Innovation involves keeping up with changing crime and social/technological context. It is important that security is not left behind.
Building the capacity for innovation is central to our ability to act on the outcome of horizon-scanning exercises.
On this page:
- Why we should innovate in security
- Publications and presentations on innovation, including the role of the 5Is framework
Why should we innovate in security?
The reasons for innovation are many:
- Current solutions to crime may be inefficient or too expensive, may not work, and may have adverse side effects, for example on privacy or aesthetics
- Cookbook replication of success stories doesn’t work. Crime prevention needs attuning to context, which has diverse dimensions. So every replication involves the intelligent process of innovation, feedback and adjustment. These are best supported through systematic process models such as the 5Is Framework or conceptual structures like the Security Function Framework, and by paying heed to tested theory and research evidence – but importantly, undertaken in a way that promotes design freedom and creativity
- New crime problems emerge, and also new constraints, possibilities or contexts. For example, a funding source dries up, priorities alter, or a law or a policy changes the operating environment of the police, local government, a social organisation or a private company
- New opportunities for improving safety and quality of life arise, often through new technology
- Adaptive criminals may misuse new technology (such as drones) or use social engineering (trickery) to overcome existing security measures – meaning that what used to work in preventing crime, works no longer. Effectiveness is often time-limited
- In extreme cases, co-evolutionary arms races between criminals and security (whether in terror attacks, for example, or credit card fraud) mean we must develop and disseminate the capacity to out-innovate adaptive offenders
- Finally, we must bear in mind the special challenges and opportunities of ICT. This provides major accelerants of innovation in both crime and security, and gives both criminals and the security side alike a huge ability to scale up their operations at little extra cost
In practice, most innovations will be a mix of social, material and cyber technology.
The EU defines social innovation as follows: ‘New ideas that meet social needs, create social relationships and form new collaborations. These innovations can be products, services or models addressing unmet needs more effectively.’
Publications and presentations
This chapter reviews the field:
Ekblom, P. and Pease, K. (2014). ‘Innovation and Crime Prevention’ in Bruinsma, G. and Weisburd, D. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. New York: Springer Science+Business Media.
Innovation and the 5Is Framework
‘Innovation in the knowledge-based process‘ (Innovation i den kunskapsbaserade processen) Råd för Framtiden conference, Swedish Crime Prevention Council, Karlstad, Sweden.
Considers the role of the 5Is Framework in facilitating innovation. Audio version – PowerPoint. As the blurb for the conference said:
‘The world is changing faster and more profoundly than ever before, whether we look at climate, disease, politics, the economy and technology. Some of these changes cause new kinds of crime to emerge, or old kinds to mutate. New patterns of conflict, stress and deprivation generate motivation for disorder and violence. Entrepreneurial, adaptive criminals exploit new opportunities for crime. In fact, we on the security side find ourselves in an arms race with offenders, where what works to prevent crime now, may no longer work in future.
‘In the face of all this, what should we do to stop security from falling ever-further behind? Strategically speaking, we have to develop and disseminate the capacity to out-innovate adaptive criminals. But innovation in crime prevention is equally important at the local, everyday level. We know that interventions that work in one place and time will not necessarily work elsewhere. So when we try to replicate some local crime prevention success story on a national scale, we find that cookbook copying often fails. We have to replicate intelligently, based on tested theory and plausible practical principles blended with specific local requirements. Every local replication therefore involves innovation, trial and adjustment.
‘But innovation doesn’t just happen by magic. In any case, relying on individual genius inventors working away in their sheds is not enough. Innovation needs to be scaled-up, routine and systematic. To do this, we need a conceptual framework that combines creativity with criminological rigour and practical knowhow. A framework that can help us focus on the tasks that need to be done, and come up with theoretically and practically plausible solutions customised to our local context.
‘As it happens, I’ve developed such a framework – the 5Is. This is a detailed process model of doing crime prevention, based on long experience of undertaking, evaluating and describing practical crime prevention projects. It is similar to the SARA model in problem-oriented policing, but far more detailed. In my talk I go through the 5 high-level task streams of 5Is – Intelligence, Intervention, Implementation, Involvement of people and organisations, and Impact and process evaluation, describing how you can use it to boost your powers of innovation when you are planning and delivering local crime prevention projects and services.’
A brief introduction to innovation, for the European Forum on Urban Security, and a longer, presentation version:
‘Innovation, Security and Crime‘, Efus conference Augsburg 2019 – presentation/workshop participation. https://efus.eu/topics/innovation-technologie-en/innovating-in-urban-security-by-paul-ekblom-university-college-london/
‘Anti-Innovation: using insights from Design Against Crime to frustrate terrorist creativity’. The Nature of Creativity: Implications for Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism‘. A St Andrews University Workshop, Milton Hill, Oxfordshire 2012.
This presentation considers the issue of ‘anti-creativity’ as a strategy to disadvantage terrorists.
CRIME FRAMEWORKS 