Making Public Spaces Safer
The 1950s and 1960s in the United
States marked a period of concern over growing poverty and social inequality.
The War on Poverty sparked the building of large urban renewal projects that,
in turn, initiated a lively debate lasting to this day over the relationship
between human behavior and the built environment. The question among those
interested in crime prevention was and still is whether good urban design can
reduce crime, including car theft. Activist Jane Jacobs argued in her book The Life and Death of Great American Cities,
that successful city neighborhoods, through their construction of spaces,
encouraged ordinary citizens to be the first line of defense against crime.31
C. Ray Jeffery turned the concept into a multidisciplinary approach to crime
deterrence in his Crime Prevention
Through Environmental Design (1971), later popularized by Oscar Newman in
his books Defensible Space: Crime
Prevention Through Urban Design (1972) and Design Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space (1976).32
Critics complaining of “environmental determinism” forced a refinement of the
ideas so that current iterations are more cognizant of site specific and social
factors.33 In the wake of these heated discussions, organizations
committed to implementing these design concepts, such as the United States
Designing Out Crime Association, have emerged, as well as efforts to document
the assertions as fact or fallacy. From these lively conversations, it is
possible to gain some insight into the relationship between environmental
design and auto theft.
What we have learned so far is that
it is sometimes difficult to isolate the specific elements that directly affect
auto theft because what is important is how these elements are arranged
together to create the total event. Nor is it easy to draw conclusions based on
statistical analysis given the rigid requirements of the processes.34
Nonetheless, the following seem to make a difference: lighting, surveillance,
landscaping that does not obscure the view of crimes in commission, and the
presence of security guards or police.35 In addition, people need to
be aware of where they park. As studies show, parking a car in a domestic
garage at night is safer than parking in a driveway, which, in turn, is safer
than parking on the street.36 But not everyone has a choice.
Streetscapes, Parking Lots and
Structures
Parking
lots and garages initially emerged in the American city as a way to ease
congestion and then later as a developmental strategy to offset commercial
growth in outlying areas. As geographer John A. Jakle and historian Keith A.
Sculle note in Lots of Parking: Land Use
in a Car Culture, the parking garage marked a transition from parking as a
privilege to parking as a necessity.37 And while
safety had become an issue by the 1970s, auto theft was not widely discussed.
One of the early design elements to gain attention with respect to crime was
lighting, yet even here the focus was on personal assaults and property stolen
from cars.38 In a 1979 evaluation of eight street lighting systems
in the US, only one location (New Orleans) examined the outcome on vehicle
theft, and they found no measurable effect.39
The
problem is that while it may seem obvious that lighting would reduce crime and
auto theft in particular, in fact, the evidence is mixed. Experts disagree that
more lighting leads to less crime or safer streets. One large, long-term study
found that: “better street lighting had had no little or effect on crime. . . .
On the other hand, they did find that the improved street lighting was warmly
welcomed by the public, and that it provided a measure of reassurance to some
people . . . ”40 In other words, improved lighting reduces fear.
However, another study found something different: “improved street lighting led
to significant reductions in crime [since] lighting increases community pride
and confidence and strengthens informal social control . . . ”41 That
is, it encourages informal surveillance or vigilance among residents. In fact,
there are both positive and negative consequences of improved street lighting.
While better lighting might bring people out in the street at night, it can and
does help criminals see what they are doing and scope out their exit strategy.
In addition, harsh lighting creates shadows that can hide criminal activity.
Clearly, numerous variables affect the relationship between lighting and crime:
The effects of improved street lighting
are likely to vary in different conditions. In particular, they are likely to
be greater if the existing lighting is poor and if the improvement in lighting
is considerable. They may vary according to characteristics of the area or
residents, the design of the area, the design of the lighting, and the places
that are illuminated. For example, improved lighting may increase community
confidence only in relatively stable homogeneous communities, not in areas with
a heterogeneous population mix and high residential mobility. The effects of
improved lighting may also interact with other environmental improvements, such
as closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras or security patrols.42
It
is not that improved lighting does not deter car theft; it is that a direct
link is not automatic. The ability to mitigate auto theft through lighting
often requires combining it with other measures such as landscaping, and
increasingly, surveillance.
Electronic
surveillance had been used by the federal government and military for years,
but it became more widespread in the 1960s during the war against organized
crime and spread to municipalities when Congress passed Title III of the
Omnibus Crime Control And Safe Street Act of 1968. The purpose of the
legislation was to define the proper use of electronic surveillance. The
Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 further allowed law enforcement
to collect information for public safety. Although challenged, court rulings
argued that individuals do not have a reasonable right to privacy when in a
public space, nor does video surveillance of public streets violate the US
Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and
seizure.43 Thus the legal groundwork was already in place at the
time of the World Trade Center bombing and Oklahoma City bombing, both of which
“raised public concerns about security . . . [and] made the video surveillance
industry more acceptable to the general public.”44
Two
early instances of the use of public video surveillance were in Hoboken, New
Jersey (1966) and Mount Vernon, New York (1971),45 but both systems
were dismantled after a few years when they produced few or no arrests. The
problem was that: “many of these early systems were technically and financially
deficient, and lacked local public support. According to a police officer,
‘Cops weren’t thrilled with the cameras.’ Police staff often had to sit in a
room to monitor the CCTV cameras, which frequently broke down.”46
But
the introduction of camcorder technology in the mid-1980s and digital
technology in the 1990s expanded the range and coverage of surveillance. When
linked to computers, cameras equipped with sensors that filtered out unrelated
information provided extremely high-resolution images that could be stored in
databases. In addition, with passage of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act, the US Department of Justice began funding such programs, as
well as the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map and track gangs
and other criminal activities. It also established regional law enforcement
technology centers that could, among other things, provide technical assistance
in the use of surveillance technology.
Consequently,
by the mid-1990s, municipalities and private companies began to erect
electronic camera surveillance systems to monitor high traffic areas and parking
lots where cars were left for an extended period of time, such as airport
parking lots, shopping centers, schools, and commuter lots. And they learned
from international experiences where such technologies were already in place.
In one example, the use of CCTV in the parking lots of a British university led
to a 50 percent reduction in automobile theft.47 In another
instance, the installation of CCTV security in the town of King’s Lynn, Great Britain
in 1988, led to a drop in the theft of cars from 52 to 0 by 1994 while theft
from cars fell from 56 to 1.48 When the municipality of South
Orange, New Jersey installed seven CCTV surveillance cameras in parking lots,
intersections, and parks in 1994, auto theft dropped a reported 40 percent.49
San Diego used CCTV surveillance in 1993 across the heavily-used Balboa Park
and realized a significant decrease in all crime, including car theft. However,
police were forced to stop the surveillance after nine months because the
program required public funding.50 Across the country, similar mixed
results were reported. In 1993, in response to the spike in auto thefts in parking
lots used by train riders into New York City, authorities installed security
cameras and signage at a 210 space commuter parking lot in Freeport, New York.
Yet, when the nearby municipality of Nassau attempted the same program, they
found the construction and maintenance of video cameras was both expensive and
labor intensive.51
Declining
budgets forced communities to find ways to overcome the high cost and labor
issues related to surveillance systems. The San Diego Police Department, for
example, used cameras selectively and advised drivers to “park in open,
well-lighted, and popular areas near your destination, preferably one in view
of a security camera.”52 Alternatively, after a Hollywood,
California, initiative by building owners and landlords to purchase and install
CCTV cameras along a crime-ridden corridor that was monitored twenty-four hours
a day by local volunteers and Los Angeles Guardian Angels led to successful
results, business tenants in the nearby Northridge Shopping Center pooled their
resources to install 64 CCTV cameras in 1995 and realized “an immediate and
sharp reduction in auto theft and burglaries.”53 In yet another
instance, the State of Florida provided the City of St. Petersburg with a
$42,000 grant in 1994 to equip mobile police officers with mounted cameras and
night scopes; the surveillance system reduced the amount of cars stolen (from a
high of 3,000) in the high traffic ‘Gateway’ between St. Petersburg and Tampa
Bay. “According to police officials, the video surveillance combined with
police officers with night scopes had a major impact.”54 Because the
police were mobile and the cameras were not fixed in place, the security was
extremely flexible.
Criminal
justice scholars Ronald V. Clarke and Patricia M. Harris cautioned that, while
promising, research on the role cameras played in preventing crime was
inconclusive at best.55 The effectiveness of the surveillance system
was dependent on having people able to review the material in a timely manner.
Consequently, when the California Research Bureau conducted a telephone survey
of major city police departments to determine whether they would use CCTV video
surveillance in public areas, most responded that it was not as effective as
“community policing and other prevention strategies.”56 To what
degree traditional policing methods were resistant to the new technologies,
however, is a question that begs to be answered. Cameras have the potential to
not only replace cops, but monitor their activities, as well.
A
detailed study was recently undertaken by the Chula Vista, California, Police
Department for the US Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services on the “Theft Of and From Autos in Parking Facilities in
Chula Vista, California” that provided not only comprehensive insight into how
and why cars are stolen in this border city, but also how designing for crime
prevention can come together in a focused effort.57 Because the City
of Chula Vista is located only10 minutes from the Mexican border, it would be
expected that the city would be a haven for auto theft. And, in fact, it was.
Chula Vista had a much higher auto theft rate than Los Angeles, New York,
Chicago, San Diego and Fort Worth, among other cities. A close examination of
US border cities shows high rates of auto theft across the board, but Chula
Vista’s auto theft statistics at 984.0 motor vehicles thefts per 100,000 in
2001 ranked higher than McAllen, Texas (670.0), Eagle Pass, Texas (424.0),
Brownsville, Texas (374.0) and El Paso, Texas (326.0), yet lower than Nogales,
Arizona (1,035.0), Calexico, California (112.0) or even San Diego, California
(1,589.0). In 2001, there were 1,714 auto thefts and 1,656 vehicle burglaries
in Chula Vista representing 44 percent of the city’s total crime index.58
The
report examined the top ten public lots from which vehicles were stolen and
among their many insights found that the experiences varied for two types of
lots: those near high schools and colleges, and those near swap meets, trolley
stops, department stores, and movie theaters. In the first instance, the
recovery rates were relatively high (67-75 percent), suggesting that the theft
was for transportation or joy riding. In the second case consisting of seven of
the ten lots studied, the recovery rates ranged from 37 to 50 percent, indicating
that the theft was for export or dismantling for parts. In these cases, thieves
targeted the lots chosen to guarantee that the owners would be parked for at
least one to three hours before noticing a loss. A thief could be in Mexico in
a matter of minutes.
None
of the lots studied had the full arsenal of countermeasures to reduce crime:
“electronically armed ticket entry system with staffed exit points for ticket
recovery, cameras, active security, and perimeter control,” but when one
participating mall with a parking lot that literally abuts the border installed
“electronic ticketing triggered gate arms, staffed exits to collect tickets,
and extensive cameras and security patrols, vehicle crimes dropped to near
zero.”59
Given
that the community is adjacent to the entrance into Mexico, authorities also
examined whether license plate cameras at the border would stop the flow of
stolen vehicles. In their interviews with border agents, they found that the
primary mission was national security, not auto theft, and when the border
agents attempted to stop vehicles going into Mexico, massive traffic jams
resulted. Instead, the best form of intervention took place in lots where auto
theft was concentrated.60
Ronald
V. Clarke listed the following recommended actions in his manuscript “Thefts of
and From Cars in Parking Facilities,” submitted to the Center for
Problem-Oriented Policing in 2002:
1. Hiring parking attendants
2. Improving surveillance at deck and
lot entrances/exits
3. Hiring dedicated security patrols
4. Installing and monitoring CCTV
5. Improving lighting
6. Securing the perimeter
7. Installing entrance barriers and
electronic access
8. Adopting rating systems for security
features
9. Arresting and prosecuting persistent
offenders.
Responses that he claimed had limited
success included:
10. Conducting lock-your-car campaigns;
11. Warning offenders;
12 Promoting car alarms and other
‘bolt-on’ security devices;
13. Using decoy vehicles; and
14. Redirecting joyriders’ interest in
cars.61
Given
Clarke’s list of generally--though not universally--accepted recommendations
and the insights derived from research, a convergence of opinion appears to be
developing over the strategies that are both most effective and most acceptable
for using the built environment to combat auto theft. First is to create
natural surveillance, or ways to maximize public visibility. Second is to
reinforce the proprietary nature of the space--let the public take “ownership” of
it. Third is to clearly differentiate between public and private spaces and
control access. These principles seem to be the drivers behind effective
measures to prevent crime in general, and auto theft in particular, through
environmental design.
A Changed People, a Transformed
Environment, and a Drop in Auto Theft
From
the days when garage doors were left open all night to living with the specter
of CCTV cameras watching our every move in public spaces, we’ve come a long way
as a society. No longer do Americans typically leave their car doors unlocked
at night or keys in their cars. Our collective insecurities continue to shape
the built environment in the race toward the creation of defensible spaces. But
as research has shown, our homes, communities, and public areas provide
imperfect, though sometimes very effective, means for thwarting auto theft.
The
US will likely never reach the stage where “indiscriminate video surveillance
raises the specter of the O[r]wellian State.”62 We have a Bill of
Rights that limits the power of the federal government and ensures privacy,
although breaches do take place. By contrast, the United Kingdom, which has no
such controls, and has more video surveillance per capita than any other nation
worldwide, illustrates the potential for problems. Because “it is relatively
easy to find footage from parking garages, housing developments, department
stores, and offices that may have commercial value,” they have a problem:
“Cameras may record couples intertwined in office stock rooms, elevators or
cars; women undressing in department store changing rooms; or husband and wives
engaging in domestic squabbles. Such scenes are sold commercially in UK video
stores.”63 Yet crime has, in fact, gone down.
In the US,
which has not resorted to such extremes, crime overall, and auto theft in
particular has also gone down dramatically over the last several decades. In some
communities, crime prevention through environmental design has been an
important addition to the arsenal against auto theft. Continued refinements in
field technology, data gathering and interpretation, and use of personnel toward
the creation of multi-layered approaches to preventing crime suggests that the
built environment may become an increasingly vital tool in the arsenal against
auto theft. However, one can’t help but wonder if this downward trend is
permanent. While there are reasons for optimism, history suggests that nothing,
even the incidence of crime, remains the same for long.
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