Secure Design
Crime Prevention Through Design The RSA Student Design Awards
Background
The RSA Student Design Awards were established by the in 1924. Each year nearly 3,000 students from the UK and mainland Europe submit their designs for a wide variety of projects ranging from engineering design to fashion, glassware to postage stamps. Award-winning students are given the opportunity of work experience with the sponsoring companies or travel abroad.
Crime prevention through design - a new focus of the RSA Student Design Awards competition
Crime is a highly emotive and complex issue: each day, crime of all sorts diminishes the lives of innocent people and causes fear, anger and loss. Crime affects not only the direct victims; we have all been irritated by untended car or building alarms, and we are learning to balance the cost in reduced privacy and the street furniture of widespread public CCTV surveillance against greater personal safety and reduction in crime.
Crime is often ignored by designers and new products are often released onto the market which are both highly attractive to criminals and all too easy to steal, damage or misuse. It can prove however, to be a highly cost effective method of reducing crime by taking it into consideration as part of the total design remit.
The RSA in conjunction with the Home Office has introduced a new category 'Less Crime through Design' into the Student Design Awards (SDA). Students have been encouraged to design with potential crime as a dominant issue. As well as a specific award, students entering other SDA projects were invited to submit designs that also attempted to design out crime.
Design-led crime prevention does not aim to affect offenders' motives or predisposition to commit crimes. It takes these as given, and introduces specific design changes, seeking to make criminal actions less attractive to the offender. A key design strategy may be to make potential targets and situations for criminal activity require more effort and be less rewarding to the criminal through increasing the level of difficulty and risk of being interrupted or caught.
The challenge for student designers is to look to the future, ensure that their designs anticipate the potential for crime, maintaining user friendliness but simultaneously making designs 'abuser unfriendly'.
Last update: 27/08/03