ABSTRACT
The link between crime analysis and engineering seems a lot more tenuous, and collaboration between criminologists and engineers is relatively seldom. The field of engineering (eng.) contains many different areas including aerospace eng., chemical eng., civil eng., electrical eng., environmental eng., medical eng., mechanical eng., and systems eng., which makes it notoriously difficult to define. As with other applied fields, novel engineering knowledge is generated through research activities and subsequently applied by practitioners to achieve specific outcomes in society. The terms ‘system’ and ‘systems thinking’ are both so fundamental to engineering sciences that appreciating the relevance of engineering to crime science requires some understanding of them. Crime experts cannot be expected to ask pertinent questions about a system if they do not know anything about it; and engineers cannot guess what information crime experts might need to know about a system if they have no understanding of behavioural and crime-prevention principles.
