NCJ Number
164488
Date Published
April 1997
Length
123 pages
Annotation
Place-specific crime prevention approaches are presented to inform police officials, urban planners and architects, multifamily housing managers, and public housing administrators about ways to design or redesign urban and suburban neighborhoods based on their specific characteristics and crime problems.
Abstract
Place-specific crime prevention approaches include physical design changes, public and private management changes, and use-pattern changes. Place-specific crime prevention builds on crime prevention through environmental design and uses the results of research on active crime prevention tactics such as community policing and community crime prevention. The report focuses on efforts by municipalities, public housing authorities, private developers, and nonprofit organizations. It uses information from a literature review, consultation approaches, site visits to four locations that use different approaches, and telephone interviews with 11 other sites. Strategies used at individual sites include closing pedestrian tunnels, opening hidden areas to resident and management view, closing a crack house through civil lawsuits, fencing and gating a community, rerouting traffic, limiting vehicular access, creating onsite police substations or security offices, and organizing the community to approve a special tax assessment for better street lighting and other improvements. The analysis concluded that changes should be tailored to specific locations, coordinated in their planning and implementation, and based on the involvement of a coalition of different players working together to define the problem and seek solutions. Photographs; figures; checklists; chapter reference notes; and appended glossary, literature review, guidelines and checklists, annotated list of resources, and data from individual sites