Crime and security futures

The importance and nature of crime and security futures work

Crime, disorder and terrorism are always changing (see also Evolution, crime and security). Offenders adapt to crime prevention methods, rendering what is currently successful, obsolete. New products and services, new business models, and wider social and economic change, mean that, for example:

The security response to these problems often lags well behind. Being alert to emerging patterns and methods of crime, and responding in a timely and adaptive way are vital. Anticipation can help us keep up better, or occasionally even get ahead of the game. Detecting, anticipating and responding to new crime problems are covered here.

Anticipation can take several forms:

Anticipation of all kinds is challenging. Rather than being a straightforward projection of current trends, the future is full of surprises from nonlinearities. A classic example is the sudden theft of telephone box handsets on the island of Bali – but only on the coast. Apparently, local people discovered that if you wired these to a battery, sealed them in a plastic bag and lowered them into the sea, the screaming noise was good for attracting fish. Whoever could have predicted, and designed against, that?

It is therefore easy to get anticipations wrong:

• Military history is full of examples of armies ‘fighting the previous war’.
• A UK Home Office panel active 2002-4 to review new technological threats and opportunities (described in Ekblom 2004d) dismissed drones as an issue, on the grounds that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles would never be licensed in the UK.
• When TV broadcasts first went digital, special ‘set-top boxes’ were marketed to enable older TVs to decode the signals. These were viewed as likely ‘Hot Products’, at elevated risk of theft, on the grounds that they would be available in most households, easily removable, valuable, enjoyable and/or disposable. They were valid risk factors, until the TV service providers decided to give them away for free and recoup the money on rental charges. Fortunately, inertia had meant that no wasteful action had been taken to get the manufacturers to boost the security on the boxes.

Beyond the technical side of anticipation, come the policy and political aspects of what futures are desirable/ undesirable, how to make a convincing case for advance action, and what that action should be.

The application of the Crime Frameworks to crime and security futures work

All the Crime Frameworks can be applied in support of a futures perspective, as can Crime Science more generally, covered here. But three frameworks deserve special mention: Misdeeds and Security, the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity and the 5Is. Evolutionary approaches to crime and security are also relevant.

Using the Misdeeds and Security Framework

The Misdeeds and Security Framework considers a given innovation or other technological or social change and asks what offenders, and security designers, might make of it in pursuing their respective goals – affordance.

Although the framework originated in a futures context, where it can contribute to systematic Crime Impact/Risk Assessments and Crime Proofing, it has wider uses. It enables users to compress and simplify the huge and ever-proliferating array of criminal offences and ‘offence elements’ into a manageable, limited and structured set of ‘Misdeeds’. It lists some very generic elements of criminal behaviour, and then identifies equally generic security actions to counter them.

The Misdeeds and Security Framework is set out in detail here.

Using the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework

Using the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity, and Misdeeds and Security Frameworks together

In horizon-scanning, one way of forecasting the future is to rely on causal models derived, ideally, from tested theoretical mechanisms, and/or broader causal principles. We can thus use the full set of causal factors identified within Crime Science, to envisage how changes in these can change the frequency, distribution or nature of criminal events. And we can go on to consider the ’causes of the causes’. For example, how can future changes in PESHTELOMI domains affect criminals’ readiness to offend or the availability of resources for offending such as tools or weapons?

Drones can be used as an example to show how the CCO and Misdeeds and Security Frameworks can be applied to futures work.

Using the CCO and 5Is Frameworks together

The following diagram (from this presentation) maps out various connections between 1) forecast background changes in society; 2) changes in the causes, risks and consequences of crime, disorder and terrorism (CDT) events (using the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework); 3) changes in the immediate operating environment of the police and other security partners; and 4) changes internal to their organisations, which influence 5) their capacity and motivation to deal with crime (using the 5Is Framework). In turn these changes affect 6) the actions of police and security partners, and, as a result, 7) crime perceptions, concerns, risks and consequences.

Evolutionary approaches to crime and security

Although not explicitly addressing crime and security futures, evolutionary approaches to crime and security are intended to help anticipate future crimes and prepare appropriate responses. They focus on developing the evolutionary capacity to ‘gear up against crime’ and out-innovate adaptive offenders in the arms race, against a background of technological, social and other changes which may favour one side or the other, in what can sometimes be a disruptive breakthrough.

Publications and presentations on crime and security futures

The articles and presentations listed on this page show how other approaches and frameworks can contribute to undertaking foresight in a way that combines rigour with structured, cross-disciplinary speculation; and how they can suggest new perspectives.

Publications

Presentations

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