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GREGORY SAVILLE · MATEJA MIHINJAC
GREGORY SAVILLE · MATEJA MIHINJAC
Paving paradise? Joni Mitchell's classic lyric to "Big Yellow Taxi" ran through my mind yesterday during research for an upcoming webinar on downtown safety next Wednesday, April 4 It happened during a visit to the U-Village Mall - a lifestyle mall in Seattle where I uncovered an example of Penalosa's maxim: "We can have a city that is very friendly to cars or a city that is very friendly to people. We can't have both." A few years ago I wrote about Enrique Penalosa, the urban visionary from Bogota, Columbia. He's the former Mayor who helped transform a nightmare downtown during his country's narco-war into a vibrant and safe place. He did that by building for people first and cars last. The U-Village Mall shows how we can do that in a parking lot. This re-imagined mall sacrifices sprawling lot design that maximizes quantity for a pedestrian friendly design to maximize quality. Playground areas for kids, water features, sidewalks and gardens - the works. The U-Village Mall ignores large lots in favor of smaller clusters of 100 cars. This reduces the number of parking spaces (to the chagrin of some), but it creates a livable urban village feel (to the joy of everyone else). Activating public spaces is a key for safety. My prior blogs on parking lot design show design errors of size and shape. Parking lots at the U-Village show how to mix people and cars. I suspect Penalosa would approve. The webinar is next Wednesday, 3-4pm EST (12-1 PST) sponsored by the International Downtown Association. Their website lists details -IDA Trending Topics #5
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CPTED pioneers never imagined how crime works in a winter city. Local practitioners figure that out themselves. Case in point: Our SafeGrowth training last week in Saskatoon, Canada, about 250 miles north of the US border. Saskatoon now leads the municipal pack for CPTED implementation. I've blogged before about Saskatoon, especially regarding bus terminals. Like many forward thinking communities it has online design guidelines and CPTED policy. Like other places Saskatoon reviews new developments for CPTED. Unlike other places Saskatoon is the first-ever city to incorporate 1st Generation CPTED, 2nd Generation CPTED, and SafeGrowth into their design guidelines. Many CPTED practitioners still don't know the difference between the concepts (explained in the guidelines). Saskatoon does this by embedding SafeGrowth into Local Area Plans in dozens of neighborhoods across the city, each with their own plans and steps for moving forward We've now trained over a hundred city staff, police and community members. Last week city planner Elisabeth Miller and myself continued the training with outdoor safety audits and CPTED reviews of parking lots. Newman, Jacobs, Jeffery, Angel, and Gardiner wrote nothing about CPTED and streetlights in snowbanks at -20 Celsius. We'll see how the project teams from class figure it out. No one reasonably armored against dogma wants to be philistine about progress. Still, how many times must we read that the latest science project will solve our crime problem? I just read the latest study showing how DNA technology lowers crime up to 10 percent! Last month computerized predictive algorithms claimed the mantle of progress. In the 1990s it was Compstat. Now scientists are about to announce 90-minute returns on DNA sampling versus up to 90 days that it takes now. It's a forensic revolution. DNA advances have done some remarkable things. They have sped convictions and exonerated the innocent. That's all good stuff. Two thoughts come to mind: civil rights and, well, crime. Civil rights and DNA? Last year the British Parliament backtracked from post 9/11 regulations that expanded police reach and they passed the Protection of Freedom Act. It limits public CCTV, biometrics and it regulates DNA databases. Why regulate databases? According to one blogger: "It's very rare that someone is arrested and has NOTHING to do with crime and will not come our way again."
According to another: "Not true and this thinking is why the public does not respect the Police. False accusations are made all the time and people are investigated and released without charge." True enough. The Virginia DNA Project uncovered a wrongful arrest/conviction rate for rapes of 8 - 15 percent prior to DNA testing. That's both why we should regulate and why DNA is important. Legalities aside, I have another question. Does DNA really work to cut crime? It's certainly not a community-building strategy that tackles neighborhood maladies and family-based dysfunction. Will it really allow police to arrest more chronic offenders so we can do community-building? I just finished the latest edits to the upcoming CPTED Perspective newsletter and there is a fantastic UK article about soundscapes to prevent crime. How creative! Whenever I hear theories about defensible space I am struck by how shackled we are to obsolete design doctrines. Activating public spaces need not be doctrinaire. Yet everywhere we act otherwise; we treat setbacks like they were written in stone and we keep homeless off park benches with dividers. We light streets up like stadiums and we argue over parallel parking spots, yet provide zero for bicycles. Creative design means none of those things. Creativity has a quality all its own. Creative design has made appearances in this blog. Consider intersection art, parking lots, tech gizmos, and laneways. The Montreal swings in the video above are another great example. Yesterday 20 young children under 10 years old and 7 adults were murdered in a Newtown, Connecticut grade school. Nationwide the statistics are cold and bleak: Since the Littleton CO school slaughter there have been 13 mass murder tragedies claiming over 150 victims; all but 3 killers committed suicide; most were mentally ill or motivated by political/religious fanaticism. In every case victims were killed by effortlessly obtained handguns and assault rifles. Even more deplorable some states have multiple cases of mass murder. In 2010 there was another Connecticut mass murder. And today none of this matters to parents of 20 murdered children or the family members of 7 others. SCHOOL-SAFE: A FAILED PROGRAM As I reflect on yesterday's horror I am ashamed to say I'm thinking of myself. A decade ago I ran a crime prevention research center at the University of New Haven. Our team developed an innovative violence prevention program called School-Safe. This was a few years before SafeGrowth but it deployed many of the same tactics. It was designed for schools. Some of our ideas were similar to those promoted in James Gilligen's Preventing Violence. We were quite proud of ourselves and excited for the potential of our program. Such hubris! We sent notices to school principals. We ran a workshop to promote it. World-renown forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee generously provided our introductory keynote address and encouraged school leaders to try it out. Of the few school leaders who showed up, none showed interest in trying it. It's now long gone. Today I know I should be thinking of young victims in Connecticut, not of myself. But that shame doesn't tamp down the fire of some burning questions: Should I have done more to convince school leaders? What could I have done different to explain the program? Might School-Safe have saved young lives in Newtown, Connecticut? I'll never know. It's humbling to walk in a city with the population of Australia and a million more than New York City's metro. In North America it is The Giant! At over 21 million people Mexico City, where I am this week, is by some counts the world's 3rd largest and the most densely populated. It is impossible to define. For lovers of cities, it is irresistible. Consider this: Insane traffic chaos, easy winner of the Graffiti-City-of-the-Year award, a profusion of public statues of every artistic bent, evocative architecture and buses with women-only safe seats. There are thousands of street vendors clustering around subway entrances and they create lively, unplanned street markets that are both pickpocketing bonanzas and part of Mexico City's financial boom. Speaking of crime... Mexico city is considerably safer than cities like Houston, Washington DC and New Orleans. True, there are thugs mugging folks, especially in poorly regulated taxis and in nasty neighborhoods (Note to self: Crime Prevention 101 - Don't get drunk and wander aimlessly at night in nasty neighborhoods!) However, as elsewhere, staying safe boils down to simple street smarts. NARCO CRIME? What about the epidemic narco-violence we hear about? Crime maps show it is clustered elsewhere, like in the north of the country. Maybe Mexico City is a neutral zone? Maybe the pervasive police, security and military help? Or maybe the government is cooking the stat books, just like the NYPD during the Compstat Caper? Difficult to say. Ironically even the intellectually vapid press lauds Mexico City's success. USA Today and CNN suggest perceptions about crime are worse than the truth. I don't know the truth. What I do know is this: walking the streets of a few neighborhoods has been safe and fascinating. People are incredibly warm and easy-going. A CPTED CONFERENCE IN MEXICO I also know there are impressive ground-up, practical crime solutions underway, like CPTED. Last week I attended a conference of the Latin American chapter of the International CPTED Association at Mexico City's IberoAmerican University. There were 500 delegates from around the world, over 60 different sessions on dozens of new approaches. I saw some remarkable Mexican (and Latin American) creativity for building safer communities. Then there was the children representing youth programs throughout the country, many whom participated in the conference. My favorite was young musicians who entertained conference delegates. Pretty inspiring stuff. As for Mexico, I'll be back. GUEST BLOG - A previous blog on LED lighting introduced the concept of blue street lights and emerging research about crime. Ivana Dankova is a designer from Slovakia currently studying for her MSc in Medialogy in Denmark. In 2011 she completed graduate design research in Scotland on Glasgow’s blue light project. Here Ivana offers this blog on her research. A longer version will appear in the upcoming issue of CPTED Perspective, the ICA newsletter. **** A new innovation in street lighting has appeared in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1999 blue streetlights were installed in order to improve the overall aesthetics of the area as a part of a city enhancement program. During my design research for a graduate dissertation I investigated whether blue lights have any effect on people and if so, how they affect them. As with prior research in CPTED, my hypothesis is that the environment in which we live can influence our behavior. It can inspire us to act in certain ways. My Glasgow case study offered the chance to experience the unique atmosphere of a blue-lit street. Some sources mentioned that the crime surprisingly dropped after blue lights were installed. However, since I could not find further statistics on blue lights in Glasgow, I decided to explore it on my own. Even though crime reduction was not the initial purpose behind the installation, the street appeared to have a much calmer effect than surrounding streets with traditional sodium yellow/orange lighting. One possible theory explaining this effect is that since short wavelength blue light produces serotonin in the human brain (which is a calming hormone) it is possible this creates a calming impact on pedestrians. My observation is that people react positively to the lighting. The overall atmosphere is unique and feels more peaceful, calm, as if time moved slower.
I also learned following the Glasgow example, similar blue lights were installed in Japanese train stations. The number of suicides at Japanese train stations was high and increasing, but after the blue lights were installed the number dropped noticeably. This reduction in suicides due to blue lights is spreading to other locations due to its positive results. Blue lights definitely provide a new tactic for designers looking to calm outdoor locations. I've just gorged myself on a raft of books about the future; The World in 2050, The Great Reset, Crawling from the Wreckage, and The Post-American World. All excellent reads. All a bit unnerving.
The utopians have us flying to floating gardens in Jetson flying cars. The dystopians claim Big Brother will steal our memories. The catastrophe-crowd, soaked with doom, imagine a Mayan apocalypse. [I must admit, whenever I hear apocalypse stories I'm reminded of Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges observation: "We are in the throws of a giddy intoxication with illusion. That's how you end up with demagogues and tyrants who promise magic."] Here's the thing - the future isn't here yet! There is no Matrix. And until some giddy, Daisy-singing, Hal 9000 computer takes over, there is no sure way to know the future. There are many futures and any one of them is possible. Lately, though, I admit I've been swayed by the dystopians. Consider these worrying trends:
Last month I said to my students in Connecticut I believe SafeGrowth is one possible and positive future. Today I found another in Connecticut. This one was by some young people in New Haven. They are, after all, where our future really unfolds. The Future Project: http://vimeo.com/41265738 Rails to Trails Conservatory "Is It Safe" video on bike trail safety This past week I worked on a bike trail and crime project. Reflecting on my last blog, some old questions resurfaced: What is it about bike trails that trigger fears? Do bike trails suffer crime? Absolutely! Are they a necessary asset for cities? Absolutely! How can we build bike and walking trails to promote safety? I've blogged on trails before; Florida's famous Pinellas Trail, Eugene, Oregon's extensive urban bike trails, and BC's Gabriola Island. The Rails to Trails Conservancy/National Parks Service commissioned a study on bike trail safety in 1998. Unsurprisingly they offer a typical CPTED buffet: trim vegetation, minimizing hiding spaces, lighting, emergency phones, patrols, access for emergency vehicles, and maintenance. CPTED prescriptions like that are fine. But prescriptions without the diagnosis are like a buffet without vegetables - tasty but not terribly healthy. And none of it guarantees anything. Crime can and still does happen on bike trails. Seattle KOMO News 4 newsclip of bike trail through "the Jungle" What do we actually know? In 1987 one of the first-ever studies on bike trail crime reported a remarkably low crime rate near and on bike trails in Eugene, Oregon. It also shocked detractors by reporting increased property values for adjacent trail properties. A decade later the same results were reported in a study in Omaha, Nebraska and again in 2000 another Rails to Trails study confirmed those results. What all these studies show is less than 5% of all residents living adjacent to trails reported crime or burglary. In the Rails to Trails study only 3% of 373 trails surveyed reported major crimes. But, as they say, the devil is in the details. There are ways to design bike trails that simply displace troubles from one place to another. The Seattle news video above suggests exactly this problem in a new bike trail running through "the Jungle". Beelzebub, it seems, has made an appearance. I live in one of the most livable towns in the country. It has a variety of bookstores, an active and safe teen skate park, accommodation for the elderly, alternative housing options like cohousing, and two local industries. There are over 40 restaurants for just 8,000 people (obviously a tourist town) and a festival every weekend from spring till winter. It has one of the most successful farmers markets and a vibrant and architecturally interesting downtown. There hasn't been a murder in the city for decades and last year there were 52 violent crimes (mostly minor assaults) in the county with about 29,000 residents producing a county violence rate of 17 violent incidents per 100,000 residents. In short, it is safe and vibrant. Gotham City crime New York City is also one of the most vibrant cities in the country and by every meaningful measure, it dwarfs my town. It has thousands of restaurants, bookstores, festivals, and every other amenity imaginable serving a city of over 8 million. It has a lower crime rate than most large cities. Yet, in comparison to my town the violent crime rate last year in NYC was 55 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. In other words, the violent crime rate there was three times higher than here. Yet a former neighbor, a young woman who lived in New York until recently, describes feeling much safer on New York streets than here. She is more concerned about walking home in the dark here than walking there even though her actual risk is 3 times higher (To be fair I doubt she knew the different rates, only how she felt). Why? The Truth about Risk Perception and risk are two entirely different animals. I have spent many years working in high crime places. I learn about the cues of environment, attitude of the locals, and actual crime risks. My first lesson - we may feel safe but not be so. This week I read a great blog about crime risk by Sam Harris titled The Truth about Violence. He cites four basic safety principles including how to avoid dangerous places and people. Harris also describes a truism about us: It is unpleasant to study the details of crime and violence—and for this reason many of us never do. I am convinced, however, that some planning and preparation can greatly reduce a person’s risk. I agree. Read Harris's blog. It's worthwhile. I get mystified by large G government attempts to tackle crime, unless they invoke neighborhoods directly in local problem solving. This week Stratfor published a follow-up report about just such a program - the Alcohol/Tobacco/Firearms program Fast and Furious. It was a get-tough-on-crime sting operation that turned into a gun-walking catastrophe more appropriately named Lost and Spuriousness. Recall the border patrol agent found shot to death by Fast and Furious guns in 2010 that led to the initial congressional investigation. Fast and Furious was supposed to stem the free flow of guns that fuel the narco-insurgency and gang killings in Mexico. Then over 1,000 guns went "missing" and are suspected to have ended up in the hands of gang members. One example was the Monterrey night-club massacre last year. STRATFOR FOLLOW-UP The Stratfor report describes some consequences of that investigation: 1. More ATF gun inspectors in southern Arizona to monitor gun sales of 430 firearms dealers in six counties on the Mexican border. Previously there were 3 inspectors monitoring 143 dealers each; now there are 8 monitoring 53 each. 2. New reporting requirements for gun dealers have helped stem the flow of bulk assault rifle purchases. Now the cartels have difficulty replenishing their supplies of M60 machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and M-72 anti-tank rockets. We are told the cartels have little difficulty obtaining their preferred weapons of choice, the AR15, M16, and the AK47 from thousands of gun dealers in Arizona, Texas and California. US gang proxies purchase the guns for the narcos, none of whom can be apprehended via the tough-on-illegal-immigration Arizona law (most of which was struck down by the Supreme Court last month). Is it me, or does this all sound like the Theatre of the Absurd? The London 2012 Olympics are almost over. Aside from some unsympathetic rain (like Vancouver's 2010 winter Olympics), things seem successful. In spite of a major gaffe with a private security company (the military came to the rescue), the Games are fascinating and safe. Was CPTED involved? Back in 2000 myself and Australian social planner Wendy Sarkissian provided CPTED training for the Sydney 2000 Olympics design staff. To our knowledge it was the first (and last) time an Olympics specifically employed CPTED strategies. No longer. This year the largest transport system in Europe, Transport for London, is benefiting from CPTED training. The IRA years gave London a head start as authorities created anti-terrorist designs like see-through trash receptacles making it difficult to hide bombs. Now those lessons are expanded through the work of my old friend Dr. Tim Pascoe (an international director of the ICA) and his colleague Kate Broadhurst. They have presented a specialized training-for-trainers course to transport officials. Their training combines CPTED along with skills to identify potential targets that offenders might select. This allows transport officials to more efficiently deploy CPTED at high risk locations. Transport for London brings hundreds of thousands of Olympic fans safely to the games each day. The full story is in the latest CPTED Perspective newsletter. I'm back in Toronto this week pondering recent shootings and how things have changed in this city. Like everywhere, crime is down here too. Is shifting demographics or the economy the cause? Better policing? Crime prevention? In 2005 Toronto experienced the "summer of the gun" - rampant shootings and gang killings. The government responded with a $200 million social development program, the so-called neighborhoods strategy. From what I can see it was implemented on a wide range of social programs, focused on high crime hotspots. No doubt some great individual stories and anecdotes arose. Today a Toronto Star news article reports the program is running out of government cash. So local politicians just decided to refund it. Incidentally, without hard evidence. That's right: After 7 years of operation the Toronto Star says "hard data on the campaign’s impact does not exist...They are working on a plan to track progress this time around." What? Almost a quarter billion dollars and no hard evidence? It took them 7 years to figure out evidence is not a trivial matter? TORONTO'S SAFEGROWTH LESSON: IGNORED Ironically (or more to the point, intentionally) our 2000 - 2011 San Romanoway SafeGrowth project in that same city was intensely researched and tracked. We saw crime declines, minimal displacement, and neighborhood capacity building. Results were published in scholarly journals and released for scrutiny. Now 12 years later, residents there run and fund programs themselves. Yet, in the same city a few miles away no one thought to track nearly a quarter billion dollars for a 2005 anti-crime social program? Next blog: A better way. Frank Zimring's book "New York's Lessons for Crime and it's Control." The Rio+20 environmental conference in Brazil is wrapping up this week. Community safety, CPTED and crime prevention folks rarely see themselves in the environment. They should. How else can we get people to engage on their streets, parks, and public areas unless they are safe?
Luckily plenty of work has been done to show how that can happen. A new publication released at Rio+20 has a chapter co-written by myself and my ICA friend and South African architect Tinus Kruger that shows how environment and crime fit together. The book is titled Sustainable Cities and authors include the Secretary-General for the Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) Sha Zukang, Executive Director of UN Habitat Joan Clos, the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes and Danish Minister of Transport, Henrik Dam Kristensen. More details can be found on the Rio+20 Sustainable Cities website. "When imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning." Albert Camus - 1960 Last blog discussed a study by US Forest Service researchers showing how tree canopy in Baltimore cut urban crime by 12%. I just read a 2010 study commissioned by the Center for Disease Control showing how business improvement districts cut violent crime by the same amount in Los Angeles. So we cut crime 24% by planting tree canopies in a business improvement district (BID)? Sounds silly. That's because both studies are correlational - studies that show a pattern between two things, not a cause. We don't know why canopies or BIDs work, only that they seem to have impact. Dozens of correlational studies appear each year. Like research showing underarm deodorant causes cancer. Or toothpaste. Or cell phones. Or smoking which, it turns out, is true. What to do? There is a mantra in science: correlation-is-not-causation. Because there is a relationship doesn't mean you can infer cause. Tree canopy and BIDs may coincide with crime declines. That doesn't mean they cause them. Unfortunately neither can we dismiss correlation studies. Doing so may result in dismissing a good cause assertion. The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists criteria for testing correlational studies - a plausible mechanism between cause and effect, a singular relationship between before/after effects, a reasonable time between the cause/effect, and so on. Satisfying these criteria helps mitigate the correlation-is-not-causation dilemma. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSE I think what correlational studies need is simple - a plausible theory explaining why. That way we'll know if a study shows a correlational relationship we are seeing a shuffle not a full step. Sometimes I wonder if theory-building is a dead language. It shouldn't be! That's where research creativity and imagination really show up (not in clever data manipulation or new statistical methods). There are some great publications that provide imaginative theory, for example Gilligen's Preventing Violence and Kennedy's Don't Shoot". It would be wonderful to produce a 24% cut in crime by planting tall trees with great canopy in a business improvement district. It would be a shame if they don't and we have no idea why. "Too often, when there’s crime, people think ‘more police.’ That isn’t the solution.” (Jim Diers, "Neighborhood Power")
It's interesting to see a story about your new home city in the eyes of someone from your old home city. I just received a link from Seattle Police Sgt. Cindy Granard. (Cindy is an exceptional community cop and CPTED expert. Though no longer tasked with CPTED, she has won national awards for cutting crime with local residents and organizations like LISC). The link was to a Toronto Star column about Seattle's Neighborhood Matching Grants program. The columnist wrote enviously on Seattle's program that helps residents take ownership of their neighborhoods to enhance livability. Since 1988 it has distributed $49 million in grants to 4,000 neighborhood projects like building community gardens, painting murals, etc. Toronto, says the columnist, could learn from Seattle. (I think most cities can learn from Seattle's example in this regards.) Nevertheless, columnists can get it wrong (or, in this case, half right). City comparisons lead to non sequiturs and monkey wrenches. The grass isn't really all that much greener. Monkey wrench #1 - Toronto has long been renown for over 200 distinct and lively neighborhoods, 25 in the city center alone. One reason those neighborhoods work is because Toronto has a safe, well-used street-car and subway system. Seattle, by comparison, doesn't. (Both have trolley's and light rail, though in Seattle the latter is limited to a recent line to the airport.) Wrench #2 - crime. Though less than half Toronto's size, Seattle's 2011 murder rate was double Toronto's (3.3 vs 1.7 per 100,000). Worse still; a rash of shootings in which, last night, Seattle suffered its 16th homicide this year (there were 21 in all 2011). Toronto's homicide rate is still falling. In truth (shooting spree's notwithstanding) Seattle and Toronto are both relatively safe cities. In fact, Toronto had its own "summer of the gun" a few years ago. Jim Diers is right! There is no mystery to untangle. Because both cities focus on neighborhoods, they are both exceptional and vibrant. No doubt their exceptional neighborhoods play a big role. Irvin Waller is a leading expert in violence prevention. He is professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. He developed the Safer Cities program with the United Nations Habitat and was a founder of the UN-affiliated International Centre for the Prevention of Crime. Irvin agreed to offer the following blog to SafeGrowth about a new study on preventing violence.
**** A new study confirms sustainable ways for violence prevention to succeed against one of the most intransigent challenges for urban violence. Prairie cities in Canada have failed for many decades to prevent violence affecting urban Aboriginal peoples. Politicians and judges seemed to only be able to react with prison time and punishment. This comprehensive study bravely starts with the innovative goal of stopping violence before it leads to victimization and criminal justice costs. It examined both the social science knowledge on what reduces crime affecting urban Aboriginal people as well as a growing body of knowledge about how ¨risk focused¨ prevention gets implemented and sustained. The study tested this knowledge with stakeholders in one of the cities. Stakeholders were optimistic about the potential for risk focused strategies to reduce crime and prevent victimization in this difficult inner city population. However, the stakeholders and the study identified missing pieces. For instance, success requires cities to support a leadership centre to sustain partnerships between schools, housing, policing and others. Funding must go to smart policing and effective prevention – not one or the other. A plethora of government agencies provide living proof that violence is preventable, not inevitable. The U.S. Department of Justice and the World Health Organization have scoured the world to provide even more. Public Safety Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada have selected best practices and made them publicly accessible. But despite their success, these practices have yet to be shared and implemented from coast to coast. As a result, cities like Edmonton and Winnipeg still ended 2011 with record numbers of homicide victims. The chief of detectives for Glasgow, one of the U.K.’s most violent cities, got fed up investigating homicides. Looking for another option, he took knowledge from around the world and applied it locally, targeting gang violence. He brought in public-health experts and oversaw the installation of programs to limit alcohol abuse, stop youth from carrying weapons, promote mentoring, improve bad parenting, and more. Five years later, these efforts have reduced rates of violent offending by 50 per cent among those engaging with the initiative. For more information, visit http://irvinwaller.org/ Much to my surprise, I just realized this SafeGrowth blog is now three years old. I have spent little time on philosophy. But If I did, this is how it would go… Some tell me homelessness has no place in CPTED. Some say you can design out crime and ignore politics, policing, or broken communities. Others want details on CCTV, graffiti-removal and lighting but nothing on privacy, street art and a beautiful starry night. I disagree. I just watched Tom Shadyac's documentary, I AM. It's a personal story about the science of connection and unity. Shadyac is the most unlikely storyteller having directed The Nutty Professor and Ace Ventura. Then a bike crash left him for dead. He didn't die. Instead he had one of those awakening moments and I AM was born. I AM's mission is a global trek to discover what is wrong in the world and what we can do about it. It is named after philosopher G.K. Chesterton's idea. When asked to write an essay to summarize what was wrong with the world, Chesterton wrote: I am. Other films of this ilk turn flakey and saccharine. Not Shadyac. He interviews luminaries like business guru Margaret Wheatley, archbishop Desmond Tutu, philosopher Noam Chomsky, environmentalist David Suzuki, historian Howard Zinn. With game-changing elections now underway in the US, France, and Mexico, I AM is timely. As Zinn says, in times of rapid change, homelessness, environmental crisis and violence you cannot stay neutral on a moving train. COLLABORATION IS IN OUR DNA I AM shone brightest in the science on connection and unity, particularly how the new biology reveals collaboration as the rule of nature. Nature, it was once thought, is a process of competition and conflict. The early ecology of crime theories suggested that too (gangs fighting for turf). But modern ecology has moved beyond. I AM shows while competition happens, it isn't inevitable and it certainly isn't natural. Connection and collaboration is in our DNA. Mixed land uses and social spaces do that. Well designed communal places like Portland's Intersection Repair does that too. Gated communities and target hardening does not. Even if we must occasionally put up a fence or camera, I AM reminds us...starry nights matter. There is a great 2010 TED.com talk by Philip Howard about reforming criminal law. He says lawyers, judges and politicians need to know much better the science behind preventing social harm. He offers four steps for getting started. Thinking about bus violence, an erratic sentence, and prevention science from my last blog, Ezzat Fattah came to mind. Ezzat was one of my favorite grad school profs. Extensively published, fair-minded, and award-winning, he was a pioneer in victimology decades before restorative justice existed. He is respected around the world as a human rights advocate for Amnesty International. In other words, one of the best! And what do I recall one of the best saying regarding reforming criminal law? Contrary to some legal scholars' persistent belief in the myth of general deterrence, criminal law doesn't prevent much crime. Instead it is about punishment, morality and politics. No surprise, perhaps. Yet given decades of research into deterrence, this is disappointing because it turns out, for most violence, retribution and deterrence do not stop it! If we were really serious about reducing social harm we would not rely on 3-strikes rules, mandatory sentencing, and tough-on-crime punishments to protect us. We'd tackle irrational sentencing, we would implement restorative justice, and we'd seriously consider anti-violence prevention programs like David Kennedy's Don't Shoot. Kennedy says it outright: most gang-and-drug street violence isn't about money. It is about shame and loss of respect. It's about honor, which is why restorative methods work. That is how social harms will be cut. Retributive justice has failed. The worst example is Florida's "Stand Your Ground" gun law. Did that law lead to gun-toting vigilantism in the shooting of Trayvon Martin last month? Was this a Neighborhood Watch program unravelling as an unarmed black kid in a hoodie is killed for the crime of walking in a gated community? A month after the shooting, following much speculation (and, no doubt, much politicking), they have now criminally charged Trayvon's shooter. Gandhi said an eye-for-an-eye leaves the whole world blind. In Trayvon's case it might have left him dead. Wandering the alleys of Saskatoon is always interesting. My co-instructor Elisabeth Miller and myself did this last week with our SafeGrowth class and we were drawn to the downtown bus terminal. In the little corner of criminology that is CPTED, bus terminals are called activity generators. Without careful design and management they easily tip into crime generators. My prior blogs on bus stop crime hotspots have made this clear. Research from Los Angeles in the early 1980s, followed up in seminal work by a UCLA researcher in the late 1990s also makes this clear. What do we know? Terminals, stops, and busses are a linchpin for humanizing the public realm. Lose your busses… Saskatoon is no better nor worse than others. Their terminal is little more than a regular city street with some streetscaping and security guards. It is unlikely to attract a larger, diverse ridership. Nor will it win any awards, unlike Dayton, Ohio. Dayton, a similar sized city, has won awards for terminal design and safety. A few years ago some CPTED-trained police officers, bus officials, and professional designers tackled a crime hotspot at the old bus terminal. Their redesign cut crime, improved ridership, and became a Goldstein Award Finalist at the annual problem-oriented policing conference in 2010. It shows how design can build community goodwill. Today I was reminded how easily that goodwill can be short-circuited by the criminal justice system. SHORT-CIRCUITING GOODWILL I refer to an attack a few years ago by a drunk on a Vancouver, BC bus driver. The driver suffered brain damage, a broken jaw and has been off work for a year. The driver's son, in the bus at the time, was also assaulted and injured when he attempted to help his father. Today BC courts kept the assailant out of jail on a conditional sentence - conditions that he stays sober, gets counseling, and (wait for it) that he purchases a ticket before he gets on a bus! Unsurprisingly this outraged the public. Putting aside the value of restorative versus punitive justice and how to fix the system (that's next blog), the message from that sentence is terrible. It says stay off busses. The Vancouver press sums it up this way: "The attack on [the busdriver], though more serious than most, is part of a persistent pattern of violence visited on vulnerable bus drivers, usually with no jail time meted out to the assailants." So while design might matter, it is not enough. We must fix our response to crime as well. My focus on North American cities results from my current travel agenda, not because cities elsewhere are very different when it comes to crime. Recent news about the French presidential election provides a reminder that we are all very much alike.
Consider France. To experienced travelers France is known as the place for exceptional cuisine, wine, and enviable high speed rail. France is celebrated for progressive social programs: eight weeks paid vacation for most employees, the world's best public healthcare. Yet as elsewhere French cities too have high crime neighborhoods where misery outweighs civility. One is Chichy-sous-Bois, a so-called Banlieue (what Americans disparagingly call "the projects"). Chichy is a poor, run-down suburb of Paris. Some writers describe Chichy as a nondescript suburb without a center, wedged between high-rise apartments and four-lane highways. No public transit means two hour commutes downtown, only 10 miles away. Residents feel isolated and ignored. Except for public transit, that is also an apt description for Toronto's Jane/Finch corridor where San Romanoway is located. Journalists describe Chichy as a "high crime area where police rarely bothered to venture". Crime and violence seem endemic. Until recently, that was an apt description for Hollygrove, the New Orleans neighborhood featured earlier. There is discrimination against Chichy's immigrant residents. When two Chichy teen boys were accidentally killed while running away from police in October 2005 it erupted into three weeks of violence, looting and arsons that later spread nation-wide. Over 9,000 cars burned, 3,000 arrests. Ironically, last year the same thing happened in Tottenham, UK. Referring to the Tottenham riots I wrote that festering poverty and deprivation dries up collective goodwill, what sociologists call community efficacy. The French in Chichy, Canadians in San Romanoway, Americans in Hollygrove, or British in Tottenham. Same lesson: If you respond to (but don't prevent) crime, underfund public transit, ignore repairs to dilapidated homes, fail to address racism...you get a tinderbox. The French are pinning their hopes on $500 Billion urban "renewal" in areas surrounding Chichy (completely ignoring Chichy) and a new police station in a nearby neighborhood. Hopefully they'll discover throwing cops and money at nearby neighborhoods seldom works to tamp down tinderboxes. Meanwhile, Hollygrove is coming back from the brink and San Romanoway was the first SafeGrowth success. They don't have to reinvent the wheel to fix Chichy. Inside the neighborhood. That's where crime is prevented and community is built. That's why federal politics rarely appear here. Today, briefly, Leroy changed my mind. Leroy Smickle is a 30-year old Toronto father with no criminal record. In 2009 he was at his cousin's apartment and, discovering a loaded handgun, hatched a bone-headed idea. Holding the gun in one hand and a laptop computer in the other, he began snapping pictures of himself wearing sunglasses and boxer shorts. Apparently, to the infantile, this looks cool. At that very moment [I'm not making this up....honest] a police tactical squad busted down the door to arrest Smickle's cousin on another matter. And there was Smickle, in flagrante delicto, gun in hand, sunglasses, laptop clicking away, boxer shorts, well… you get the picture. Talk about a bad visual. Talk about bad luck! Fast forward. After 7 months of pre-trial incarceration, Smickle came in front of Judge Anne Molloy. Mandatory sentencing rules required her to send Smickle to another 3 years in prison. Three years, no record, for a bone-headed stunt. Instead she gave him 5 months in-house arrest and called the mandatory sentencing "outrageous". CANADA'S NEW TOUGH-ON-CRIME LAW In truth, except for a new law just passed in Ottawa, the Smickle caper is little more than tabloid fodder. But today that changed. Canada's federal conservative government voted sweeping tough-on-crime legislation into law (mandatory sentences, more prison-building, etc). I've criticized BC courts for leniency in prior blogs. Mandatory sentencing would seem the answer. In fact, the BC Premier (and other western Premiers) supports the new law. But mandatory sentencing rarely works and more prisons just fill up. Ontario and Quebec oppose the law. What about the public? A recent non-scientific poll found 86% wanted more prevention. Only 8% wanted more punishments. Restorative justice advocates call it a step backwards. Canadian criminologists feel the same. Even justice officials in Texas, the most conservative of all States, say the new Canadian law won't work. They've tried and it failed. In fact they are repealing their mandatory sentences in favor of drug treatment and community supervision. With apologies to great Canadian poet Robert Service, there truly are strange things done in the midnight sun. I fear there are dark days ahead in the Canadian justice system. Canadian criminologist Evelyn Zellerer describes restorative justice as one alternative to new Canadian law
After my last blog I'm fighting the urge to quote the Star Wars droid Threepio: "We're Doomed!"
The story of cooked books in NYPD seems the symptom of a much larger crisis. CompStat is an excellent idea. What went wrong? The opportunity to truly change service delivery was at hand. Did they blow it? Now the Great Recession has changed the game. Declining budgets. Rapidly changing police roles. Private security filling gaps. Systematic problem-solving lost in the dust. Combat policing on the rise. Community policing on the decline. Clearly, policing faces the single greatest challenge in a half century. You can imagine my surprise yesterday when I saw the agenda at the inaugural US version of the International Conference for Police Law Enforcement Executives next month in Seattle. Here's part of the program. Find Waldo... * Terror sleeper cells * Internal corruption * Special interest groups * Negative press and malicious accusations * Union non-confidence motions * High tech cyber crime What's missing? How about the single greatest challenge in a half century! These conferences are important and necessary for executives. However I do think, respectfully, that our eyes need to be on the prize. This agenda suggests otherwise. Thomas Cahill said economic crises create "hinges in history". We are not doomed, of course. But we are at such a hinge right now. I have started a LinkedIn discussion group to talk about alternative types of accountability, measuring success and failure, and new models for public safety. Find it here: Civic Protection in the 21st Century - Policing, Privatization and Public Safety Reminiscing always gives me the willies. Are memories exaggerated? Ignored? Still, now and then, a memory surfaces worth shouting aloud. I recently came across this one. Disclaimer: Some of this is probably not even my memory - at least not latter parts of it - but rather stories of others doing remarkable work. I doubt many of them even know my name. It's doesn't really matter. It's a fantastic story for turning troubled places back from the brink. It's also probably one of the birthplaces for tactics that later became SafeGrowth. Yesterday I discovered a recently posted YouTube (see below). It shows another success at the San Romanoway apartments in Toronto's infamous Jane/Finch corridor. I have written about San Romanoway elsewhere. Here's my memory of the project: 12 years ago myself and Ross McLeod assembled a team to review and recommend ways to reverse endemic violence in some high crime apartment towers. In late 2000 we wrote the San Romanoway Revitalization plan. The plan had steps for research surveys, a community association, gardens, and lots of CPTED. Community organizer Stephnie Payne was then hired to start outreach, raise funds, administer the association, and get things going. She did that magnificently. McLeod's security company worked with her to tackle crime. The rest, as they say, is history. The video tells the latest chapter in this story. More bikes means more eyes on the street. That can cut crime. Last week I spent time working with my Safe Cascadia friends in Eugene, Oregon, one of the most bike friendly cities in the country. Recently Eugene copied other bike friendly cities (Davis CA, Portland OR) by installing special bike traffic signals. They have also dedicated half a roadway to bike lanes. Three thoughts come to mind. 1) From what I saw, Eugene cyclists seem unaccustomed to stopping at red lights. Police enforcement may become the new vogue (last year cops issued 114 tickets for bikes running stop lights and signs). Thousands of lost and stolen bikes already clog police evidence rooms. Clearly, bike enforcement is a growth industry. 2) Bike trails might also put illegitimate eyes on the street (drug dealers, burglars). Police rarely target bike criminals. Bike cops can do that but bike cops are an underfunded and small part of police patrol. 3) There are comments in an earlier blog about assaults on the Pinellas Trail in Florida. That 30-mile trail has added security features due to crime concerns. All which leads me to ask: Could the design and siting of bike trails need more CPTED and security attention? That's a rhetorical question. |
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