As mentioned a few weeks ago, ensuring good natural surveillance is essential to making a premises less vulnerable to criminal behaviour. Offenders that are likely to be seen by either the building’s occupants or those passing by will be more reluctant to complete their task. Yet, in the Bolton area there are numerous buildings/stores that have, for some reason, deliberately taken measures to limit natural surveillance.

A local computer dealer for example has now completely covered all its windows with large signs. Now, granted they are rather effective in terms of catching the eye of those passing by, but their impact on surveillance is entirely negative. Because the interior of the store is no longer visible from the street (where hundreds of potential witnesses pass by), an attempted burglary would likely go completely unnoticed. Moreover, in the evening the premises suffers from numerous dark areas because of insufficient lighting. Given that most break and enters take place in the evening, the premises should be lit up like a theme park. Automatic flood lights and other territorial lights (small lights that mark off the boundaries of the store) would certainly help.

Lets look an another example where design has been carefully considered. At the new Petro-Canada station down from Garden Foods a number of design decisions have made the facility more resistant to criminal behaviour. Given that gas stations have been notorious places for hold-ups in the past, these design modifications were intelligently included.

First, the cashier station is highly visible from the outside. The large glass windows – without posters and advertising – allows customers and passing drivers to look inside. Secondly, the cashier is located at the rear of the station which makes it morelikely that a potential offender would have to pass through the well lit pumping area and the numerous operational video cameras mounted above. This not only increases the probability that the offender would be forced to interact with (or pass by) other customers, but also ensures ample opportunity for him/her to be watched. This benefit is, however, offset by the row of parking spaces to the right of the cashier station, which provide easy access to the target while allowing the offender to keep the car running (not to mention close to the exit). It would have been best to locate those parking spots further from the cashier station where all customers would have to pass through the pumping areas and thus the cameras.

Of course, these things are not always easy to identify, and are often expensive to enact. For these reasons CPTED is best considered during the design phase when ideas can be built in initially. Nevertheless, simple modifications can be made quite readily.

About Patrick Parnaby
Patrick Parnaby is currently completing his Ph.D. in Sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton. His current research includes Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design and the sociology of deviance. E-mail Patrick at patrick@mycaledon.com

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