Business Crime
Crime on Industrial Estates
Crime is an important issue to businesses, and a considerable amount of attention has focused on crime prevention in the retailing and financial sectors. The manufacturing sector and industrial estates have, by comparison, been a relatively neglected target for crime prevention, yet these areas play an important part in the economic life and well-being of our towns and cities.
This study provided the first systematic description in this country of the crime problems facing businesses on industrial estates and identifies the sort of strategic action that might be taken to prevent such problems in the future.
The conventional crime prevention approach has been to encourage individual units on industrial estates to take target hardening measures. This study suggests that a more effective approach would be to focus on the estate as a whole, through measures such as the design and layout of the estate, security patrols and policing activity, and the management of retailing activity. This requires landlords to take a much more active role in the development of crime prevention strategies, and for tenants to co-operate at the local level in developing joint strategies.
Section 1. Documents the findings of the first research to be carried out on crime on industrial estates.
Section 2. Crime is by no means the only problem on industrial estates, and in general, estates have as great a variation in the level of crime as residential neighbourhoods. Repeat victimisation is also a characteristic.
Section 3. Businesses have invested heavily in additional security precautions in order to protect their units. Not all of this expenditure is cost effective, or based on known crime threats
Section 4. Managers reported most crimes to the police unless an employee was suspected, when civil action was preferred.
Section 5. The level of crime on an estate is greatly influenced by its design, layout and location..
Section 6. Action points to reduce crime on industrial estates.
Police Research Group Crime Prevention Unit Series: Paper No.54 by Valerie Johnston, Maria Leitner, Joanna Shapland, and Paul Wiles is available from here.
Last update: 14 February 2005