ABSTRACT
Classical place-based crime prevention theory is derived from disciplines that span architecture, urban planning, criminology, geography, psychology and sociology (among others) and from on-the-ground experiences that involve juvenile offenders, public and council housing tenants, and the practical problems of police investigations. Working within these disciplines and informed by practice, the scholars and researchers referred to in this chapter developed the family of theories that together form the classical core of today’s place-based crime prevention. These theories include defensible space, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), situational crime prevention and environmental criminology. In this chapter we review the history and context of the theories’ development and consider their application today by law enforcement agencies, criminologists, planners, designers and academics in efforts to organise, understand and resolve criminal events in the built environment. In so doing we discuss problem-and community-oriented policing, law enforcement strategies that have evolved from these, and related theoretical backgrounds. Emerging conceptual frameworks such as space syntax and new urbanism are described in Chapter 3. These latter ideas raise many issues connected to the fundamental place-based crime prevention theories discussed here, and we shall refer back to them as necessary throughout the book.
