‘Is it Safe?’

As every parent knows who has ever sent a child off to live away from home, whether for a day or a semester, the fundamental questions asked are: ‘Is it safe where you’ll be living? Is the neighbourhood a high crime area? Is there adequate street lighting? Are the doors strong, the windows secure? Will there be parents or guardians to watch over you?’ We put such questions to our loved ones (and to ourselves) countless times in our lives. Often, the answers we get flow from gut feelings, from casual observations, from impressions based on newspaper reports, from speaking with friends and relatives, or infrequently, from police statistics or from survey data. While those responses may be sufficient to guide the average citizen’s choices in answering the question ‘Is it safe?’, they are rarely helpful in understanding ‘How can we make places safer?’