ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 has already demonstrated that, while urban and regional planning systems have been around in much of the developed world for many years now, the notion that these can be used effectively to address crime prevention issues and the associated idea that this means that police officers have to interface with the planning system are both much more recent. As we noted in Chapter 4, the first UK government guidance to planners that they should consult police architectural liaison officers (ALOs) in relation to development proposals is as recent as 1994 (Department of the Environment, 1994); and even then the speed of response to this new relationship among planning authorities across the country clearly varied (Williams and Wood, 2001; Kitchen 2002). So, the contribution of the police service to the process of planning for crime prevention via the planning service (as distinct from all the other crime prevention activities in which police forces have a leading role) is a relatively recent arrival on the planning stage.
