitted this blog.

In mid-October, the ICA hosted a 2014 regional Asia-Pacific CPTED forum themed Better CPTED - Multidisciplinary Design for Safer Places.

The participants came from many different backgrounds thus bringing to the table a rainbow of strategies. Despite the differences we all agreed better and safer places emerge from the special features that make places more attractive and the people who use those places. I found great examples on the streets of Adelaide.

The nicely maintained Victoria Square offers numerous opportunities for social activities, meeting spots and sheltered seating areas. Walking down the pedestrian Rundle Mall I found The Mall’s Balls   - a common meeting point for people in the mall.

Dame Roma Mitchell statue

Looking for examples of people being users and co-creators of such special places I discovered some yarn bombing - dressed-up Rundle Mall Pigs and a statue of Dame Roma Mitchell on the North Terrace. They instantly attracted my attention and reminded me of the yarn bombed road barrier from Melbourne in a blog from a few months ago.

Turns out that the pigs and the statue were not isolated cases and that yarn bombing is popular throughout Adelaide, especially since 2012 when even the statue of Queen Victoria received a makeover. Yarn bombing is now part of Adelaide’s community events and it all started from local people aiming to create better places for and by themselves.

Rundle Mall yarn bombed pigs

Yarn bombing and its “softer” version known as yarn storming (in the UK) manifests community pride and provides a personal touch in public places. It is  widely considered a feminine form of graffiti or artistic vandalism.

Creative approaches such as knitting are one channel for the public to express and partake in public life. What I find neat about this approach is that it empowers those who traditionally wouldn’t participate in public activism and allows them to have a say in their own communities.

Placemaking surely comes in many forms.

Sheltered seating in Victoria Square

3rd Generation CPTED and the eco-friendly city

A new design for wiring public transit stops to the net - New Energy report

At an ICA CPTED conference last year in Mexico City I introduced a paper from the SENSEable City Lab at the famed MIT sent to me just before the conference. It was fascinating. Published through the UN, it is titled; New Energy for Urban Security: Improving Urban Security Through Green Environmental Design. As both a thought piece and a white paper, New Energy is a curious read, especially their ideas for a 3rd Generation CPTED.

To some CPTED traditionalists, 3rd Generation CPTED will be heresy! When Gerry Cleveland and I introduced 2nd Generation CPTED in 1997, with its focus on neighborhood social dynamics, we too were met by gasps or yawns.

"No, no…" gasped those incredulous with what they saw as the imponderable, "That's not CPTED! CPTED is only about physical modifications for reducing crime opportunity."

Yawned others, "We've been doing that all along," (in spite of a lack of data recording where and no published training details on how).

REMEMBERING THE TITANS

Ever so gently (okay, maybe not so gently at times) we reminded them of the original writings of CPTED, laden with concepts like communities of interest and neighborliness and written by pioneers like Jacobs, Newman, Jeffery, Angel, Wood, and Gardiner. The naysayers parked their gasps and yawns and retreated to the comfort of their target hardened forts to snipe from the ramparts (I admit some bias in this affair).

Dare I say that 2nd Generation CPTED nowadays is a staple in training and practice? (Even if some trainers still mistakenly believe it's just a fancy name for activity support.) Thus is the nature of theory growth!

Now we approach another watershed.

The MIT folks propose integrating eco-sensibilities into CPTED with what they call 3rd Generation CPTED. The gist of their aim is to activate public dead spaces so they are more defensible, but doing so using green technology. "A green and digitally enhanced environmental design that addresses the concerns of cities."

Can't argue with that.

But is that really CPTED (gasp)? Aren't advanced designers already doing that (yawn)? Consider the eco-designs of Portland's City Repair program, founded by the keynote speaker at next week's ICA CPTED conference in Calgary.

Fearful of becoming my own nemesis, I read New Energy with gusto and discovered it was refreshing and exciting. Perhaps having a name for all this work isn't such a bad thing.

ECO HIGH-TECH 

The coolest parts in the report are the eco-high-tech solutions: multi-functional and eco-friendly urban furniture that is crime safe; interactive urban art in public spaces to improve perceptions of safety (recall examples from Milan and Minneapolis I posted a few months ago).

Pretty cool stuff. My favorite? Wireless networks across the city made available on street furniture. Imagine video-based, touch screens on transit stops (see photo above) with real-time information on alternate routes during delays or Google Earth safe alternate routes home.

A bit Bladerunner-like…but still, pretty cool.

Interactive public art to activate public spaces - New Energy report

Riot nights, city lights

Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty - Loving Spoonful, 1966

Depressed from riot news, I silence static from clueless TV pundits by tuning down the volume. Just watching images it seems the worst violence and looting happens at night. Biased news reporting perhaps? I wonder how street lighting impacts the locations of violence and looting? Can we use that knowledge for prevention?

There are online clues. There is a problem-oriented guide for police on improved street lighting.

That guide is less about tactical design and more about analysis, evaluation, and public support (all valuable, especially for police). It lists 8 US studies in which half show no impact and 3 UK studies that show more promise. There are 2 examples of police-led lighting improvements, one of which cut thefts from cars from 27 to 4.

For urban designers and developers looking for specifics you'll find more tactical designs in the ICA guidebook for professionals, CPTED and Lighting: reducing crime, improving security by Randy Atlas.

In addition to diagrams, photometric maps, and site photos, Atlas provides details on perimeter lighting, new technologies like LEDs, lighting controls, and the IESNA lighting guidelines for minimum lighting levels.

LEDs to the rescue

According to The Atlantic magazine, the yellowish glare of sodium street lighting may be fading forever in favor of low-energy, white LEDs and crime had nothing to do with it. Energy saving and the recession did.

There has been an explosion of LED (light emitting diode) technology. Cities like Seattle and Pittsburg have been racing to install LEDs. LA will replace 140,000 of the city’s 209,000 streetlights with LEDs.

I have blogged on lighting and crime before, especially in Toronto, Oakland, and Los Angeles.

Photo from ICAs lighting guide. Atlas, 2010

Now Arlington, Virginia is replacing 4,200 high pressure sodium street lights with LEDs. Apparently they may switch out all 12,000 street lights to cut costs.

According to the LA Times, LED technology still has glitches. No matter. The Great Recession is charting our future in ways we don't expect.

For better or worse, street light LEDs are on our horizon.

Visions of the future - the 2010 ICA conference

Calgary - a dynamic growing city flush with oil wealth. Site of the 2010 ICA Conference

This week I attended the International CPTED Association's international conference in Calgary, Alberta. Typical CPTED conferences, like other prevention conferences, can be pretty droll affairs rehashing tired old ideas. Old wine in new bottles. The worst? My vote goes to academic conferences where obtuse PowerPoint slides fill sessions like hieroglyphics on an Egyptian Third Dynasty tomb - a theory-bound academese intended more for the academically-heeled than for those who actually prevent crime.

Not this time.

As a regular ICA attendee I was struck by the richness and passion in this year's offerings. We heard presenters from Germany, Chile, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, Australia and North America. We heard police officers from Berlin and Toronto, planners from Washington and Saskatoon, scholars from Seattle and criminologists from Florida. We learned about behavioral based design in Ontario, community-led CCTV in Pennsylvania, safer schools in Holland and how to use public art to tackle domestic terrorism.

My own sessions were gifted by incredibly talented practitioners with whom I co-presented. In one, Saskatoon planner Elisabeth Miller and I coaxed conference participants into an interactive dialogue about overcoming obstacles. In another session I co-presented with computer scientist Nick Bereza from ATRiM Group and Michael Huggett from Australia. We presented the CPTED Continuum - a new way to understand CPTED from target hardening to traditional CPTED and situational prevention to neighborhood planning.

There were too many great presenters to mention them all (forgive me for not).

But there was one speaker who had the right stuff. He captured our imagination. Jim Diers is a visionary and powerful speaker. Currently with the University of Washington, he is former director of Seattle's Office of Neighborhoods. He is also author of Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way.

A book worth reading

Jim spoke on participatory democracy and how to strengthen social capital. He is one of those people who finds ways to get people involved creating more livable places.

If you are interested in vital and safe places, and you haven't heard Jim's story you must. If you haven't read Jim's book, you should!