NCJ Number
79564
Date Published
1980
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This review assesses the research aspect of William Brill Associates' analysis of crime locations and social and physical environmental factors that may contribute to crime, so as to develop a security planning program for a housing development.
Abstract
The research design was preexperimental and exploratory. It consisted of (1) a household safety and security survey, which collected data on victimization, fear of crime, and the extent to which residents alter their behavior because of crime-related problems in the housing development (William Nickerson, Jr. Gardens in Los Angeles, Calif.); (2) a physically oriented site security analysis based in part on observation of the use of space; and (3) an investigation of the housing development's social problems and the level of police and other security-related social services. The study reported that many residents altered their behavior to avoid situations in which they feared being victimized. Further, the housing development scored high on all the vulnerability criteria such as amounts of unassigned space, highly penetrable, design conflicts, limited opportunities for natural surveillance, and several high-risk areas. Residents are reported not to have been socially cohesive. The study's purpose--to identify some of the potentially crime-inducing problems--was achieved. The study never attempted to test any hypotheses about the relationship between crime-related behaviors and the built environment. The study assumed that physical design factors were crime inducing. Although some circumstantial evidence was presented to support these assumptions, the research did not prove their validity. For the original report, see NCJ 74531.