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Gearing Up Against Crime: A Dynamic Framework to Help Designers Keep Up With the Adaptive Criminal in a Changing World

NCJ Number
178131
Journal
International Journal of Risk, Security and Crime Prevention Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Dated: October 1997 Pages: 249-265
Author(s)
Paul Ekblom
Date Published
October 1997
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This article attempts to provide background and a framework to help designers more systematically incorporate crime prevention in their projects.
Abstract
The scope of the article includes design of technological items, environments, systems, and services. This is design against misappropriation, damage, and misuse in the furtherance of crime; and design of products explicitly intended for the furtherance of prevention. The intent is to stimulate designers, commissioners of design and those like criminologists who conduct research that informs design, in two ways: (1) shifting perspective from user to misuser to aid the day-to-day process of incorporating the preventive function in specific design tasks; and (2) in the more strategic process of helping crime prevention evolve as fast as crime in a world of adaptable criminals and changing opportunities, many of which stem from the permeation of society by information technology. This involves setting up the infrastructure to expedite the feeding of information on crime and prevention to designers, and to promote the durability of preventive techniques. Figure, notes