Understanding the causes of criminal events, and how to intervene in those causes to make the crimes impossible to commit, less likely or less harmful, is at the heart of crime prevention. The traditional Crime Science perspectives (Rational Choice, Routine Activities, Geometry of Crime), whilst they have generated and guided much valuable research and practice over decades, are fragmentary, overlapping and ‘underlapping’. They also neglect much knowledge on the offender side, such as resources for committing crime. As argued below, and in Making Offenders Richer, knowing more about the offender and what influences them to offend or not to offend enables better design of situational interventions (on the ‘think perpetrator’ principle).
The Ds Framework focuses on how interventions work, in terms of the ways they influence the offender. The Ds are a set of security intervention principles which include deterrence and detection but go way beyond them, in pursuit of wider coverage and greater precision.
This page sets out the Ds Framework and principles; how the Ds could be developed in future; who can benefit from using the Ds; how the Ds Framework relates to the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework, the Problem Analysis Triangle and the 25 Techniques of Situational Crime Prevention. This page also lists key publications and presentations; and explains how the Ds Framework originated.
An extension of the Ds Framework covering ways of disrupting terrorism and organised crime, is on a separate page on Disruption.
What is the Ds Framework?
The Ds Framework contributes to know-what works. It provides a set of mechanism-based security intervention principles that focus on the diverse mechanisms by which crime prevention methods potentially work – in particular, how they can influence the offender, including corporate offenders.
The Ds Framework includes opportunity factors but goes well beyond them to cover practical and motivational/emotional ones too. The emphasis remains on influences in or near the immediate crime situation. There are currently no connections made with developmental processes.
Currently there are 11 Ds but more are anticipated – suggestions welcome.
What are the Ds?
Each D principle is based on a distinct causal mechanism of security intervention, such as Deterrence.
Each D principle can be described in terms of how it bears on three domains of action:
- Practical – limit what the offender can do by changing the environment and its contents)
- Personal – spot, identify, track or trace offender)
- Psychological – change how offenders perceive, think and feel, hence how they decide and perform)
Each D principle can be realised by many practical methods.
The Ds are:
- Defeat – physically block access and movement or block/obscure the information that offenders want to collect
- Disable/Deny – equipment helpful to offenders such as bugs or cameras
- Direct/Deflect – move offenders towards/away from place or behaviour
- Deter-known – offenders know what the risk of exposure is, and judge it unacceptable so abandon/abort hostile reconnaissance attempt
- Deter-unknown – offenders uncertain what control methods they are up against, so again judge risk of exposure unacceptable
- Discourage – offenders perceive effort too great, reward too little, relative to risk, so abandon/abort attempt
- Demotivate – awakening, within offenders, motives/emotions contrary to the mission, e.g. empathy with potential victims, removing excuses, coward image
- Deceive – offenders act on wrong information on risk, effort, reward, where to go etc, and are exposed to immediate arrest or protracted intelligence collection, frustrated, or mistakenly decide not to select this site as target
- Disconcert – causing offenders to make overt involuntary movement or otherwise become startled
- Detect – passive, and active exposure to make offenders reveal themselves by instrumental, expressive or involuntary action; by making legitimate presence/ behaviour distinctive; and by improving capacity to detect, of people exercising the security role
- Detain – once offenders are detected, they must be caught and held (or credible identifying details obtained so they can be traced)
This diagram shows how each D bears on the different domains of action:
Note that the D principles are not fully separable in practice. A given practical method can activate multiple D principles. The Ds can interact – Detaining some offenders may Deter others, for example.
How could the Ds Framework be developed?
Below are ways in which researchers/practitioners could consider taking the Ds Framework forward.
Adding extra Ds
There are several candidates which might be added to the Ds list:
- Dampen – provocations, prompts and pressures (suggested by Richard Wortley)
- Diminish – excuses
- Delay – used widely in security, as a practical brake on offender productivity, and perhaps a psychological influence serving to Discourage offending
Please contact with suggestions for extra Ds.
Causal counterparts of the D principles
The D principles describe kinds of intervention. But it may be worth restating them in terms of their causal counterparts. For example ‘How to Demotivate offender?’ becomes ‘How are offenders motivated? This could aid Intelligence and Intervention task streams under the 5Is Framework.
How criminals might use their own counterparts of the Ds
It may be worth considering whether there are generic ways by which offenders act on the other crime roles – e.g. lulling suspicion of victims, corrupting crime preventers/ regulators, mobilising crime promoters etc. Again this is a way of ‘thinking perpetrator’.
Developmental Ds
Describing ways of influencing developmental pathways to reduce the likelihood/severity of people/corporates embarking on a criminal career (though maintaining the ‘D’ initial may be challenging!)
Who can use the Ds Framework and how do they benefit?
By focusing more sharply on the offender dimension of situational intervention mechanisms, the Ds Framework may offer more flexible and tailored structuring of knowledge, thinking and communication among practitioners, researchers and designers.
The Ds Framework is an attempt to help practitioners and researchers alike to use ‘deter’ in a specific way rather than as a catch-all term for ‘any crime prevention mechanism’. In fact deterrence is just one specific set of mechanisms among many.
- Practitioners – the Ds Framework offers an alternative perspective on Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) interventions to the 25 Techniques and the Problem Analysis Triangle. It blends the approaches of SCP and conventional security (including covering Advanced Persistent Threat actors). It provides a clear focus on ‘thinking perpetrator’ to stimulate thinking. Under the 5Is Framework, the Ds sharpen scanning and analysis in the Intelligence task stream; and helps to articulate the question ‘how does this proposed Intervention work?’. The Ds Framework can also be used in a ‘what works’ knowledge base to characterise intervention methods.
- Researchers – the Ds Framework suggests alternative causal mechanisms (or statements of mechanisms) for Realist Reviews of ‘what works’; can sharpen theoretical thinking; and can widen the scope of SCP/ crime science thinking to connect with the conventional security domain.
- Designers – the Ds Framework can stimulate and focus creative ideation from a ‘think perpetrator’ perspective, and encourage systematic exploration of diverse approaches to intervention. Since the Ds are articulated as principles, this facilitates design freedom. Ds can be used in conjunction with the Security Function Framework to articulate the mechanism dimension. Note: don’t confuse the Ds with the Double Diamond design process model (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver).
How does the Ds framework differ from alternatives?
Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity
Like CCO, the Ds are based on analytic intervention principles. But they focus on the offender and what the situation does to the offender. They map onto the CCO Framework as below:
| The Ds do this to offenders | CCO identifies causes of criminal events residing in these elements and their interaction |
| Defeat | Target, Enclosure, Environment |
| Disable/deny | Resources for crime |
| Direct/deflect | Presence of offender |
| Deter-known | Perception/anticipation |
| Deter-unknown | Perception/anticipation |
| Discourage | Perception/anticipation |
| Demotivate | Readiness to offend |
| Deceive | Perception/anticipation |
| Disconcert | Readiness to offend, presence, perception/anticipation |
| Detect | Presence of offender |
| Detain | Presence of offender |
The Problem Analysis Triangle
Like the CCO Framework but less sophisticated, the PAT covers both causes of crime problems (i.e. patterns of criminal events), and the locus of preventive interventions, with the elements Target/Victim, Location, Offender. The Ds focuses on offenders and, in more detail, how the other elements of the crime situation influence them.
The 25 Techniques of Situational Crime Prevention
There is some overlap with the 25 Techniques of SCP, but the Ds:
- Are more analytic, less a list of exemplars
- Cover more of the ‘caused’ aspects of the offender (motivation etc) making it suitable for Advanced Persistent Threat actors as well as more casual offenders
Publications
Main article introducing the Ds Framework:
Ekblom, P. and Hirschfield, A. (2014). ‘Developing an alternative formulation of SCP principles – the Ds (11 and counting).’ Crime Science, 3:2.
Examples of application of the Ds Framework:
Brown, R. (2022). Eliminating Online Child Sexual Abuse Material. Crime Science Series. Milton Park: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003327264.
Laufs, J., Borrion, H. and Bradford, B. (2020). Security and the smart city: A systematic review. Sustainable Cities and Society, 55.
Presentations
How did the Ds Framework originate?
The Ds Framework stemmed from a project for UK Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure, to produce a toolkit for controlling hostile reconnaissance by terrorists and others. The idea was to support an approach centring on ‘think perpetrator’.
The D principles came from diverse sources including the 25 Techniques of SCP, the generic terminology of security, and the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework. Below is a list of the conceptual/ practical sources of the D principles:
- Risk (Deter)
- Effort and Reward (Discourage)
- Physical blocking (Defeat)
- Deflection (Deflect from/ direct to)
- Enforcement (Detect, Detain)
- Restrict resources for offending (Disable/Deny)
- Offender-oriented/ reverse Precipitation (Demotivate, Disconcert – idea suggested by one of the security managers in toolkit trial)
Colleagues contributing to 11Ds included Alex Hirschfield, Rachel Armitage, Kris Christmann, Jason Roach, Michelle Rogerson (Applied Criminology and Policing Centre, University of Huddersfield) and Marcus Willcocks (Design Against Crime Research Centre, University of the Arts London).
CRIME FRAMEWORKS 