Preventing Crime at Places: The Importance of Recognizing That Places Exist Within a Broader Social Context

Abstract

Reducing crime opportunities at places is a successful strategy to reduce actual crime. This conceptual article examines how reducing crime at places is also an opportunity to have greater social impact and improve social justice, particularly when crime displacement may occur, through the recognition that no place exists in a vacuum. We discuss opportunity reduction in its traditional form, but also in a broader context that considers a fuller extent of crime prevention that more closely resembles its original formulation in the field of environmental criminology. We interrogate our traditional opportunity-reduction theories, identifying some of their limitations and noting that theoretical integration is not only conceptually possible, but empirically shown to matter. This is followed by a discussion of theoretical integration and its importance for crime prevention. We close our discussion outlining a crime prevention model, SafeGrowth, that considers both place-based strategies and community approaches.

Efforts to prevent crime by addressing opportunities for the commission of crimes in particular places have demonstrated significant success (Eck and Guerette 2012). For example, changes in housing design, such as Secure by Design, have led to significant improvements in physical security measures and housing estate design at the planning stages in England and Wales that have produced measurable reductions in burglary in several studies (Armitage 2000). Moreover, such improvements in the physical security of homes are attributed to the drop in burglary more generally (Farrell 2022). A recent meta-analysis of street light interventions has also shown reductions in crime in treatment areas (Welsh et al. 2022). Similarly, a meta-analysis of hot-spot policing models demonstrates a general reduction in incidents in treatment compared to control areas (Braga et al. 2019). Together, these place-based strategies are useful in preventing crime.

These strategies not only reduce crime in certain places but also have the ability to provide other social benefits. For example, in pharmacies in British Columbia, Canada, targeted opportunity-reduction measures, such as time-delayed safes for narcotics, pharmacy gates, and a media campaign, led to significant reductions in pharmacy burglaries, improved safety for pharmacists, and reduced the number of schedule I and II drugs that ended up on the streets ¹ (Andresen et al. 2019). In fact, in countries like Canada, scholars have recently recommended that the national crime prevention policy, which has exclusively supported crime prevention through social development approaches, also fund place-based opportunity-reduction techniques (Hodgkinson and Farrell 2018).

However, place-based techniques that rely on opportunity reduction alone may not be enough to contribute to sustainable reductions in crime and positive social impacts. In this review, we discuss the benefits of place-based crime prevention strategies to improve safety at the local level. At the same time, we interrogate some of the drawbacks of relying solely on these methods that, if addressed, may lead to more beneficial and sustainable societal outcomes. For example, consider the question of displacement: Criminological research has demonstrated that place-based strategies rarely result in displacement of crime to other locations, yet recent research has highlighted methodological deficiencies plaguing these studies, which fail to capture the extent of spatial displacement to the rest of the city (Hodgkinson, Saville, and Andresen 2020). These findings raise important questions about how place-based crime prevention strategies operate and how they can be improved. We suggest some promising paths forward in place-based crime prevention that may build local capacity for collective action and produce more socially just outcomes.

Background

Crime and place

Place-based crime prevention strategies often emerge from the field of environmental criminology. While the emergence of this field can be attributed largely to the work of the Chicago School in the early 1900s, specifically social disorganization theory and ecological explanations of crime, today much of this research focuses on the impact of microplaces on crime (Eck and Guerette 2012).

The contemporary literature on crime at places began with the work of Sherman et al. (1989). In their analysis of crime in Minneapolis, Minnesota, they found that approximately 50 percent of calls for service to the police came from 3 percent of addresses in the city. This mimicked findings in the offender literature that suggested a large proportion of crimes is committed by a small number of offenders (Wolfgang et al. 1972). Sherman et al. (1989) also found that places with high crime tended to neighbor places with low crime, leading them to suggest that high-crime areas often had many safe places and low-crime areas had dangerous ones.

In one of the most prominent studies on crime and place, Weisburd et al. (2004) reproduced a similar level of crime concentration (5 percent of street segments accounted for 50 percent of crimes) in Seattle, Washington. Weisburd et al. (2004) also found that the trajectories of high-crime places were stable over their 14-year study period. Additionally, only 14 percent of street segments in Seattle had decreasing crime trends, meaning that 14 percent of the city’s street segments accounted for the entire crime drop in the city from 1989 to 2002 (24 percent citywide). Subsequent research found that juvenile crime trends showed a similar trajectory (Weisburd et al. 2009) and that these high-crime places generally clustered together (Groff et al. 2010).

Despite the importance of this research, the first replication of Weisburd et al. (2004) did not emerge for a decade. Using data from Vancouver, Canada, Curman et al. (2015) conducted a citywide replication and found many similarities with the work undertaken in Seattle. Specifically, crime concentrated in a similar manner, and the trajectories of crime at places demonstrated a high degree of stability. The following year, Wheeler et al. (2016), again, found similar patterns in Albany, New York. Research on crime and place has since become much more widespread with special issues of journals examining the measurement of crime at places (Braga et al. 2017) and improving methodologies in research on crime and place (Andresen et al. 2021).

Together, these findings and others led Weisburd (2015) to posit the law of crime concentration at places. Essentially, he argues that because the finding of 5 percent of places accounting for 50 percent of crime appears to be universal, crime concentration is a law, in that it can predict the results of particular conditions. Although other researchers have criticized this law (Lee et al. 2017), a recent systematic review has shown the widespread adoption of the law of crime concentration across the globe (Weisburd et al. 2024). Because of these high concentrations of crime and the relatively small number of places that have been shown to be “responsible” for citywide crime drops, reducing crime at places can lead to significant reductions in crime for the community at large and society more generally. In other words, crime is not random, it occurs at particular places, and we can use that knowledge to reduce it. The key, of course, is to understand why particular places, and the neighborhoods where they are found, matter for crime and its prevention.

Current Study

In this article, we discuss the importance of theoretical integration for understanding crime prevention. By outlining the intersection between motivational and situational understandings of crime, we are better able to integrate neighborhood- and opportunity-based crime prevention strategies. We first review the theory behind place-based prevention approaches and then discuss their limitations, with a particular focus on the lack of theory within environmental criminology more broadly. We then turn our attention to opportunities for theoretical integration with classical, ecological understandings of crime and community cohesion. We end with a focus on one model for moving forward in place-based crime prevention; called SafeGrowth, it integrates theories of crime and place with opportunity-reduction approaches and, importantly, community-development approaches that train residents and stakeholders in how to build community cohesion and collective efficacy.

Theory

Understanding how and why reductions in crime occur in certain places, and why place matters, is important for developing appropriate crime reduction strategies. These explanations are embedded in the theories, approaches, and perspectives of environmental criminology (Andresen 2024). As stated above, environmental criminology is rooted in early criminological/ecological theories of crime and disorder, such as social disorganization. However, some researchers argue that the field of environmental criminology is based on more recent theories and perspectives that focus on situational factors related to criminal events. These theories include the routine activity approach, the geometry of crime, and the rational choice perspective. We briefly outline these concepts here.

The routine activity approach (Cohen and Felson 1979) states that a criminal event occurs when a motivated offender and a suitable target converge in time and space and in the absence of a capable guardian. It is important to note here that this convergence can only occur at a specific place. Convergence in a neighborhood or a community is too imprecise to lead to a criminal event. As such, because the routine activity approach helps our understanding of the criminology of places, it limits the analysis of crime to specific places and thus our efforts to prevent crime.

The geometry of crime (Brantingham et al. 2017) is based on understanding the activity nodes (places) of offenders and victims as well as the paths between their various nodes. Criminal events, however, do not occur anywhere within activity nodes but instead occur at certain places within the activity nodes that contain suitable targets and match with the crime template of offenders. This is a model of crime at places.

The rational choice perspective (Clarke and Cornish 1985) outlines how criminal events at these places are the outcome of context-specific choices. While neighborhoods or communities are a part of that context, so are specific places within them—specifically, places where the targets of these criminal events are located. As such, the place itself is critical for understanding the choice structures of crime (Cornish and Clarke 1987).

Absent from much of the recent crime at places literature are neighborhood- or community-level theories. Research that has worked to integrate the routine activity approach with social disorganization has shown that “cross-level effects” operate between places and their neighborhoods (Rountree et al. 1994; Wilcox et al. 2003, 2013). This dynamic is important because, according to this research, neighborhood context moderated or changed the relationship between individuals and places and their subsequent victimization. Subsequent work by Jones and Pridemore (2019) formalized a model that showed how local (street segment) characteristics are impacted by neighborhood context, specifically, how neighborhood stability and concentrated disadvantage impact suitable targets and local guardianship. In some more recent empirical evaluations of these integrated theories, Tillyer et al. (2021) found that both places and neighborhoods matter for understanding criminal opportunities and that they interact with one another to impact those opportunities. Herein lies the importance of recognizing the interplay between places and the broader community, or societal institutions: They are embedded within each other to facilitate, or prevent, crime.

In essence, and this is clear with these theoretical integration attempts, the theories within environmental criminology are not incongruent with social disorganization theory or community-based theories. Theoretically, this should highlight the need to address ecological correlates of crime at place, including social cohesion and collective efficacy—meaning that these processes contribute to the activation of formal and informal social control that may contribute to the prevention of crime.

Before we turn to the opportunities for theoretical integration in place-based crime prevention, we first highlight some of the research evidence on the effectiveness of these strategies, including Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Situational Crime Prevention.

Place-Based Crime Prevention Strategies

CPTED, initially proposed by Jeffery (1971) and Newman (1972), has become a mainstay in place-based crime prevention. Jeffery prioritized the prevention of criminal events from occurring in the first place, rather than waiting for a crime to occur and intervening to prevent further victimization. Jeffery (1971) assumed that a complex interaction between people and their environment led to probabilistic effects, that is, increasing or decreasing probabilities of criminal events occurring. In turn, he argued that we can modify the environment to decrease the probability of criminal events and prevent crime. Newman (1972) suggested a somewhat different, but related, model. He outlined the construct of defensible space that inhibited crime because the built environment emitted cues to motivated offenders that crime was risky. In effect, the environment would exhibit territorial behavior that signaled an area was not conducive to criminal activity. Whether one follows the model put forth by Jeffery (1971) or Newman (1972), either can be implemented in stages as part of situational crime prevention measures.

Place-based crime prevention strategies are typically considered secondary or tertiary (as compared to primary) in that they do not address root causes of crime before they occur but rather identify risky places that require creating improved designs from the outset or retroactively implementing target-hardening strategies once a place has been deemed to be criminogenic (or a crime generator). These strategies are most frequently referred to as situational crime prevention.

At the core of situational prevention is a set of 25 (originally 12) techniques, or theoretical mechanisms, for preventing crime (Cornish and Clarke 2003). These techniques are situated within five general categories: (1) increasing the effort, (2) increasing the risks, (3) reducing the rewards, (4) reducing provocations, and (5) removing excuses. A key perceived advantage of the situational approach is that, simply by changing the structure of opportunities to make crime more difficult and less rewarding, these tactics sidestep the largely punitive approaches to crime. The situational approach is characterized by the notion that “opportunity makes the thief,” and a broad range of evidence shows that removing opportunities can significantly reduce offending (Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, n.d.).

Farrell (2013) has argued that improvements in security have resulted in significant reductions in crime worldwide. In fact, he and others argue that this is the only consistent explanation for the crime decline across countries and contexts (Farrell et al. 2014). This important research identifies the aspects of situational crime prevention (increased security) associated with an international drop in crime across a variety of (property) crime classifications and shows how, as the leading explanation of the overall crime drop, these crime prevention techniques have contributed to social good. Some examples of successful situational crime prevention strategies include street lighting, electronic immobilizers in vehicles, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, and increased presence and quality of security to prevent residential burglary.

In the context of street lighting, Chalfin et al. (2022) used an experimental design to test the impact of the installation of street lighting in New York City. They found significant and sizable reductions in nighttime outdoor index crimes where street lighting was installed compared to untreated control areas. Davies and Farrington (2020) found that when street lighting went out in Maldon, Essex, UK, there was a notable increase in residential burglary and vehicle crime. It is important to note, however, that despite reviews of the street lighting and crime literature showing strong effects for decreases in crime (Welsh and Farrington 2008; Welsh et al. 2022), some of this more recent work has not shown overall cost benefits from such reductions (Davies and Farrington 2020).

The installation of electronic immobilizers is another situational crime prevention technique shown to be related to a decrease in vehicle thefts. In an evaluation of vehicle thefts in Australia, Kriven and Ziersch (2007) found notable decreases among vehicles that had electronic immobilizers installed. Moreover, they found a shift in the types of vehicles being stolen after the policy change, that is, older vehicles without electronic immobilizers. Hodgkinson et al. (2016) found a similar result in Vancouver, Canada, where the spatial pattern of vehicle theft shifted into poorer areas of the city, thus suggesting a substitution toward stealing less expensive vehicles without electronic immobilizers.

CCTV cameras have been increasingly implemented in public and private places to prevent crime and disorder through surveillance. In a systematic review covering 40 years of research on the effects of CCTV on crime, Piza et al. (2019) found that significant, albeit modest, effects of CCTV are most commonly found in car parks but also in residential areas. Moreover, CCTV systems that are actively monitored, as opposed to passive systems that only record activity, may have larger effects on reducing crime (Welsh et al. 2020), particularly when implemented in conjunction with direct police patrol (Piza et al. 2015).

Situational crime prevention has also shown significant effects in the context of residential burglary. As outlined by Farrell (2022), residential burglary in the United States had been on a steady decline for 40 years, from 1980 to 2019. In his research, Farrell outlines how the application of security to households decreased residential burglary for those households but also decreased the spatial displacement of residential burglary (i.e., to other households) as ever more households installed various security measures.

Overall, the narrative of situational crime prevention is largely one of success (see Clarke 2012). However, one of the long-standing criticisms of this tactic that has emerged from the research is that crime is displaced: It changes locations, it changes time, it changes offenders, and it changes its form.

Displacement

The research on situational crime prevention strategies has largely found that targeted prevention reduces crime in specific locations as well as contributing to declines in crime in surrounding areas. This phenomenon is referred to as “diffusion of benefits” (Clarke 1994, ch. 8; Barr and Pease 1990). However, these findings are mixed. Guerette and Bowers (2009) examined more than 100 situational crime prevention initiatives for displacement and diffusion effects. They found evidence of spatial displacement (in 26 percent of cases) and diffusion of benefits (in 27 percent of cases). Importantly, they noted that many studies were not designed to assess displacement, had inadequate research designs, and were unsuited for identifying displacement. In a separate study, Weisburd et al. (2006) extracted a subset of 13 studies with sufficiently rigorous research designs and found a net benefit, that is, when displacement occurred, it was less than the reduction in the treatment area. Despite being the most methodologically rigorous evaluation of crime displacement at the time, this study was nonetheless limited by being able to identify only crime that “moves around the corner” (i.e., immediate spatial displacement).

In subsequent research using an agent-based model, Weisburd et al. (2017) found that crime displaced farther away than “around the corner,” although still in theoretically expected areas (i.e., those still in the awareness/activity spaces of the offenders). In a review of crime displacement and diffusion of crime prevention benefits, Telep et al. (2014) found that crime displacement is not a common occurrence, particularly when the crime control intervention was deployed in a larger area. However, they also found no statistically significant evidence for diffusion of benefits (Telep et al. 2014).

Johnson et al. (2014) outlined why the displacement of crime should not be an expected outcome, specifically in the context of tertiary crime prevention where a common technique is to remove easy targets. In that case, motivated offenders with a low risk tolerance and a low effort threshold are deterred, whereas motivated offenders with a high risk tolerance and a high effort threshold are not. Though crime displacement is expected to occur in the latter case, the net expected effect from crime prevention initiatives is an overall reduction in crime because most motivated offenders are expected to have a low risk tolerance and a low effort threshold (Johnson et al. 2014).

The prevailing view in the crime prevention literature is that crime displacement is not “perfect”; the consensus is a net reduction in overall crime, even though some is displaced. The difficulty here is that when alternative methods are used to investigate displacement—specifically ethnographic and qualitative approaches that have largely been absent from this research (Johnson et al. 2014)—displacement has been found to occur and to lead to more harm than before the intervention (see Hodgkinson, Saville, and Andresen 2020).

As noted by Barr and Pease (1990, 312), modern-day crime patterns are a “response to the distribution of criminal opportunities.” Consequently, if we change the distribution of opportunities, we can expect a change in crime patterns. Thus, we need to have evaluation methods that can account for these changes. An evaluation of police foot patrol by Andresen and Shen (2019) reveals just how pressing this need is: In their research, they found that crime decreased in both the intervention area and the potential displacement region (i.e., evidence of diffusion of benefits), but they also found that the distribution of crime completely changed, shifting relatively more crime into the potential displacement region.

These methodological concerns have manifested themselves in some relatively recent research that has investigated the crime drop in the context of vehicle theft and residential burglary. Hodgkinson et al. (2016) investigated the large magnitude drop (> 80 percent) in vehicle theft in Vancouver from 2003 to 2013. Despite the large drops in crime, the spatial pattern of vehicle theft shifted into the relatively poorer areas that had older vehicles with fewer electronic immobilizers.

Turning to residential burglary, Hodgkinson and Andresen (2019) found that increased security in newer home developments in Vancouver, Canada (e.g., entry fobs, door security), has led to a shift in residential burglary into wealthier areas with older homes. These older homes have more entry points and fewer electronic security devices with contemporaneous effects; for example, burglar alarms may be more common in wealthier areas but still have response time issues, whereas key fobs limit entry immediately.

The commonality between these two studies is the identification of offender adaptation to changes in the availability of suitable targets at places. Hodgkinson et al. (2022) investigated the changing patterns of the co-occurrence of vehicle theft and residential burglary in Brisbane, Australia, finding that the proliferation of vehicle immobilizers led to the co-occurrence of these crimes. In the commission of a residential burglary, offenders were stealing keys and then stealing a vehicle with keys that had an immobilizer. Again, this speaks to offender adaptability and the changing landscape of criminal opportunities that is, in turn, changing the patterns of crime.

Considering crime displacement specifically, Hodgkinson, Saville, and Andresen (2020) evaluated the impact of removing a crime generator (i.e., a fast-food restaurant that had become a haven for criminal activity) in a natural experiment. The authors found that, when the crime generator was knocked down, crime did indeed decrease in the immediate area, with the appearance of no spatial displacement. However, a citywide search for displacement in conjunction with qualitative and ethnographic research found that crime not only displaced, but it displaced into areas theoretically predicted (activity spaces of motivated offenders) with increased crime severity. These findings suggest that place-based strategies alone, such as removing opportunities, not only may lead to spatial displacement but also have the potential to shift to more harmful crime types.

The poverty of theory in environmental criminology and crime prevention

What is important to note here is that theoretical frameworks, approaches, and perspectives cannot be considered in isolation when conceptualizing crime prevention. If crime is displaced, as discussed above, then environmental criminology is of limited use in this context for those approaches that take motivation as a given. If a crime prevention strategy (target hardening, for example) does not substantively impact routine activities, or only does so for a short period of time, then we have to consider alternatives.

However, in the literature on place-based crime prevention strategies, we often see the adaptation of crime prevention frameworks, approaches, and perspectives on their own without considering larger effects (ecological and individual-level predictors, for example). This does not move our understanding forward. Rather, it is a recursive process that repeats itself ad infinitum, where we constantly attempt to understand the prevention of crime, or lack thereof, after the fact. From the outside, this tactic appears to be more of a cherry-picking exercise made for convenience’s sake rather than an effort to truly understand a phenomenon. If we focus exclusively on choice structures, routine activities, the suitability of targets, or the presence of capable guardians after the fact, we are doing little to advance our understandings of the theoretical mechanisms of crime. Researchers have consistently demonstrated the empirical basis for theoretical integration, hence our call for the integration of neighborhood- and opportunity-based approaches in crime prevention.

Integrating Community- and Opportunity-Based Crime Prevention

Overall, while this investigation of crime displacement and offender adaptation has shown the importance of alternative methods for the evaluation of crime prevention/reduction strategies, for the purposes of our conceptual piece, it highlights that we need to think more deeply about how to reduce crime at place. As discussed above, the theories and their empirical evidence show that places and their neighborhoods matter. Opportunity-reduction strategies can reduce crimes at places, but those reductions may be only temporary. If broader social conditions that interact with opportunity structures are addressed at the place level, situational crime prevention initiatives are more likely not only to reduce crime in the short term but also to have a sustained effect that can, in turn, contribute to a broader social impact (Hodgkinson 2022b; Kelly et al. 2005).

Indeed, part of the reason opportunity-reduction measures alone are not enough to reduce crime is that they address only one cause of crime: opportunity. Given that not all opportunities result in criminal events, it is important to remember that the opportunity-reduction approach alone ignores the role of motivation and the structural inequities that can drive said motivation. If we can impact noncriminal opportunities that, in turn, impact motivation, we may be able to create more sustainable approaches to reducing crime.

The causes of crime are complex and, therefore, so too should be the solutions. For example, Ekblom (Clarke 1994, ch. 9) notes the need to address both distal and proximal causes of crime. Proximal causes refer to the immediate conditions that contribute to, or cause, a crime. For example, in the case of residential burglary, a proximal cause refers to the presence of a weak door or window lock on a home (a suitable target) and the fact that no one is at home (lack of capable guardianship). A motivated offender may observe these conditions and take advantage of the opportunity to burgle the house. Proximal causes are often linked to distal causes, which are often less obvious and more distant and remote. Staying with the example of residential burglary, a distal cause may include the design of the lock, the owner’s knowledge of better security technology or means to purchase it, the social demographics of the offender that led to the motivation to commit residential burglary (a lack of noncriminal opportunities), and even the design of the community that has precluded the exercise of informal surveillance by other residents.

While there is excellent research on preventing crime through social development (Kelly et al. 2005; Waller 2013), when attempting to prevent crime at places, neighborhood-based crime prevention strategies, integrated with opportunity-reduction measures, are arguably the best at addressing both distal and proximal causes. For example, researchers have noted that local networks and social ties are the mechanisms that contribute to facilitating or hindering crime in a community. If residents of a community can recognize their shared goals and values (often referred to as social cohesion) and are willing to act on behalf of them (collective efficacy), they are less likely to witness crime and disorder in their neighborhood (Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Sampson et al. 1997).

In some countries, crime rates have been on the rise in recent years. In Canada, for example, both property and violent crime have been increasing since 2014. Specifically, general crime severity has increased 20 percent in the past 10 years, with violence increasing by 40 percent, and property crime increasing by 12.5 percent (Statistics Canada 2024). These increases are admittedly from a low baseline rooted in the international crime drop (Farrell et al. 2018), but they are still important increases that show situational crime prevention strategies alone are not enough.

Conclusion: Moving Forward in Prevention at Place

Somewhere along the way, environmental criminologists forgot that just because we can take offender motivation as a given when explaining and addressing crime does not mean we can ignore it altogether. Mixed-method, place-based approaches that are inclusive and consider the social predictors of crime, including motivation, are arguably the most appropriate and sustainable strategies (Fagan et al. 2018; Hawkins et al. 2002). Although these methods do not impact motivation directly, they do work to change noncriminal opportunities that may impact motivation by identifying risk and protective factors and activating them within the communities where people live (Fagan et al. 2018; Hawkins et al. 2002). However, practitioners are often steered away from implementing these strategies, as they are time-consuming and require meaningful buy-in from residents and stakeholders (Jonkman et al. 2009). Nonetheless, the literature offers examples of strategies that integrate both the social and the situational sides of crime prevention. We provide one such example here.

SafeGrowth is a community planning methodology built on the belief that healthy and functioning small neighborhoods provide the healthiest and safest way to build cities in the twenty-first century (Saville 2009). It is based on the premise that crime is best tackled within small neighborhoods by harnessing the creative energy of functioning neighborhood groups, by employing the latest crime prevention methods, and by adopting an annual SafeGrowth plan to prevent, and mitigate, crime and fear.

SafeGrowth relies on four principles to inform its strategy: action-based practice, social ecology, neighborhood activation, and sociotechnical systems:

1. Action-based practice means that rather than applying a project to, or for, the community, SafeGrowth works with the community to build local capacity and knowledge around evidence-based crime prevention strategies (Saville 2018, ch. 10).

2. Social ecology recognizes the ways in which all aspects of the community rely on each other and are impacted by each other, much like an organic system. Changes to one aspect of the system (such as a crime prevention strategy) will impact all other parts of the system.

3. Neighborhood activation refers to the ways in which building up the capacity of residents and stakeholders and creating opportunities for engagement and cohesion is one of the best ways to reduce crime.

4. Sociotechnical systems are the additional expertise that residents and stakeholders may connect to, or rely on, to better inform their strategies. For example, there might be a perception that vehicle theft is increasing locally. However, working with a crime analyst might demonstrate that only two vehicles have been stolen in the past few years, and so crime prevention efforts might be better focused elsewhere (Saville 2018).

Using place-based crime prevention methods rooted in first- and second-generation CPTED, SafeGrowth works by training local residents and stakeholders in teams to address local crime issues. First-generation CPTED involves the implementation of the principles put forth by Newman (1972): territoriality, natural surveillance, image and milieu, and access control. It is the application of these principles that comprise most of what we call crime prevention today (Saville and Cleveland 2008). Second-generation CPTED includes those aspects of first-generation CPTED and adds social cohesion, community culture, connectivity, and threshold capacity (Saville and Cleveland 2008). These latter principles are all present in the original formulations of crime prevention from Jeffery (1971) and Newman (1972) when one considers what the environment means for these authors, i.e., that the environment within which crime occurs includes the social, economic, and cultural forces that shape the environment. SafeGrowth establishes these principles as a crime prevention methodology.

Importantly, this is done with a range of partners, including residents, planners, architects, police, educators, health care providers, and others, as all of these participants contribute different perspectives and opportunities for implementation. By building knowledge on what contributes to and reduces crime and then creating a strategy and a plan to implement that strategy, local residents and stakeholders are directly involved in the crime prevention process (Hodgkinson, Saville, Sutton, et al. 2020).

Neighborhoods that have implemented SafeGrowth have seen significant declines in violence, victimization, and property offenses (Hodgkinson 2022a; Hodgkinson, Saville, and Andresen 2020; Mihinjac and Saville 2020; Saville 2009). For example, in Hollygrove, Louisiana, community members created a local walking group to reduce gang-related drug activity around a park, improved bus stops to reduce violence and homicides related to these locations, and established a community garden that contributed to food security and job training for local youth. In North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada, residents and stakeholders worked together to improve social cohesion and safety downtown through local business revitalization plans, painted intersection projects, city-funded block parties, and a community garden that activated a local homeless shelter. These initiatives and others correlated with declines in crime severity citywide (Hodgkinson, Saville, Sutton, et al. 2020).

One benefit of this strategy is that it addresses some of the main concerns regarding implementation, which presents serious challenges to crime prevention interventions. Because local residents and stakeholders build capacity in preventing crime and create the strategies that fit their local context and needs, they are invested in proper implementation of these strategies. At the same time, they learn a process for solving problems that contributes to their ability to plan and solve other problems. Finally, they build cohesion with each other, which creates the foundations for informal and formal social control.

By building cohesive networks of capable community partners, integrated strategies can improve the overall well-being of the community through local governance systems. Strategies like SafeGrowth recognize the social ecology of places—i.e., how neighborhoods and places are interconnected and influence one another—rather than simply targeting micro crime problems or addressing poor guardianship and a lack of place management (Saville 2018). This interconnectedness is key for breaking down structural predictors of crime and creating safe and livable places.

Here, we have suggested that while many place-based crime prevention strategies can be successful, they can also be short-lived or contribute to harm through crime displacement. We argue this is due, in part, to the lack of attention paid to other mechanisms of crime at place, including offender motivation and informal and formal social control through social cohesion and collective efficacy. We argue for the integration of situational and social approaches (Hodgkinson and Farrell 2018) at places to create more sustainable, socially just, and socially impactful approaches to reducing crime.