List of terms, definitions and concepts

On this page, wherever possible, clear terms and their definitions are set out. These are shown in italics. In other cases, where attempting a fixed definition may not be straightforward or helpful at the present state of the art, the concepts are addressed more discursively.

Other relevant pages:

Crime and criminal events

Curiously, Crime Science has paid very little attention to defining the concept of crime, preferring instead to just get on with the job of reducing it. This is not particularly scientific! An attempt to remedy this follows.

Crime can be considered both as events and the acts that define them; and it can be viewed from a societal or cultural level. The cyber dimension of crime and security is still rapidly evolving. However, most of the concepts defined here are done so in a way that straddles cyber and material worlds. Exceptions that emerge will be incorporated into the definitions.

Criminal events

It’s relatively straightforward to define criminal events, which are obviously central to the definition of crime prevention.

Criminal events are the result of acts which, usually with the agent’s awareness and intent, break societal rules and norms enforceable by criminal law. (This definition draws on work by Wikström, e.g. 2018.) The events can include terrorism, antisocial behaviour, disorder and drug dealing; and may be opportunistic, planned or organised.

Some crimes are more complex than single events like a brick through the window, and have been termed process crimes. Most legally-defined crimes centre on the ‘main event’ but in some cases acts of preparation for the main event (e.g. planning a terror attack, obtaining precursor chemicals for drug manufacture) have themselves been criminalised in support of prevention, and what could be called acts of consummation e.g. money laundering the proceeds.

Crime scripts may connect a sequence of such acts, plus acts which are not themselves criminal but nevertheless part of a criminal plan. Crime as a service (slow to download) is a relatively new concept covering when professional criminals develop advanced tools, exploit kits and other services to sell or rent to other, less experienced or specialised offenders.

Criminal attempts are acts where the offender fails to achieve their main goal but may still cause harm, e.g. damage attempting burglary, alarming occupants. Some elements of attempts may be criminal in themselves, either by virtue of criminal law proscribing acts of preparation (e.g. ‘going equipped to burgle’), or due to any instrumental damage. Reducing criminal attempts can come under crime prevention, but an increase in the proportion of attempts to successes can of course be an outcome indicator in evaluation.

Crime at societal/ cultural level

The focus on criminal events still leaves the concept of crime deficient at a system, societal or cultural level. Arguably, the closest to a satisfying functional account of crime, which stands outside the ‘dictionary loop’ of defining crime in terms of law and law in terms of crime, comes from Schneier (2012), reviewed by Ekblom (2012b). What follows is not yet a definition of crime but rather, an effort to elaborate some of its key aspects, switching to the positive side of the absence of crime.

Schneier focuses on the trust mechanisms available to a given society to encourage people and corporations to act in the wider group interest, and not cheat. The society in question can mean anything from a small grouping to society as a whole, with the following example falling in between. Society as used by Schneier relates to the concept of community.

The trust mechanisms come under four fundamental and universal ways whereby societies hold themselves together. The example from the society of athletics goes as follows:

• Moral (e.g. guilt at not winning fair-and-square; shame at failing as role model)
• Reputational (e.g. keep fans and commercial advertising opportunities by maintaining reputation of a fair player)
• Institutional (e.g. civil or criminal bans on performance-enhancing drugs)
• Security (e.g. testing for specific drugs and banning athletes showing positive)

The institutional level includes criminal law and the various institutions that enforce it, though the ‘représentation sociale’ of crime is permeated by moral and reputational issues too. (The concept of représentations sociales originated with Moscovici and is defined as a stock of values, ideas, metaphors, beliefs, and practices that are shared among the members of groups and communities.)

One might add a fifth mechanism, that of tribal solidarity, to denote the human universal of perceived external threat from outgroups boosting internal cooperation. ‘Internal outgroups’, in the form of social reject categories, can also support this mechanism, and substantial social divisions may make crime reduction/ control challenging. Here, civil crime prevention can avoid the confrontation of traditional repressive/ enforcement-oriented crime control. But on the downside, intervening to influence people’s and businesses’ everyday lives and activities loses the benefit of the perception of crime and criminals as the ‘common enemy’, risking entanglement in political and/or wicked problems and issues.

Crime prevention

There is a lot to pack into the definition of crime prevention, so there are both short and long versions, and a definition-in-depth which states key subsidiary concepts in what is intended to be a suite of mutually consistent relationships.

The expansion process continues, below, to define a wider circle of supporting concepts for crime prevention such as ‘problem’ and ‘opportunity’. Other modes of action, including community safety and security, are discussed further down this page.

Crime prevention short definition

Crime prevention comprises advance actions to reduce the actual and perceived risk of criminal events and patterns thereof, by intervening in their causes and preparing for their consequences, in order to frustrate criminal purposes, reduce harm and improve people’s quality of life.

Crime prevention long version

Crime prevention comprises advance actions intended to reduce the actual and perceived risk of criminal events and patterns thereof, by intervening at a range of ecological levels in their causes and risk factors, and preparing for their consequences. This is in order to frustrate criminal purposes, reduce harm and improve the quality of life of individuals, families, groups and communities.

Crime prevention also covers wider actions undertaken within the preventive process to implement and support the focal interventions; and actions to build operational, resilient and innovative capacities. The actions can be implemented by a wide range of stakeholders/ dutyholders in an equally diverse range of institutional contexts, including law enforcement but going far beyond it.

The preventive actions should: comprise interventions intelligently-targeted on problems, contexts, causes, risk/protective factors or criminal goals; be appropriate for all stakeholders; be proportionate to problem and resources; be ethically acceptable; be limited in adverse effects; support multiple societal goals; where possible, be based on reliable and valid evidence and/or tested theoretical and practical principles; And be implemented and evaluated in such a way as to contribute to the knowledge pool of reliable evidence, tested theory and experience-honed practice.

Crime prevention definition-in-depth

Definition-in-depth means that the various elements of the above definitions must themselves be explained, in a suite which is consistent both internally, and with the various Crime Frameworks on this site. So, the technical ones first:

• Advance actions means intervening to influence the multiple causes of crime and/or preparing to limit and mitigate harm should the crimes occur; taking practical steps to implement those interventions; and involving stakeholders in their design and implementation. Note that actions taken after one criminal event may be intended to prevent subsequent events, as with repeat victimisation strategies.
• Risk comprises possibility (the type of criminal events in question), likelihood and harm (for a wider discussion see Security and risk management, hazards and threats).
• Actual or perceived refers to the fact that fear of crime may diverge from objective risk, and is a harm in its own right.
• Criminal events, defined in more detail here, are the result of acts which, usually with deliberate awareness and intent, break societal rules and norms enforceable by criminal law and related regulations (note there may be some fuzziness and contention here, e.g. over ‘nuisance’ behaviour). The events can include antisocial behaviour, disorder, drug dealing and terrorism. They may be single events or ‘process crimes’, and opportunistic or organised. Crime is defined here.
• Patterns of crime refer to the distribution of particular crime types over time (i.e. trends), space and demographics. Some crimes, e.g. domestic abuse or modern slavery, may be ongoing rather than single events. Others may occur within, or be inflicted upon, specific social groups.
• Harm can occur during the criminal event itself, after the event (e.g. psychological trauma, misuse of stolen identity) or in anticipation (as in fear of crime); and can affect individual victims, families, groups, communities, businesses and other organisations and society as a whole. Avoidance, reduction or recovery from harm relates to resilience, defined here.
• Quality of life covers a range of positive benefits beyond simple freedom from crime – these are listed under community safety.
• Community is discussed here.
• Preventive process means a structured sequence of professional actions (expert, based on evidence and experience, and ethical) intended to lead to reduced crime and/or harm; examples are the 5Is Framework and SARA.
• Intervention is the 5Is Framework’s term to denote the core action of crime prevention/ security, namely blocking, weakening or diverting causes, reducing risk factors/ increasing protective factors, and frustrating criminal purposes or goals. Note that a practical intervention method can act via multiple mechanisms; and that one intervention mechanism can be realised by a variety of practical methods.
• Causes, risk factors and criminal purposes refers to alternative discourses for expressing and guiding how to intervene in the causes of criminal events. For example, we can talk equivalently about blocking causes or frustrating criminal goals. For causes more generally, it is useful to follow the Scientific Realist approach advocated by Pawson and Tilley (1997) and also Wikström (2007) which articulates causes, and causal hypotheses, in terms of causal mechanisms. The mechanisms can equally apply to causes of criminal events, and those enacted through interventions with the intention of modifying the former. Within the 5Is, Framework there can also be mechanisms of implementation and involvement. Abstractions of mechanisms, generalised across-contexts for practical purposes, can be referred to as principles.
• Ecological levels refers to the range of groupings and/or causal processes in society: individual person, environment, product, procedure; family, peer-group, gang, community, neighbourhood, system, society as a whole. Preventive action too can operate at any of these levels and target causes and risk factors focused on environments, offenders, communities and society as a whole. (See Bouhana 2019 for related levels.)
• ‘Criminality prevention’ could be used to denote interventions targeted specifically on individuals’ propensity to offend, although the term is used loosely within criminology; offender-oriented prevention is more inclusive, tackling also offenders’ motivation, short-term state of readiness, resources both to avoid and to commit crime, and their propensity to perceive criminal opportunities and react to precipitators such as provocations. Arguably, ‘social’ crime prevention and its contrast with ‘physical’ crime prevention are rather meaningless since even a (situational) brick wall can have social dimensions e.g. of territoriality. The Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework identifies the complete set of situational and offender-oriented causes acting at the lowest ecological level, i.e. in the immediate crime situation, and counterpart intervention principles intended to block them.
• Implementation is the 5Is task stream term to denote practical actions to make an intervention happen.
• Involvement is the 5Is task stream term to denote actions to mobilise, support or collaborate with third-party people and institutions to implement a crime prevention intervention.
• Operational, resilient and innovative capacities are not specific to particular problems and respectively refer to tackling here-and-now problems; coping adaptively with consequences of particular problems through recovery and improved security; and the ability to tackle new problems, new contexts and adaptive offenders.
• Stakeholders are any individual, group or organisation with an interest in prevention; dutyholders are those stakeholders whose interest is by virtue of their formal employment.
• Institutional contexts can be characterised as
  • Judicial – undertaken via conventional law-enforcement activity (often termed ‘repression’) in arresting, punishing and incapacitating criminals, and preventing private vengeance by providing fair and satisfying procedural and criminal justice.
  • Civil – undertaken in the course of everyday domestic activity, leisure, travel and work.
  • ‘Parajudicial’ – undertaken by conventional law-enforcement agencies acting in a civil role, e.g. when police help set up a youth club, and often involving various third parties (Mazerolle and Ransley 2006).
  • Private – usually covering private security organisations or business security functions

Crime preventers can operate within any of these contexts as public or private security professionals, employees with security duties or ordinary citizens; and organisations as well as individuals. Preventers and other crime roles are discussed here.

And now the normative requirements for preventive action:

• Proportionate to problem and resources refers to prioritisation and budgeting in financial, material and human resource terms.
• Ethically acceptable is a wide-ranging requirement which covers concerns about power, justice, informed consent, equity etc.
• Limited in adverse effects and supporting multiple societal goals refers to respecting multiple societal requirements and trade-offs between security and e.g. privacy, aesthetics, carbon-neutrality. Ideally positive side effects could be covered; but there should be an acknowledgement that, say, education is valued for its own sake rather than merely for any benefit it may have for security.
• Based on reliable evidence implies an ongoing commitment to invest in impact/process evaluation to build and share reliable knowledge of what works in what context and how to implement it; and to distil theoretical and practical principles to generate plausible innovation in order to cover the many circumstances where prior knowledge is limited.
• Contributing to the knowledge pool expresses the collective benefit of evaluation; and in particular, the benefit to all of investing in more rigorous methods and perhaps wider scope than might be required for immediate operational purposes.

Crime prevention supporting concepts

Although not strictly defining the concept of crime prevention itself, several key supporting concepts require elaboration, including Agents, Situation, Opportunity and Problem. (Crime itself is covered above.) These supporting concepts also apply to the other modes of action – crime reduction, security, community safety etc.

A presentation which discusses some of these concepts is here.

Agents

Crime is always about human (mis)behaviour. Orwell’s ‘thought crimes’ apart, that behaviour inevitably takes place in environments, whether material or cyber. It therefore makes sense to build an ontology around a foundation of psychological and ecological concepts before connecting with social structural levels. The Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework draws on the classic Crime Science approaches to combine both – e.g. the Rational Choice (psychological) and Routine Activities (ecological) perspectives. So does Situational Action Theory (Wikström 2018). Other emergent levels (e.g. system, societal) can be added – for example as in Bouhana (2019).

Behaviour is produced by individuals, groups and organisations. These can be referred to collectively as agents or actors – the terms are equivalent but agents will normally be used here. Agents can be described in terms of the roles they play in the material, social and cyber worlds, and their performance of those roles. The crime roles described in the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework are offender, preventer and promoter; victim and responder can be added for after-the-event circumstances. The crime roles overlay with civil roles such as user, employer or landlord. The Crime Role Grid sets out how crime and civil roles can cross over, as a guide to mapping out complex human systems of involvement in crime and security. Useful connections can be made here with the concept of supercontrollers (Sampson et al. 2010) who influence the immediate crime preventer roles of guardians of targets, managers of places and handlers of offenders.

The concept of agency is complex. To handle this complexity the term ‘caused agent’ (Ekblom 2010) is used. The agent is caused by environmental and/or internal psychological/ neurological/ physiological mechanisms (perceptions of risk, states of intoxication or arousal, provocation etc.); but is simultaneously causing, i.e. actively constructing and executing plans and goals, exploiting personal resources and affordances sought or opportunistically encountered in the environment. The caused perspective can be called the ‘view of the offender’; causing, the ‘view from the offender’.

While the Rational Choice approach focuses on offenders’ decision-making, post-decisional processes and influences are often neglected – in particular, performance of the action taken to implement the decision. This is further discussed under crime scripts.

In the design field, ‘thinking thief’ (Ekblom 1997) – or indeed ‘thinking any kind of offender’ – is an important way of guiding research, analysis, intervention and evaluation. This theme continued in the development of toolkits where getting the users to put themselves in the shoes of perpetrators was a dominant theme. The entire sequence was ‘think perpetrator, think opportunity, think security, think intervention, think designer, think manager’.

Making Offenders Richer (Ekblom 2007) sets out the idea that, even if our only concern was to boost situational methods of prevention, knowing more about the attributes of offenders was a prerequisite to designing effective interventions. Attributes identified were rational, routine, reactive, remorseful, ready, revengeful, righteous, resourceful (Ekblom and Tilley 2000) and responsive, i.e. adaptive. Some of these aspects are also discussed from an evolutionary psychology perspective. The Ds Framework (Ekblom and Hirschfield 2014) follows through with this idea in identifying many more ways to influence offenders situationally than simply ‘deter and detect’.

Situation, setting, environment, context

This set of terms is challenging to resolve, especially given the wide range of disciplines that Crime Science draws upon, and in particular the exponential growth of cyberspace. Settings, situations, environments and contexts can include both material and cyber counterparts as acknowledged in the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity and in more depth, the discussion of space and place by Ife et al. (2019).

Situation and setting

The term ‘situation’ is used with some abandon in Crime Science – interchangeably with circumstances, environment and sometimes opportunity It normally refers to the immediate/ proximal environmental context in which a criminal event happens. But there are complications. In most cases, offenders, and their decisions and actions, are influenced not by the objective environment of matter, energy and information impinging on them or constraining their action, but by the perceived situation.

In most cases we act on what we perceive or believe rather than raw, objective reality (unless that happens to be a brick wall – cf. Wortley and Tilley 2017), and that perception is inescapably co-determined by what we are primed to perceive or capable of perceiving, some of which may be effectively predispositional. Situation, therefore, is an interactive concept (Hardie 2020). This perspective fits with diverse perspectives:

• System approaches seeking to understand the often complex relationship between some entity and its environment (e.g. Dekkers 2017).
• Evolutionary philosophers like Walsh (2015), who talk of organisms adapting to ‘affordance landscapes’ – these reflect not just what is out there (as implied in the more familiar ‘fitness landscape’), but what the organism is capable of perceiving and doing. (Affordance itself is covered below.)

In view of this, the distinction between setting and situation that Situational Action Theory (Wikström 2018; Bouhana 2019; Hardie 2020) makes is worth adopting, in modified form:

While situations are highly interactional in complex and subtle ways, settings are not entirely devoid of interaction. For example, the fact that an individual cannot perceive and respond to anything over that particular high wall says as much about them – their height, reliance on visible light, ways of perceiving things and optional possession of resources such as a periscope – as it does about the construction and material properties of the wall.

Barker’s (1968) ecological psychology concept of behaviour settings is a concept that is more empirical than analytical, identifying regularities of behaviour in particular places – e.g. a restaurant as a place for eating. As such, it could usefully connect with the behavioural regularities classed as crime scripts.

Environment

The term ‘environment’ is used in diverse ways (system theory, environmental criminology, CPTED, environmental or developmental psychology). It is challenging to construct a definition, that clearly distinguishes it from situations and settings, but here is a first attempt that owes most to system theory:

The environment of a given agent, object or system is anything during their existence with which they can exchange matter, energy and information, over greater or lesser spans of time and space.

Crime Science can probably safely ignore issues of special and general relativity, the expanding universe and quantum entanglement for now. Regarding environments, it should be noted, though, that:

• Settings are specific regions of the environment, identified in terms of their causal immediacy for the agents in those settings.
• Environments exist relative to individual agents, not like some absolute Newtonian time-space background: you are part of my environment, and vice-versa. But there is much in common especially if people come from the same culture, and for practical purposes one can cautiously talk about a shared environment, setting or situation – but not get carried away.
• Environments and the agents within them are, like situations and to a lesser extent settings as described above, co-determining.
• There is reciprocal causation between agent and environment over a range of timeframes.
• It is important to distinguish between an agent’s immediate or proximal environment, close in space, time or information-processing to the agent, their perceptions and actions (including committing or experiencing a crime); and their distal one, where longer chains of causation have to unfold before the agent is influenced by the environment or is able to influence it. Those causal chains can operate via offenders and what they bring to the situation in the broadest terms; or via the situation – for example, how particular targets or preventers came to be there.
• Those environments an agent inhabits or passes through over longer periods of time comprise their developmental environment or environments (a perspective taken up in the Co-Eco-Devo-Evo Framework). Those environments an agent is occupying in a here-and-now sense comprise their current environment. Within the current environment, agents may pass through priming events/ circumstances on their way to the crime situation – for example, a stressful commute may render them more easily provoked, or more generally, more ready to offend motivationally, emotionally and perhaps in terms of operational planning to commit crime.

The practice field of CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) is not renowned for its definitional articulacy. Here, environment generally refers to the built environment at various scales. Attempts at developing an ontology for environmental concepts (such as surveillability, defensibility) and identifying ‘environmental primitives’ (such as space for containment, movement and exertion of force; perceivability) are documented here, with a brief entry also under glossaries and ontologies.

Context

The Scientific Realist approach to Crime Science promulgated by Pawson and Tilley (1997) with particular reference to evaluation and what works (Johnson et al. 2015), refers to causal mechanisms operating in particular contexts.

The term tends to be under-defined. For example, it’s possible to differentiate between the contexts of intervention, implementation and involvement within the 5Is Framework. Within the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework the immediate or proximal causal context of a given intervention mechanism is taken as all the other 10 sets of causal influences that add to, or interact with, the one cause we are currently focusing on.

Opportunity, affordance, opportunity structure

Opportunity

Situational Crime Prevention mainly works by modifying the situation to reduce the opportunity for offenders to commit crime. (It can also reduce perceptual/ motivational/ emotional/ social precipitators – prompts, provocations, pressures and permissions – Wortley 2017.) Underlying this is the wider concept of the Rational Offender (Cornish and Clarke 1986). Clarke (2012) notes that much of this thinking was developed in order to provide some rapid theoretical coverage for the kinds of practical action envisaged. Accordingly, the concept of opportunity has remained rather underdeveloped, and its use as a cause of crime has been criticised (e.g. Bouhana 2013). Likewise, it tends to be seen as part of the environment.

In fact, it is better to consider opportunity, like the situation, as an interaction (cf Wortley 2012) between offender and environment, but this time, with a more goal-directed flavour. For example, in the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity the offender’s resources to commit crime are seen as co-determining the opportunity – an open window three floors up is only an opportunity for a burglar who has strength, agility, courage and perhaps a ladder.

Following this line further, opportunity can be seen to have several distinct aspects, which have been buried in past Crime Science thinking in the drive to emphasise situations and de-emphasise offender characteristics:

• Setting – as defined in the box above, that part of the environment in which the criminal event occurs, or is close to in space and time, to which the individual is directly exposed, perceives and reacts. The setting can be material or informational, near or remote (as in crimes of telepresence) and any combination thereof.
• Resources/capability of the agent to exploit possibilities, cope with hazards and threats and consistent with Cohen and Felson’s (1979) ‘likely’ offender.
• Goal/s – opportunity to achieve what? This is consistent with Cohen and Felson’s (1979) ‘motivated’ offender, and note that the ‘risk, effort, reward’ of the Rational Choice perspective all implicitly relate to the offender’s goal states/purposes.
• Presence or access in the setting that is necessary to apply the capability in service of the goals – similar to the security concept of ‘present threat’; and note that this applies to cyberspace as well as material space. Both presence and access enable exchange/ transaction of energy, materials, information and social influence between the agent and their setting, which may include other agents.
• Perception relates to action possibilities/ constraints and associated risk, effort and reward. What is perceived depends partly on what is out there in the setting, and partly on the predisposition and propensity of the offender to see things in particular ways. See also affordance, below.
• Dynamics – going beyond the ‘casual opportunity’ of encountering some propitious circumstance, to include maximising and creating opportunity (opportunity takers and makers). This can extend further to cover the opportunity path – a set of opportunities that enables an offender to follow through an entire sequence of scenes in a crime script, as in Reason’s ‘Swiss cheese’ model of accident causation (critiqued in Larouzee and le Coze 2020). Opportunity taking is associated with crime generators (Brantingham et al. 2017), seeking with crime attractors. In either case, settings can be modified or created in acts of making which may be planned or spontaneous.

The above aspects have been stated from the perspective of the offender, but agents undertaking any of the crime roles (preventer etc) can have opportunities to achieve their own particular goals in similar vein.

The ecological (as opposed to developmental/sociological) concept of opportunity can thus be defined as a joint property of agents, their resources and the setting in which: they are actually or potentially present or telepresent, whether through a chance encounter or as a result of deliberate search or act of creation; are able to perceive relevant information; and can act in furtherance of their goals.

Affordance

Opportunity has much in common with the concept of affordance – the notion by Gibson (2014) from ecological psychology, modified by Norman (2013). A chapter on the application of the affordance concept to terrorism opportunities is Ekblom (2012d).

Affordance comprises those action possibilities in the environment that are readily perceivable by an actor or agent.

The Misdeeds and Security Framework describes how offenders can misappropriate, mistreat, misuse, mishandle, misbeget or misbehave with some product, place or system, essentially listing some very generic criminal affordances.

The link from affordance to opportunity for committing crime or terrorism is taken further by Ekblom (2012d), Wortley (2012) and Bouhana (2019). And Situational Action Theory (Wikström 2018) refers to instances where those people who lack criminal propensity, simply fail to perceive the crime opportunity in a given situation, rather than being tempted but decide to resist. The link to the concept of offenders’ awareness space in Crime Pattern Theory (Brantingham et al. 2017) is also apparent – in familiarising themselves with various nodes and paths in their everyday routine environment (or during deliberate hostile reconnaissance) offenders can develop affordance of escape routes and ambush sites for example. The dynamics of opportunity seeking connects with the ecological concept of foraging as described in ‘optimal foraging theory’ approaches to criminal behaviour (Bernasco 2009).

Opportunity structure

Going beyond the here-and-now of individual opportunities, Clarke (1997) refers to opportunity structures, a term which lacked a clear definition (and see also a similar lack 20 years later in Freilich and Newman 2017). They could, though, be defined thus:

Opportunity structures are regularities in how society is construed, which repeatedly bring together the conditions for individual opportunities at particular places and times.

Again, note that these conditions include both environmental circumstances and offender resources for exploiting them, in interaction. The situational concept is of course distinct from the sociological use of opportunity structure e.g. by Cloward and Ohlin (1960) who cover legitimate vs. illegitimate developmental or career opportunities open to individuals growing up in different contexts.

Another interactionist concept, from evolutionary thinking in both genetic and cultural domains, is the niche. This is a developmental/ ecological notion.

The niche covers what career slot an offender can pursue or construct, with what resources they have in their repertoire/possession, in an environment with what opportunity structure.

The niche is thus a career-level counterpart of opportunity.

It has been argued (PJ Brantingham and J Brantingham 1991) that to make prevention sustainable, there is little point in arresting and removing individual offenders (e.g. drug dealers) from a territory without structural attempts to diminish or close the niche – otherwise offender replacement will nullify any crime reductive gains. Evolutionary ecology (see here) additionally supplies the concept of niche construction, the population equivalent of opportunity making. Here, agents blindly or intentionally shape the environment, with beneficial or adverse consequences for themselves, and for others. An example would be organised criminal groups corrupting regulatory bodies.

Broader interactionist perspectives that emerge at higher levels are proposed by Bouhana (2019), in a framework developed for violent extremism but applicable to crime in general. The S5 Inference Framework (covering the ‘moral ecology of extremism’) sets out how five key categories of determinants interact to generate or suppress the risk of extremist propensity development and extremist action.

The categories/ levels are: susceptibility to moral change; (social) selection due to a combination of exposure and self-selection; settings (with a range of cognitive, moral attachment and social control affordances); wider social ecology; and the widest social system factors. These terms/ concepts are not fully consistent with the Crime Frameworks definitions on this page, but the aim is to bring them closer together.

Attack surface

An attack surface is another useful concept, developed in IT security but with wider applicability.

The attack surface comprises the sum of all possible security risk exposures of some system.

It can also be explained as the aggregate of all known, unknown, and potential vulnerabilities, and controls across all hardware, software, and network components. As with opportunity, the extent to which the vulnerabilities are co-determined by the resources available to attackers needs to be highlighted. The Ds Framework in effect identifies an attack surface for preventers acting upon offenders.

Problem

Several aspects of the term ‘problem’ deserve clarification.

Defining ‘problem’

At the heart of the Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) approach is, well, the concept of problem. Much of the following is based on the argument of Borrion et al. (2020). A simple definition of problem might be the ‘manifestation of a set of crime events’. However, this leaves much that is implicit. Goldstein (2018: 388) extends it by referring to a problem as ‘an obstacle between a present state and a goal and it is not obvious how to get around the obstacle’. The goal in question is a crime-free or at least a crime-reduced existence.

Wider problem-solving approaches see the practical problem addressed by practitioners as the ‘generation and selection of discretionary actions to bring about a goal state’ (Scandura 1977). However, the goal state should not merely be defined in terms of removing the obstacle to keeping crime under acceptable levels – here defined as crime control; it should extend to include ‘by acceptable means, that is, those which satisfy a wider set of requirements’. These range from aesthetics to social inclusion and low-carbon solutions – in other words, we are back in the domain of design and the discourse of ‘ideal final result’, and the normative aspects of the definition of crime prevention.

The term ‘problem’ in crime reduction terms could therefore be redefined at two levels as follows:

A crime problem is a particular manifestation of crime, e.g. a recurring set of similar criminal events, often but not always centred on a location, product, system, service or procedure, or a set of similar such instances. The problem to be solved is one of how to intervene to reduce that crime problem to acceptable levels, whilst also satisficing the wider set of goals of all legitimate stakeholders.

Once practitioners get beyond basic law enforcement approaches, moving away from the legal ‘purity’ of enforcement which treats crime problems as ‘the common enemy’ leads the police into sometimes difficult relationships with other agencies and stakeholders and engagement with politicised issues (Ekblom 1986; 2011a; Wilson and Kelling 1989). Many crime problems turn out to be wicked – (Rittel and Webber 1973; Grint 2008 talks of tame, critical and wicked problems), i.e., those which are hard to solve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements or, alternatively put, problems which are complex, dynamic and networked (Dorst 2015).

A useful alternative characterisation of problems has been developed by Snowden and colleagues – called Cynefin, Welsh for ‘habitat’. Drawing on systems theory, complexity theory, network theory and learning theories, Cynefin classes problems as clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic, and sets out the very different approaches that tackling each of these requires.

Reframing problems

Again in a design context it is worth noting the importance of reframing the problem (Dorst 2015) – the ‘presenting problem’ may actually be a manifestation of something else, which requires some persistent investigation to unearth. For example, the former Designing Out Crime Research Centre at University of Technology, Sydney was approached by Sydney Rail to design some bomb-deflecting litter bins. Further quizzing of the client revealed that their ‘real’ problem had been one of disruption from many false alarms, so the bins were designed to reduce these too. Reframing is similar to the ‘system operator’ concept in the engineering inventiveness framework TRIZ (Ekblom 2012g). Here, users are invited to consider intervening before or after the obvious point in time, and in a supersystem or a subsystem of the main focus. Hence the alternative name ‘nine windows’.

Problems, opportunities and risks

A final aspect of problems to consider is their relationship to opportunities. Given the adversarial nature of crime, one side’s problem will be the other’s opportunity, and vice-versa. This flip of perspectives can be particularly useful regarding conflicts, where problems and opportunities are intimately entangled; and arms races, where each move sets a problem for the opposing party to come up with a countermove. There is some connection to be made also with the definition of risk which includes positive as well as negative uncertainties and their effects on an agent’s objectives.

See also general discussions on quality of knowledge and definitions.

Crime reduction and control

Crime reduction

Crime reduction is a broader and simpler concept than prevention, sometimes favoured in the UK. It has much in common with security. Although its originators never gave it a clear definition it is worth attempting this:

Crime reduction is any intervention made before, during or after criminal events to reduce their frequency or harm.

In practice, most reduction is delivered through future-oriented prevention, focusing on prior causes. It is also future-oriented in preparing for those events that are not prevented. However, reduction additionally has present-oriented aspects including detecting ongoing criminal events, and responding as they unfold or immediately after. There are thus elements of resilience. It also has past-oriented aspects such as investigating crimes, punishing criminals for prior offences and offering victim support. Note, though, that both present and past aspects of reduction are usually intended to reduce the likelihood of future events too. Offenders contemplating a robbery may be deterred because they anticipate intervention by public or police, and on conviction and punishment they (or others observing their fate) may be deterred or incapacitated from committing the next crime. Victims may be encouraged to take preventive action against repeats.

Crime control

Crime control is essentially crime reduction with performance targets. Total elimination of crime is impossible on both resource and effectiveness grounds (not to mention libertarian considerations – see Sutton et al. (2008) on Singaporean crime prevention). Crime control can have two meanings:

The ‘everyday’ meaning and aim of crime control is holding the frequency of criminal events, or their harm, below a tolerable level.

The ‘exceptional’ aim of crime control is halting rapid and disruptive growth in frequency or harm.

• Tolerable level means those targets are set in a context of harm reduction, of finite resources, and wider priorities and choices to resolve (Ekblom 2000). Obviously an explicit address to tolerance levels exposes police, government etc to intense political debate in many countries.
• Growth reflects the understanding that crime is continually changing. Growth may happen with a specific crime problem (like a spate of car thefts following the emergence of a new perpetrator technique). On a wider front, it may be a qualitative deterioration as well as quantitative, and may feed back on itself – with increasing seriousness and organisation of offending, intimidation, corruption of agents of regulation, law enforcement and criminal justice and ultimately collapse of the state’s power and legitimacy. A high rate of growth may be disruptive, e.g. outstripping the capacity of the police to respond. It may also be directly harmful in itself, scaring people that crime is ‘out of control’ and arousing punitiveness irrespective of the objective consequences of those crimes. Growth in harm may happen for several reasons, including extraneous changes that make a given kind of criminal event more injurious or damaging, e.g. stealing medical supplies in a health emergency.

Major disruptions such as the Covid-19 pandemic put civil society under strain whilst simultaneously overloading the police and security services. The existence of fair and effective criminal, civil and procedural justice arguably makes a huge contribution to keeping these problems at bay; and avoiding events that jeopardise such justice (as with the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota) is an important aspect of preventive policy and practice, as well as being a moral imperative.

Sometimes it’s necessary to think beyond everyday crime prevention and security. What might be called the ‘apocalyptic’ aim of crime control is the maintenance of civil society.

The maintenance of civil society embraces the control of a range of progressively more devastating systemic problems: corruption, particularly in the enforcement and judicial system; feuding and conflict and other forms of extreme and persistent disorder; the collapse of faith in the state as provider of fair and satisfying justice, and its substitution by vigilantism, violent self-defence, and even quasi-government by paramilitaries.

Community safety, community and partnership

Community safety focuses less on individual criminal and disorderly events and more on consequences of crime and disorder as a whole; hence the goal is harm reduction and mitigation – as in security, and the delivery of various social and economic benefits rather than merely lowering the frequency or probability of criminal events or reducing their rate of growth. The concept is a positive one, more akin to health as a state of wellbeing rather than merely the absence of sickness; or vibrancy. This connects with the Design Against Crime prioritisation of ‘what we want more of’ over ‘what we want less of’.

Wiles and Pease (2000) made the connection between community safety and harm early on but inclined towards safety in its widest sense – that is, including physical and accidental hazard (‘all hazards’) as well as deliberate criminal threat. The distinctive emotional significance of crime perhaps makes the latter inclusivity unrealistic although there may be much to gain from institutional and methodological links in managing diverse risks.

Community safety tends towards a holistic view of crime problems, and of solutions. Paradoxically, this requires an even greater clarity and rigour, to understand what exactly the interventions are aiming to achieve and by what causal mechanisms they will do so. Without this, practical interventions often degenerate into well-meant but superficial and ineffectual efforts with drifting objectives.

The definition adopted here is again given a shorter and a long version. There’s also the need to define community, and partnership, both terms used widely in the community safety/crime prevention context. As described here, and in Chapter 8 of the 5Is book, the long definition emerged from a deliberative exercise among UK stakeholders arranged through the Home Office but was unfortunately dropped by a later generation of administrators.

Community safety: short version

Community safety is an aspect of the individual and collective quality of life, in which people enjoy freedom from, and/or reassurance about, a range of real and perceived crime risks; can cope with harmful consequences of crime, if necessary with help; have confidence that the police and other agencies will provide a responsive, fair and effective service delivering justice and broader remedies; trust and moral order is upheld; and conflicts are resolved. Meeting these conditions enables people to pursue the necessities of life; receive adequate services; exercise skills; experience well-being; engage in community life; and create wealth in the widest sense.

Community safety: long version

Community safety is an aspect of the quality of life, a state of existence in which people, individually, collectively and in organisations, and in public and private space, enjoy the following crime-related conditions:

• Freedom from and/or reassurance about a range of real and perceived risks centring on crime, antisocial behaviour, disorder and drug dealing and abuse – including freedom from fear of crime.
• Ability to cope with the harmful consequences of those incidents they nevertheless experience, at reasonable cost (e.g. without curtailment of going out).
• Help to cope if unable to do so alone, whether informally from the community, or more formally by, say, victim support or insurance.
• Confidence that the police, Criminal Justice System and other agencies will, if needed, provide a responsive, fair and effective service that delivers justice and broader remedies to the problems and conflicts they experience or risks they perceive.
• Trust – within and across cultural boundaries – in neighbours, colleagues and passers-by, to support them both morally and materially in terms of sympathy; existence of collectively-upheld moral order, social control and support; and trust in police and other enforcement-empowered services, to behave fairly and decently towards those that they must confront.
• Avoidance and resolution of civil conflicts with the potential to turn criminal.

When all these conditions are sufficiently met, they enable individuals, families and, communities to enjoy these wider benefits:

• Pursuing the necessities of cultural, social and economic life
• Receiving adequate services
• Exercising skills
• Experiencing well-being
• Engaging in community life
• Creating wealth in the widest sense
• Particularly where social cohesion and collective efficacy and an obligation to reciprocate develop, the above conditions contribute to the community’s own capacity to address crime and disorder in collaboration with official institutions without making informal social control oppressive, invasive or exclusionary, or taking the law into their own hands; and to the development of sustainable communities.

Community

It’s particularly important to address the concept and institution of community, a term used with some abandon within the crime prevention field (community policing, community safety, community crime prevention, even punishment in the community) and beyond. To act and to document effectively, those engaged in community safety must be able to navigate this particular semantic sea (see also Jamieson 2008). Wiles and Pease (2000) also warn against the ‘fluffy’ connotation of ‘community’ which may privilege ‘social’ or offender-oriented action over other kinds. But the wide range of meanings of the term ‘community’ itself is challenging. Proposed here is a minimalist definition, supplemented by the elaboration of a set of alternative aspects of community. Those who use the term should declare which aspect/s they are addressing.

Communities comprise sets of people with a common interest or sense of identity and usually some means of communication, collaboration and exchange. They can cover particular geographical territories (such as neighbourhoods), or spatially diffuse groupings (such as ethnic minority groupings). They can exist at different scales, from families to societies, and may be nested or cross-linked.

The concept is similar to Schneier’s (2012) usage of ‘society’ (see Crime). It relates to community safety in several ways:

• A community itself (or its physical components like high streets or community centres) can be a collective target of crime in receipt of crime prevention/security initiatives.
• A community can be a source of crime meriting preventive action – simply by being composed of many criminally predisposed members, or by the emergent contribution of a criminal subculture. The crime can afflict members of the same community, other neighbourhoods or (for example) the town centre.
• A community can be a setting where crime preventive interventions are planned and implemented, with a key ingredient being the participation and ownership on the part of community members and organisations in identifying problems, and planning and implementing solutions.
• Community safety can exploit specific community crime prevention mechanisms, including informal social control or support processes, in the intervention itself. It can also tackle the social conditions and influences which act at a community level to generate crime (or radicalisation – cf. Bouhana’s 2019 ‘moral ecology’ concept). Offenders, victims and other crime preventers may be linked by pre-existing civil community relationships (such as pupil-teacher, landlord-tenant, employer-employee, neighbours – see Crime Role Grid) which may be the source of conflict and/or offer the prospect of resolving it. Interventions may enhance the general capacity of a community to protect or control by developing social structures such as residents’ associations, and/or by improving trust and social cohesion among members. Interventions may also empower through provision of specific resources, such as property marking tool-libraries or transport for young people to legitimate entertainment facilities.

Partnership

Partnership approaches pervade community safety and civil crime prevention; they extend to public-private partnerships, whether with private security organisations or with businesses and business umbrella associations. As with crime prevention publicity campaigns, use of the term ‘partnership’, or more loosely ‘we are working with [young people/ businesses/ charities/ whoever] to reduce crime’ as a statement of action has too often become a substitute for clearly setting out the nature of any intervention. Partnership is one of a number of kinds of action that the 5Is Framework classes as involvement.

The definition here originated in a Council of Europe expert working group on partnership in crime prevention (see ‘Partnership definition – background’, below). The overall aim was to help us gain a comprehensive and explicit picture of the key dimensions of partnership – to organise what we know about it, when it is needed and how best to implement and evaluate it. The international nature of the exercise acknowledged that the contexts for partnership differ between countries. The more specific aim was to achieve understandings that are either ‘universal’ (they apply irrespective of national, regional or local context) or ‘contingent’ (which apply in certain, known, contexts). The focus is on what partnership is for – why it adds value to crime prevention and community safety work.

Partnership is an institutional arrangement that shades into a philosophy. It is a way of enhancing performance in the delivery of a common goal, by the taking of joint responsibility and the pooling of resources by different agents, whether these are public or private, collective or individual. The added value from such a collaborative approach usually stems from an enhanced ability to tackle problems whose solutions span the division of labour, and/or centre on a particular locality. The agents in partnership may bring with them conflicting or competing interests, and different perspectives, ideologies and cultures – so in democratic and legally-regulated contexts they seek to act together without loss of their separate professional identities, without unacceptable or illegal blurring of powers and interests, and without loss of accountability.

Partnership definition-in-depth

It’s helpful to expand the definition of partnership to include the various subsidiary terms, otherwise considerable ambiguity would remain embedded in the concept.

Related concepts to partnership include:

Besides the immediately practical, goal-directed aspects focused on here, partnership can also be viewed as a philosophy of governance – a collective state of mind which contributes to a climate of support. Of course, philosophy without the practicality can lead to pseudo-partnerships – where one agency holds all the power beneath a show of mutuality – and fashion. Lip-service to partnership ideals can lead to collapse when tough commitments and decisions have to be made, and partners find they have to go in different directions; or when proceeding along the same path, encounter diverse constraints.

Partnership definition – background

The definition of partnership originated in a paper, ‘Shared Responsibilities, Pooled Resources: a Partnership Approach to Crime Prevention’ (Ekblom 2004). The paper itself is a fuller version of material in the Final Activity Report prepared by the Committee of Experts on Partnership in Crime Prevention (PC-PA), adopted by the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) at its 52nd plenary session (June 2003) and approved by Committee of Ministers in September 2003. The ideas were developed collectively by the Committee of Experts (2000-2002) in response to an original outline presented by Paul Ekblom.

The paper first develops the meaning of the term ‘partnership’, by focusing in progressive detail on the key concepts on which the term is built. It then focuses in a similar way on crime prevention and related concepts such as crime reduction and community safety. This is followed by a discussion of why crime prevention in particular needs a partnership approach; an analysis of responsibility for delivering crime prevention; and a further exploration of some central dimensions of prevention, relating in particular to the concept of community. Then, in a change of direction, the paper considers problems and costs of partnership, and a design-based approach to overcoming or controlling these costs whilst securing the benefits. This includes a discussion of evaluation.

Security and risk management, hazards and threats

Where crime prevention, reduction and control cease and security begins is unclear, due to the semi-independent growth of institutions and industries each with traditional and/or proprietary terms. Use of the term ‘security’ tends to be as much a marker of institutional context (Chapter 8 of 5Is book) and the seriousness of the crime/offenders behind it (though ‘human-guarding’ work is a contrary example). We should bring prevention and security closer together, conceptually and linguistically, to avoid confusion and to facilitate exchange of knowledge. This is especially pressing given the increased stakes in prevention of terrorism, mostly the province of national/ international security agencies.

Security

As defined here, security merges key elements of crime prevention, reduction and control in a framework emphasising harm reduction. This is also echoed in the definition of community safety, albeit with a radically different flavour.

Security acts at both tactical/operational and strategic levels. The former can be defined as deliberate action to reduce the risk of criminal events, taken before, during or after the event. (Risk is defined below.) The strategic level covers adapting to changes in the nature and patterns of crime and reducing the rate of growth of crime, which can have adverse effects of its own. These are discussed here (crime and security futures, arms races and innovation).

The temporal dimension draws on the Haddon matrix described (in a counter-terrorism context), by Clarke and Newman (2006), and can be further refined as follows:

• Primary security – action eliminates possibility of harmful event; if event nevertheless remains possible, it reduces its likelihood
• Secondary security – if event does happen, action limits any harm as it unfolds
• Tertiary security – action limits propagation of harm that may occur post-event, e.g. by preventing further offences such as identity theft following theft of credit cards
• Mitigation attempts to repair harm already done, but may be prepared for in advance
• Resilience is defined below

Note: there’s no direct connection of the above with ‘primary, secondary and tertiary prevention’ (Brantingham and Faust 1976). These are risk-based targeting strategies and more meaningfully named ‘universal, selective and indicated’ (Mrazek and Haggerty 1994; Wilson and Lipsey 2007). They are typically applied to offender-oriented interventions (e.g. all young people; those judged at particular risk of offending; those who have offended) but van Dijk and de Waard 1991 have also applied the original ‘primary, secondary, tertiary prevention categories to situational, offender-oriented and community-based prevention to derive a six-fold classification.

A notable mixed example is the ‘once bitten’ strategy (Farrell and Pease 1993) against burglary which targets all households for primary/universal prevention; those with elevated risk through repeat victimisation for tertiary/indicated prevention; and if that fails, attempting to target offenders with a range of secondary/tertiary strategies.

In counterterrorism, in the UK security is articulated in terms of the CONTEST Framework. This uses the terms as follows:

The advance action elements of all four of these tasks come under prevention as defined within Crime Frameworks.

Risk and risk management, hazard, harm, threat

Risk

Risk can be used as a strategy for targeting security and crime prevention. It also features in Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) as something the offender wants to reduce, i.e. implicitly the risk of arrest or other adverse consequences. There has however been little attention to teasing out the wider concept of risk. Since SCP was founded, the concepts of risk in general and in security in particular have moved on and it’s important to keep up, otherwise SCP practitioners (and researchers) will find it increasingly difficult to communicate, share knowledge and collaborate with those working within mainstream security, and in wider risk-related fields.

The ISO 31000 definition of risk (part of the ISO package on risk management) has shifted from past preoccupation with the possibility of an adverse event (something bad happens) to the possibility of an effect on objectives – and the effect could be either negative or positive. Thus:

Risk is the effect of uncertainty on objectives.

A presentation on uncertainty is here.

With the ISO concept of risk covering both positive and negative outcome uncertainty, we can flip perspectives from offenders to the security side and note the mirror relationship of security opportunity and security risk. One party’s problem may be their adversary’s opportunity and vice-versa. Understanding these symmetries helps to get to grips with co-evolutionary security arms races.

The concept of risk can be further dissected into possibility (the classes of adverse event that we want not to happen), likelihood and harm – whether from the event itself (such as the loss of some asset, or injury during a robbery) or subsequently (such as misuse of a stolen credit card, or the likelihood that criminals will repeat their own successes or emulate that of others).

The risk management process

Security (including loss prevention approaches) adopts a risk management approach similar to crime control in seeking to keep risks below tolerable levels; to anticipate or keep abreast of changes in risks; and to be prepared should the undesired events happen.

From the tactical/operational perspective, risk management is a process described in ISO 31000

The core risk management process involves identifying, analysing, evaluating, treating, monitoring and reviewing risk, supported by an appropriate organisational framework. Treating risk involves choosing between these alternatives:

• Avoiding the risk by deciding not to start or continue with the activity that gives rise to the risk
• Accepting or increasing the risk in order to pursue an opportunity
• Sharing the risk with another party or parties (including contracts and risk financing)
• Retaining the risk by informed decision
• Removing the risk source
• Changing the likelihood
• Changing the consequences

The last three, risk treatment interventions, are of course what crime prevention is about.

From a strategic perspective, security involves systematically:

• Spotting emerging crimes and crime trends and nipping them in the bud by addressing the causes that underlie them or preparing for mitigation. This usually requires setting up a monitoring and notification system, for example across the police service or within a particular industry, combined with channels for mobilising action.
• Anticipating new criminal opportunities and motivational influences on offenders over a range of timescales. This can involve:
  • Crime Risk Assessment – identifying the potential effect of incoming changes from other domains on the crime risks of interest.
  • Crime Impact Assessment – identifying the potential effect of one’s own planned activities/products on crime, whether affecting one’s own interests or those of others.
  • Crime Proofing – acting on the identified risks/impacts at the design stage.
  • Security Impact Assessment checks for the often-negative side-effects of security, such as false burglar alarms or stigmatisation of places.

These are covered in more depth under crime and security futures, along with a range of wider anticipatory approaches.

Hazards

What are hazards and threats and how do these relate to risk?

There is a need to distinguish between risk, hazard and threat, although these are commonly used loosely.

A hazard is a source with causal potential to do harm, whether on its own or in conjunction with other contextual factors. That potential amounts to the risk associated with/given the presence of the source and its context.

Hazard applies, of course, to a broader field than just crime and security. Much of the literature stems from health and safety, but the concepts are transferrable. According to ISO45001, hazards could be:

• Sources (e.g. moving machinery, radiation or energy sources)
• Situations (e.g. working in confined spaces, working at height)
• Acts (e.g. manual handling, wearing PPE)

Crime-related equivalent examples can be readily envisaged. Offenders may constitute a source (e.g. of violence) and may exploit other hazards, either bringing weapons with them or using those that are available in situ. For example, they could detonate an on-site fuel tank to destroy a major station.

Harm

Harm reduction has been gaining traction, both as a concept in itself, and an aim of crime reduction and policing in recent years (cf. the Cambridge Crime Harm Index).

Harm is the detrimental effect of an event or process, or of the perception of the risk of their occurrence, on people and to institutions, communities, information and systems, or any other asset.

This definition includes harm to the asset during/after the crime; harm to owner or other parties through loss or damage of the asset and its informational contents; harm to the owner or other parties through collateral loss of or damage to an enclosure/carrier (bag, house, car) in which the and any bycatch of other goods taken and perhaps discarded; harm to owner/carrier/householder from the criminal event itself; and propagation of further harm, e.g. through misuse of product.

Threat

Sparrow (2016) discusses police work in terms of its wider governance context, referring to ‘risk-based regulatory practice’. But he goes further to distinguish the unique aspect of policing and crime prevention, as having to deal with opponents who deliberately seek to evade detection and adapt strategies to circumvent control initiatives. We can go with this distinction and define thus:

A threat, in the security sense (as opposed to an offender making threats), is a hazard created, activated or directed through adaptive human malintent.

In turn, adaptive means that the offender may take an open-ended set of discretionary actions to achieve their goal; malintent refers to the intention by some agent to do harm in ways that violate criminal law or otherwise deliberately harm some other party’s interests, whether instrumentally or as an end in itself. Arguably, it is the combination of adaptability and malintent which gives threat a uniquely disturbing quality. Together, capability, (mal)intent and presence/access empower threat agents as shown in the terrorism/ crime at complex stations toolkit glossary.

All hazards approach

The most generic approach to risk management is the so-called ‘all-hazards’ approach (see e.g. here). This covers not only threats but the widest range of natural, accidental or otherwise unintentionally-originating hazards including those with the potential to cause disasters and traffic emergencies.

Resilience – beyond prevention and preparedness

Relying solely on prevention and preparedness to mitigate risks, assumes that we are able to anticipate the kinds of adverse events that we wish to avoid; or, if necessary, to adequately respond to them. This assumption may be false. Our predictions can be wrong for several reasons:

For these reasons, to handle the ‘unknown unknowns’, risk-specific prevention and preparedness must be complemented by something more generic – resilience.

Resilience

Connecting with the above discussion of security, resilience combines the capacity to deliver secondary and tertiary security, and mitigation. More strategically thinking, Edwards (2009) defines resilience as the capacity of an individual, community or system to adapt in order to sustain an acceptable level of function, structure, and identity.

Definitions are diverse, reflecting a wide range of practical and theoretical approaches and disciplines, but these are the recurrent elements:

Resilience is the capacity of some individual, group, community, system or item of technology to avoid, resist or absorb harmful events (e.g. crimes, civil emergencies), either whilst continuing to function or with the ability to be restored to function; and then to reorganise and adapt to changes. The harms encountered may or may not have been anticipated, hence advance preparations to instil resilience must always include those that are generalised in nature, such as redundancy and flexibility.

A presentation on resilience against cybercrime: