Designing out crime

For more information on the research in this article email: r.a.armitage@hud.ac.uk and l.y.monchuk@hud.ac.uk or visit pure.hud.ac.uk

The extent to which housing design influences the likelihood of future crime is of fundamental importance to both planning and policing policy and practice. Once built, housing lasts for decades, and there is little that can be done to correct vulnerabilities without great expense.

Secured by Design

Between 2000 and 2009, Professor Rachel Armitage and Dr Leanne Monchuk conducted three research projects, funded by West Yorkshire Police (WYP) in 2000, the Home Office (HO) in 2001 and WYP in 2009. Each focused upon the extent to which the combined design requirements of the Secured by Design (SBD) scheme impacted upon levels of crime, residents’ feelings of safety and, whether any benefits had been sustained over a ten-year period.

Professor Rachel Armitage

Housing design and crime

Building on these findings Professor Armitage and Dr Monchuk examined the effect of housing design on crime. Their research included assessing the impact on crime of fifty individual and combined design features of over 6,000 properties across three police forces in England and Wales. They also carried out indepth interviews with twenty-two incarcerated burglars. Both studies confirming that housing design impacts the likelihood of crime and identifying the most criminogenic design features.

Research was also carried out with Police Designing Out Crime Officers (DOCOs) to assess the quality of delivery of crime prevention through environmental design.

Residential housing

The research confirmed that the design of residential housing influences risk of crime, and that housing built to the police SBD award scheme standards will experience significantly lower levels of crime. It identified the extent to which designing out crime is being implemented by police DOCOs, the strengths and limitations of training provision and how effectively crime prevention is being embedded within local and national planning.

Building standards and regulations

The research has played a key role in influencing the inclusion of SBD and security within UK building regulations. It has also influenced policy with the government announcing that the proposed deregulation of security within the planning system would not be implemented and that the building standards would be amended to include security for doors and windows for the first time. This was implemented in England and Wales in 2015.

Global impact

The findings from this research have influenced policy and planning policy and practice in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. The research confirmed that housing built to the Secured by Design (SBD) standard experiences 55% less burglary than housing that does not meet these standards, thus enabling planning guidance, building regulations and other national and local policy to stipulate that housing be built to these standards; increasing the number of secure homes (43% of new homes built between 2006 and 2017 were SBD) and, in turn, decreasing the number of crimes experienced.

Through research projects funded by a variety of diverse agencies, presentations at 21 international conferences, participation on key Advisory Boards and the production of practitioner focused knowledge transfer materials, this research has impacted police and planning policy and practice, prevented residential burglary and reduced the economic and social costs of crime.