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Reducing Burglary pp 165–193Cite as

An Evaluation of a Research-Informed Target Hardening Initiative

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Abstract

This chapter describes a target hardening demonstration project implemented in an English city, which drew on the research findings relating to burglary and the most effective combination ‘on a budget’ nationally – window locks, internal lights on a timer, double door locks or deadlocks and external lights on a sensor (WIDE) – of security devices presented earlier in this book. The pilot target hardening initiative sought to test the effectiveness of the WIDE security combination in local areas following the principle of repeat and near repeat victimisation. The discussion provides an overview of the different stages of the initiative and the partner organisations involved. It also outlines preliminary evaluation results, which suggest WIDE-informed burglary prevention gains, and discusses some of the practical and methodological issues surrounding crime reduction initiatives that stem from the project in question.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The burglary prevention initiative was developed as a demonstration project that drew on the research findings relating to burglary risk and security devices presented in Chaps. 4 and 5.

  2. 2.

    The Maryland Scale of Scientific Methods for Evaluating Crime Prevention has five levels of increasing complexity: ‘Level One: Correlation between a crime prevention program and a measure of crime or crime risk factors at a single point in time; Level Two: Temporal sequence between the program and the crime or risk outcome clearly observed, or the presence of a comparison group without demonstrated comparability to the treatment group; Level Three: A comparison between two or more comparable units of analysis, one with and one without the program; Level Four: Comparison between multiple units with and without the program, controlling for other factors, or using comparison units that evidence only minor differences; Level Five: Random assignment and analysis of comparable units to program and comparison groups’ (Sherman et al. 1998, pp. 4–5).

  3. 3.

    The primary stakeholders within the BTF which acted as a critical friend to the project were NCH, Nottinghamshire Police, the academic research partner and Professor Ken Pease.

  4. 4.

    The protocol included the following information: ‘1.1 The theory of repeat and near repeat victimisation in [relation] to dwelling burglary is well known. Recent on-going and thus preliminary research has also identified the most effective combination of security devices to prevent burglary. The pilot project outlined in this protocol is designed to test the effectiveness of those security devices through a programme of target hardening. The properties selected for target hardening will be determined by the repeat and near repeat victimisation theory within two areas of the city’ (NCDP 2014, Sect. 1.1).

  5. 5.

    Chainey, S. (2012). Repeat Victimisation. JDiBrief Series. London: UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science. ISSN: 2050–4853

  6. 6.

    At an earlier stage, two wards with similar near-repeat burglaries (Ward IX at 13.5 percent and Ward XI at 12.7 percent) within the set time and space configurations were selected. Due to the high presence of council housing, Ward XI was subsequently replaced with Ward II.

  7. 7.

    Lower Super Output Areas are a geographical statistical area employed by the Office for National Statistics in the UK primarily for the Census and the country’s sampling frame of a number of social surveys. They are analogous to Census tracks for other countries. LSOAs underpin the collation and analysis of data relating to a wide range of social problems and issues including crime in England. They have minimum and maximum population thresholds of between 1000 and 3000 people in order to enable valid comparison of data across similar sized neighbourhoods.

  8. 8.

    Property marking, which had been commonly provided in the city since 2006, was deemed a successful preventive measure (NCDP 2015a). According to the protocol, it was due to be given out to burgled properties and their cocooning in the control areas together with advice about Neighbourhood Alert (NCDP 2014). In reality however the property marking pen and guidance were given to any properties which did not already have it regardless of whether they fell in the test or control areas. According to the pilot’s Activity Log, nearly 60 percent of the burgled and cocoon properties in the test areas received the property marking pen and guidance (see later Table 6.3).

    Table 6.3 Summary of the Activity Log for the burglary pilot project
    Full size table
  9. 9.

    The Home Security Assessment form differs from the Security Survey conducted in the test areas and is included in Appendix C.

  10. 10.

    It should be noted that in the test areas, the Home Security Assessment of the neighbouring properties of a burgled dwelling was undertaken by the PCU and not the Safer Neighbourhoods Team PCSOs (as was the case in the control areas).

  11. 11.

    Advice about Neighbourhood Alert does not seem to have been offered in the test areas according to the protocol.

  12. 12.

    The ‘I’ from WIDE has been crossed out here since internal lights operating on a timer were not part of the initiative in the test neighbourhoods but across both control and test neighbourhoods.

  13. 13.

    The last one requires labour intensive work to prepare it for analysis, consequently the household-related contextual information of the pilot remains for future study.

  14. 14.

    Additional analyses which distinguish areas with high burglary rates (defined as above two standard deviations of the mean citywide burglary rate), those bordering the test areas and the rest of the city have been completed, but they are not presented here for economy. These analyses showed considerable diffusion of benefits from the pilot target hardening initiative in the test to the neighbouring areas.

  15. 15.

    The difference between the 71 target hardened properties in the test areas and the number of properties in the Activity Log that had the Security Survey and required upgrades (65, calculated as 68 minus 3 from the first row and column of figures in Table 6.3) refers to properties of which the owners responded to the letter left and accepted the offered upgrades at a subsequent to first contact point in time.

  16. 16.

    For a full list of security devices identified within the national data in the CSEW, see Chap. 4.

  17. 17.

    As a result of this process, the end months of the original burglary data, September 2013 and January 2016, were subsumed within those of the following and previous month, respectively. Therefore the data presented here concern 3-month moving average burglary rates per 1000 households from October 2013 to December 2015. For example, the burglary rate for October 2013 was calculated as the mean value (or the sum divided by three) of the burglary rates for September, October and November 2013; that of November 2013 as the mean value of the burglary rates for October, November and December 2013; and so on and so forth.

  18. 18.

    The Responsible Authorities are the Local Authority, Nottinghamshire Police, Nottinghamshire Probation, Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service and Clinical Commissioning Group.

Abbreviations

BTF:

Burglary Task and Finish group

CSEW:

Crime Survey for England and Wales

ESRC-SDAI:

Economic and Social Research Council-Secondary Data Analysis Initiative

LSOA:

Lower Super Output Area (statistical geographical boundary for UK Census and other data)

NCDP:

Nottingham Crime and Drugs Partnership

NCH:

Nottingham City Homes

NRV:

Near repeat victimisation

OPCC:

Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner

PCSOs:

Police Community Support Officers

PCU:

Pre-crime unit

WIDE:

Window locks, internal lights on a timer, double door locks and external lights on a sensor

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Quantitative and Spatial Criminology, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    James Hunter & Andromachi Tseloni

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  1. James Hunter
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Correspondence to James Hunter .

Appendices

Appendix C

C.1 The Nottingham Crime and Drugs Partnership (NCDP)

The following text has been provided by the NCDP and briefly delineates the partnership at the time of writing (2017) which is almost 3 years after the pilot.

6.2.1 C.1.1 Statement

The CDP is the local Community Safety Partnership. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 established Community Safety Partnerships, placing a statutory duty on public authorities (referred to as Responsible AuthoritiesFootnote 18) to co-operate in order to formulate and implement a strategy for the reduction of crime and disorder and for combating substance misuse in the area. The CDP produces an annual Partnership Plan which performs this function and gives strategic direction to the partnership.

6.2.2 C.1.2 For Recognition

The CDP is supported by a small partnership team of Community Safety Officers, commissioners and analysts who produce the necessary documents to enable the partnership to discharge its statutory obligations.

6.2.3 C.1.3 History

The Crime and Drugs Partnership was formed in 2005 after the merger of the Nottingham Drug and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT) and the Nottingham Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership. The merger recognised the inextricable link between crime and drug use (particularly heroin and crack cocaine). The CDP, by virtue of the fact that it incorporates the DAAT, is distinct from other CSPs in the country, and this unique model has provided excellent opportunities for partnership working.

Crime and drug-related offending in Nottingham has dropped significantly over recent years. Since 2002 crime in the city has reduced by over 60% (representing over 40,000 less crimes).

The nature of crime and substance misuse has changed significantly since the formation of the partnership in 2005. As crime has fallen in Nottingham, the profile has changed considerably so that offending is now more evenly distributed across the city and across a wider range of offence types.

Partners have responded with the development of case working approaches to manage repeat offenders and victims such as the Complex People’s Panel, Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (addressing high-risk domestic violence), Young People’s Panel and the Priority Families programme.

As partnership funding has reduced for the delivery of local community safety initiatives and individual partners have subsumed the work into their core business, the CDP has significantly reduced its investment in the direct provision of community safety measures. Consequently the function of the partnership has evolved to give greater focus to coordination and facilitation in locality working and more effective use of partner’s core resources in people, systems and process improvements.

C.2 Selected Protocol and Home Security Assessment Templates

Appendix Table 6.5 Burglary Pilot (Target Hardening) Process
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Appendix Table 6.6 Data Capture Form
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Appendix Table 6.7a Security Survey
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Appendix Table 6.7b Details of security works carried out
Full size table

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Hunter, J., Tseloni, A. (2018). An Evaluation of a Research-Informed Target Hardening Initiative. In: Reducing Burglary. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99942-5_6

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