Physical Ecological Intervention: Environmental Design

Abstract

Earlier chapters have presented and examined site, neighborhood, and regional characteristics which, in interaction with person qualities, function as antecedents or correlates of crime and aggression. In seeking to reduce the occurrence of such antisocial behavior, criminology, sociology, and psychology have traditionally focused primarily on the person component of the person-environment duet. Crimes, such disciplines hold, grew from those person characteristics collectively finding expression in criminal motivation. Reducing crime, therefore, required preventive and rehabilitative actions directed toward potential and existing perpetrators—counseling, behavior modification, probationary or parole stipulations, diversion programming, and so forth. In major contrast to this broadly held and widely implemented dispositional perspective on crime and aggression control, there has emerged in recent decades a series of philosophies which concern themselves with environmental, rather than perpetrator, intervention. These are each primarily criminal-opportunity-altering, rather than criminal-motivation-altering approaches. Each places its targeting emphasis much more heavily on the prevention of crime or aggression yet to occur than on the rehabilitation of already-existing criminals. Their names clearly reflect this focus: crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED; Angel, 1968; Jacobs, 1961; Wood, 1991), situational crime prevention (Clarke, 1992; Jeffery, 1977), and environmental criminology (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1991).