CPTED and Traditional Security Countermeasures

150 Things You Should Know

Lawrence Fennelly, Marianna Perry

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351385435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Cybersicherheit

CTPED and Traditional Security Countermeasures: 150 Things You Should Know is a handy reference for both seasoned professionals and those just starting out in security and law enforcement. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is a foundational concept to physical security and can be incorporated widely in security policies, plans, and procedures. It has proven effective over the many years insofar as building and campus design, security architecture, and creating an overall security culture in any workplace.

The authors have collected a broad array of topics together, garnered through their many years of real-world experience in the field. Security solutions that address a wide range of physical security challenges are presented in an easy to follow format. Security practitioners and law enforcement professionals alike will find practical tips to understand and manage their security program, including access control, target hardening, command and control, physical security protections, and visitor management, among a myriad of other topics. This will be a must-have reference for professionals looking for real-world recommendations for physical security solutions.

Chapter 1

Who Is Jane Jacobs?

Jane Jacobs wrote extensively on urban studies and was a woman ahead of her time. Many consider her the first woman in the security profession. She wrote, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), which The New York Times said was “Perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning.”1

She recommended “four generators of diversity” for cities and economic developments that “create effective economic pools of use”:

Mixed primary uses, activating streets at different times of the day

Short blocks, allowing high pedestrian permeability

Buildings of various ages and states of repair

Density2

The book covers such topics as the use of sidewalks, their safety, and the public assimilating them to children’s activities—and that was just the first 88 pages. Next, Jacobs covered the use of neighborhood parks and the use of city neighborhoods. Chapter 22 is titled, “The Kind of Problem a City Is.” It begins, “Thinking has its strategies and tactics too, much as other forms of action have. Merely to think about cities and get somewhere, one of the main things to know is what kind of problems cities pose, for all the problems cannot be thought about the same way.”

There is something very pure about Jacob’s style of writing. It is much deeper than it initially appeared, and reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities3 will require you to think about the implications of her thoughts on urban planning, even though she was not an architect or a city planner. We highly recommend this work.

1When Jane Jacobs Took on the World. Retrieved on April 28, 2017, from: http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/08/specials/jacobs.html

2The Death and Life of Great American Cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities; Aaron M. Renn. On Jane Jacobs: “Generating and Preserving Diversity.” http://www.newgeography.com/content/002711-on-jane-jacobs-generating-and-preserving-diversity

3A pdf of Jane Jacobs book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities is available at: https://www.buurtwijs.nl/sites/default/files/buurtwijs/bestanden/jane_jacobs_the_death_and_life_of_great_american.pdf

Chapter 2

Defensible Space Theory and CPTED

Oscar Newman, an architect and city planner, developed the Defensible Space Theory in the early 1970s to encompass ideas about crime prevention and neighborhood safety.1 Newman’s book, Defensible Space was written in 1972. The book contains a study from New York that discusses how higher crime rates existed in high-rise apartment buildings than in lower housing projects. His conclusion was that an area was safer when people felt a sense of ownership and responsibility for the property. Fear was higher in an area where residents had no control or personal responsibility for an area occupied by so many people. Newman’s focus was on social control, crime prevention, and public health in relation to community design.

Theory

Newman’s book, Design Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space, defined defensible space as “a residential environment whose physical characteristics—building layout and site plan—function to allow inhabitants themselves to become the key agents in ensuring their own security” (p. 118). He goes on to explain that a housing development is only defensible if residents intend to adopt this role, which is defined by good design: “Defensible space therefore is a socio-physical phenomenon,” says Newman. Both society and physical elements are parts of a successful defensible space.

The theory argues that an area is safer when people feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for the area. Newman’s ideas include that “the criminal is isolated because his turf is removed” when each space in an area is owned and cared for by a responsible party. If an intruder can sense a watchful community, the intruder feels less secure committing his or her crime. The idea is that crime and delinquency can be controlled and mitigated through environmental design.

There are five factors that make a space defensible:

1.Territoriality—the idea that one’s home is sacred.

2.Natural Surveillance—the link between an area’s physical characteristics and the residents’ ability to see what is happening.

3.Image—the capacity of the physical design to impart a sense of security.

4.Milieu—other features that may affect security, such as proximity to a police substation or busy commercial area.

5.Safe Adjoining Areas—for better security, residents obtain higher ability to surveil the adjoining area through designing the adjoining area.

The concept of defensible space is controversial. A U.S. Department of Justice experiment in Hartford, Connecticut, closed streets and assigned police teams to certain neighborhoods. New public housing projects were designed around ideas of limited access to the neighborhoods, but Hartford did not show any dramatic drop in crime. The...