Many of the Crime Frameworks have been developed, or modified, during collaboration with the Design Against Crime Research Centre, University of the Arts London (now the Design Against Crime Research Lab).
Adapting the Crime Frameworks in this way was part of a strategy of scaling up the application of design against crime, by resourcing designers through development and dissemination of innovative capacity, as described in Thorpe et al. (2009).
On this page:
- Generic presentations showing how Crime Frameworks can be applied to Design, including Thinking thief and Risk analysis design guide
- Specifying and describing security-related designs using the Security Function Framework and Vibrant-Secure Function Framework
- UK Design Council guidance and case studies of design against crime
- Lessons from design for Crime Science
Generic frameworks for design against crime
The versions of the Crime Frameworks presented below were developed through application in Bikeoff and other projects, as listed on this page. Input came from both designers at the Design Against Crime Research Centre, University of the Arts London, and colleagues at the Department of Security & Crime Science, University College London.
This summary slide was produced for the Graffolution project on graffiti.
Thinking thief
This compendium presentation sets out some of the Crime Frameworks in a design-oriented way:
The presentation first introduces the frameworks intended to give designers the underpinning knowledge of design against crime, taken from Crime Science but adapted by collaborations with designers. The knowledge covers defining the crime problem and the characteristics of the aspired-to solution; and filling the gap between problem and solution by using a range of successively more sophisticated practical conceptual frameworks. These include:
- The crime situation and its individual elements
- The situation as a complex whole – the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity Framework
- The dynamics of interaction between the people, the products and the places involved in the CCO – Scripts and script clashes
- The more specific characterisation of types of crime risk – the Misdeeds and Security Framework
- Mobilisation of people/organisations (including users, site managers, designers and design decisionmakers) as crime preventers – the CLAIMED Framework
The presentation then moves from the general to the particular, and runs through a possible sequence whereby the frameworks just introduced can be used in real design problems. The example used throughout is bike parking; in many cases design for indoor bike parking, which originated in briefing for a MA Industrial Design studio project at Central Saint Martins. It also fed into the Bikeoff project.
Risk analysis design guide
A companion presentation ‘Risk analysis design guide’ introduces a more structured version of the Crime Frameworks, and uses them to undertake a specific crime risk analysis of bike stands and bike parking facilities, leading to a theory-based suite of security design guidelines. This is a summary slide from the presentation, of the entire procedure:
A more comprehensive overview of the use of Crime Frameworks in design is here in this presentation to designers at Lahti University, Finland:
‘Designing products and places against crime: Some tools for thinking and innovation’. Safe and sound in Finland: Local Safety Planning Seminar, Finnish Ministry of Interior, Lahti, Finland 2012.
A page specifically on the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity, design and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is here.
Security Function Framework
The Security Function Framework is a structured way to set out the specifications for, and describe the realisations of, designs with a security aspect. The four dimensions are Purpose (Who/what is the design for?), Niche (How does it fit within the security ecosystem, e.g. as secure, securing or security product?), Mechanism (How does it work? described here) and Technicality (How is it constructed, how does it operate?). The framework was extended as the Vibrant Secure Function Framework, which followed the Design Against Crime principle of favouring what we want more of over what we want less of. Both are covered on this page:
Design Council Guide
This guide for designers was prepared for the UK Design Council by the University of Salford. The guide introduces (among much useful case study material) the Crime Lifecycle Model (p16). ItThe model is mainly derived from the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity, but adds some post-crime issues:
Design Council case studies on Design Against Crime are on this page. See also the 2000 report of the role of design in crime prevention and an earlier, 2003, design Council guide, Think thief – a designer’s guide to designing out crime.
Lessons from design, for Crime Science
Early forays into design against crime centred on conveying the principles and practice of situational crime prevention to designers, and the message think thief (e.g. Ekblom 1995, 1997). Since designers are accustomed to ‘user-centred’ approaches this requirement to add the abuser perspective was challenging and to some, distasteful. But the team at the Design Against Crime Research Centre persevered, and the message did in most places sink home.
The following chapter (and associated presentation with Aiden Sidebottom) set out some of the experiences gleaned as ‘a crime scientist fallen among designers’. It reports lessons to take back for crime scientists: draw on design. Issues covered centre on the design process itself; visualisation; discourses, co-evolution and innovation; and dynamics, scripts and script clashes.
CRIME FRAMEWORKS 