Paul Ekblom

University College London | UCL · Department of Security and Crime Science

There is a conflict between the need for security compliance by users and the fact that commonly they cannot afford to dedicate much of their time and energy to that security. A balanced level of user engagement in security is difficult to achieve due to difference of priorities between the business perspective and the security perspective. We soug...

This project gathers important new data exploring five general themes, which will enable a more complete picture to be drawn of how to better tackle fly-tipping. These include: • Why people fly-tip, and more generally how they decide what to do with their waste. • The impacts of fly-tipping. • What LAs in England, central government and landowners...

Note this is the summary report. The full report can be found on RG as well. This project gathers important new data exploring five general themes, which will enable a more complete picture to be drawn of how to better tackle fly-tipping. These include: • Why people fly-tip, and more generally how they decide what to do with their waste. • The im...

Unanticipated accumulation and dissemination of accurate location information flows is the latest iteration of the privacy debate. This mixed-methods research contributes a grounded understanding of risk perceptions, enablers and barriers to privacy preserving behaviour in a cyber-physical environment. We conducted the first representative survey o...

Crisis and disruption are often unpredictable and can create opportunities for crime. During such times, policing may also need to meet additional challenges to handle the disruption. The use of social media by officials can be essential for crisis mitigation and crime reduction. In this paper, we study the use of Twitter for crime mitigation and r...

The focus on cyber security as an interaction between technical elements and humans has typically confined consideration of the latter to practical issues of implementation, conventionally those of ‘human performance factors’ of vigilance etc., ‘raising awareness’ and/or ‘incentivization’ of people and organizations to participate and adapt their b...

The focus on cyber security as an interaction between technical elements and humans has typically confined consideration of the latter to practical issues of implementation, conventionally those of ‘human performance factors’ of vigilance etc., ‘raising awareness’ and/or ‘incentivization’ of people and organizations to participate and adapt their b...

Technology, opportunity, crime and crime prevention-current and evolutionary perspectives Ekblom, P. (2017). 'Technology, opportunity, crime and crime prevention-current and evolutionary perspectives' in B. Leclerc and E. Savona (Eds.) Crime Prevention in the 21st Century. Abstract: This chapter seeks to link technology and crime science, including...

In his 2018 Stockholm prize winner lecture, Goldstein highlighted the need for Problem-Oriented Policing to be not only effective but also fair. Contributing to the development of POP, this study examines how a wider perspective on problem-solving generally, and scoping in particular, can be adopted to address some of the growing challenges in 21st...

The nature of crime is changing. In this chapter, the authors discuss the findings of a scoping study conducted to examine how developing technologies might create new opportunities for crime or inform approaches to combat them. The work described involved a search of key science and technology publications to identify emerging technologies with po...

Sets out the Security Function Framework, for systematically describing some designed product, place, system or procedure in terms of Purpose (what crime does it address), Niche (how does it fit with other security arrangements), Mechanism (how does it work, causally speaking) and Technicality (how is it constructed and how operated).

Uses the Security Function Framework to describe an attempt to design, develop, install and evaluate Grippa Clips to secure customers' bags beneath tables in bars.

This chapter seeks to link technology and crime science, including situational crime prevention. It starts by briefly considering the nature of technology. It then looks at the relationship between technology, opportunity, problems and solutions. But opportunity is a more subtle concept than many in the field assume, needing further development for...

The use of Cornish’s crime-scripts approach in situational crime prevention grows apace. However, we believe the conceptual foundation of cognitive scripts imported from Abelson and colleagues was rather unclear and is too narrow to support current script research. We therefore review the notion of scripts to both promote clarity and better connect...

Background The 25 Techniques of Situational Crime Prevention remain one of the bedrocks of research in Crime Science and play a key role in managing knowledge of research and practice. But they are not the only way of organising, transferring and applying this knowledge. Discussion Taking the 25 Techniques and their theoretical underpinnings as...

Question: What makes connections (often deep ones) between diverse areas, has a network of equally diverse participants, and the potential to significantly impact the life of cities and their inhabitants? Answer: The researchers who combined to produce this special issue, of course. I was privileged to see them, and others, in action at a workshop...

Crime and communications are perennial and pervasive features of society, while equally subject to dramatic change. They have a complex and evolving relationship, covering both the communications function and its realization through communication technology (→ Technology and Communication). Attempts to control crime involve conventional law enforce...

Consider an elementary security problem: theft of customers’ bags in bars. Consider also an equally elementary practical solution: mounting clips beneath bar tables to secure bags by preventing thieves from moving them stealthily along the floor with their foot or lifting them off chairbacks while customers chat with their companions. Faced with hi...

In our increasingly knowledge-driven society, we continually encounter guides on ‘how-to’ operate new procedures and technologies at home and work, necessitating rapid familiarization with terms, standards and updates, adaptation to new constraints and exploitation of new enablers. This occurs whenever we change companies, move posts, our current p...

The UK Cox Report on creativity in business (HM Treasury 2005: 2), identifies three key interlinked terms: ‘Creativity’ is the generation of new ideas – either new ways of looking at existing problems, or of seeing new opportunities, perhaps by exploiting emerging technologies or changes in markets. ‘Innovation’ is the successful exploitation of n...

Game-based learning has been used to teach topics in diverse domains, but it is still hard to determine when such approaches are an efficient learning technique. In this paper we focus on one open challenge – the limited understanding in the community of the types of knowledge these games help to develop. Using a taxonomy that distinguishes between...

The opening lines of the handbook issued by Sir Robert Peel to all officers of the Metropolitan Police in 1829, were these: ‘It should be understood at the outset that the object to be attained is the prevention of crime. To this great end every effort of the police is to be directed. The security of person and property, the preservation of the pub...

In the CPTED field, theorists and practitioners alike readily acknowledge the need to design buildings and layouts that closely fit the local context and wider design requirements, whether this relates to design aesthetics, social conditions or development and construction constraints. Crime prevention and security functions cannot simply be impose...

In the field of CPTED, theorists and practitioners alike readily acknowledge the need to design buildings and layouts that closely fit the local context and wider design requirements, including aesthetics, social conditions, and development and construction constraints. Crime prevention functions cannot simply be imposed or bolted on while ignoring...

This paper reports on a case study of using rapid prototyping to develop a serious game about crime prevention. Five small-scale formative evaluations (with a total of 17 participants) were used to guide the collect user requirements and formative feedback. Early formative results are positive and provided early signals on what needs to be changed...

In this paper we propose the fundaments of a design of an exploratory simulation of security management in a corporate environment. The model brings together theory and research findings on causes of information security risks in order to analyse diverse roles interacting through scripts. The framework is an adaptation of theoretical and empirical...

This article focuses on designing products against crime. It studies the theoretical links between design against crime and situational prevention, and then identifies the empirical links with risk-factor approaches. From here the discussion demonstrates how the security function of products can be described. Next, it addresses the issues related t...

This paper describes the latest stage of an ongoing attempt to update and upgrade CPTED’s concepts and actions and link them more closely to developments in architecture, design and crime science. The concept of territoriality, for example, is central to the practice domain of CPTED. Yet territoriality is only vaguely defined within that domain, as...

Anyone trying to devise counter-terrorist designs for railway carriages faces a range of issues. In particular, designers need a framework for thinking about security. This article explores the specific practical design problem of securing railway carriages against explosive terrorist attacks and assesses the benefits of articulating such explorati...

Chapter 7 presented basic design features of 5Is descriptions and Chapters 8 and 9 developed supporting terms and concepts. Chapters 11–15 define, illustrate and list the detailed features and headings of each individual I. This chapter addresses some common practical issues. It first covers structures and formats for 5Is descriptions. Then it desc...

Few crime prevention interventions are directly put in place and even fewer operated by the professional preventers that design them — these tasks are often done by other people and agencies. Involvement is therefore a major aspect of the context of crime prevention interventions, Involvement activity a major proportion of the work of practitioners...

Algorithms can’t operate on thin air. The 5Is process model is necessary, but not sufficient as a complete framework for characterising knowledge of good practice in crime prevention. 5Is must be fleshed out by four things: Clear and consistent definitions-in-depth of the central concepts of practice such as crime, crime prevention, community safet...

The Implementation concept within the initial version of 5Is (e.g. Ekblom, 2002c) comprised a relatively ad hoc assemblage of headings. To some extent this reflects the inevitable messiness of getting to grips with all the diverse practicalities of the real world. But, as will be seen, it’s possible to draw on some more recent ‘process’ frameworks...

The pursuit of simplicity in both theory and method is a longstanding preference in crime prevention. In this chapter I’ll argue that the simplification tendency has gone too far; that this is implicated in implementation failure and has harmed theory; and that we should therefore attempt, carefully and selectively, to change course.

Chapter 8 stated how conceptual clarity was vital for the framework for knowledge management of good practice; and in particular, how crime prevention interventions — what’s done to block, weaken or divert causes of criminal events — should be central to descriptions of preventive action. 5Is therefore needs a versatile and rigorous language for de...

The previous chapter began by revealing implementation failure as a major problem within crime prevention, and ended by implicating knowledge and its management. These now take centre-stage. I identify a range of limitations on knowledge which together constrain the performance of crime prevention. Some limitations relate to practical matters of kn...

Now we can develop a detailed Specification for a knowledge framework for crime prevention, combining suggestions from previous chapters. As indicated, I shall use a design-like approach to identify and resolve contradictions and trade-offs between simplicity and complexity, and between brevity and familiarity of terminology versus articulacy clari...

This chapter gives an initial view of the 5Is framework. After an account of the historical background to its development over some two decades involving experience from the UK, the wider European scene and North America, 5Is is introduced. Then some major foundations are set out. The central purpose of 5Is is described in relation to three main gr...

This is where we begin to move from description and diagnosis of the shortcomings in the performance of crime prevention, towards a remedy for at least one constraint on that performance: knowledge and how it’s managed. In this chapter, I make some strategic suggestions for how crime prevention and its knowledge framework should co-evolve. This pre...

5Is centres on describing preventive action; but it also sets the scene for evaluating that action, in terms of both impact and process. I say ‘sets the scene’ deliberately. Although 5Is descriptions provide, and organise, important material on which evaluations are based, it doesn’t inherently comprise or contain a methodology for impact evaluatio...

Under Intelligence, differences have already emerged between 5Is and other process models of prevention like SARA. But 5Is really begins to demonstrate its distinctive features from here on. The Response stage of SARA is split into the three interlinked task streams of Intervention, Implementation and Involvement.

We’ve almost reached the end of our Odyssey through the world of knowledge management and application in crime prevention, community safety and security. Here, we revisit the issue of complexity and simplicity, discuss the process of knowledge capture, contemplate wider uses of 5Is and how we might evaluate the impact of 5Is on performance, then fi...

In the 1970s a conjunction of North American and UK studies on the effectiveness of conventional policing, probation and imprisonment ushered in the era of pessimism known as ‘nothing works’ (Clarke and Hough, 1984; Lipton et al., 1975). Partly as a result, ‘civil’ approaches to crime prevention, ranging from situational to developmental and commun...

We begin the detailed description of the 5Is task streams with Intelligence. The primary function of Intelligence in the course of preventive action is to gain a detailed understanding of the crime/community safety problem in order to guide Intervention. The information that Intervention needs to draw on comprises the causes and context of the crim...

In crime prevention, security and community safety, attempts to replicate individual 'success-story' projects still often end in implementation failure. And the effort remains divided – between situational and offender-oriented interventions, between cause, risk factor and problem-oriented approaches, and between justice/law enforcement and 'civil'...

This paper focuses on descriptions of crime prevention projects identified as ‘good practice’, and how they are captured and shared in knowledge bases, with the purpose of improving performance in the field as a whole. This relates both to evidence-based approaches to practice, and to growing attempts at explicit knowledge management. There are, ho...

Planners of crime prevention evaluations often face a dilemma: how to actively manage numerous interacting variables needing prospective consideration as part of a research design. Failure to consider one design component at the expense of another, or lavishing disproportionate attention on some and not others can increase the likelihood of non-con...

Sidebottom This paper outlines the issue of bicycle theft as it affects the achievement of sustainable transport objectives relating to increased cycle use. It describes the research activities of the AHRC and D21C funded Bikeoff Research Initiative and its methodology. It also discusses the relationship between this methodology and Chesbrough's mo...

Project MARC aimed to develop a mechanism to assess the risk of theft of consumer electronic products, and their corresponding security; and to devise an operational scheme for EU level to influence manufacturers to make their products less criminogenic. The project encountered serious difficulties in the assessment process due, among other things,...

This paper outlines a framework which draws together the currently fragmented understandings of, and actions against, terrorism. The 'conjunction of terrorist opportunity' (CTO) stems from a widely known equivalent in crime prevention. Detailed distinctions emerge which clarify the relationship between crime and terrorism. There is special emphasis...

Knowledge, in combination with pragmatic, cultural, organ- isational and conceptual factors, determines the performance of practi- tioners such as police, local government community safety officers and product designers. This paper addresses the serious and widespread obstacles to the transfer and application of knowledge generated by professional...

In showing more interest in the crime event than the offender, situational crime prevention has tended to be at the margins of mainstream academic criminology. Yet offenders can only exploit potential crime opportunities if they have the resources to take advantage of them. To understand how crime patterns are generated, situational crime preventio...

Crime prevention faces a perpetual struggle to keep up with changing opportunities for crime and adaptable offenders. To avoid obsolescence, it has to become adaptive itself. The task of keeping prevention up to date resembles other 'evolutionary struggles' such as biological co-evolution between predator and prey (e.g. continually sharper teeth ve...

This article reflects the particular point of view of an English professional «user» of Déviance et Société, seeking to describe the reception of this journal in the professional criminological Anglo-Saxon world, in order to broaden its dissemination. In this respect, some reflections are addressed to the Editorial board, both from a practical and...

This paper is a first, exploratory, attempt at providing some background, and a framework, to help designers more systematically incorporate crime prevention in their remit. The scope includes design of technological items, environments, systems and services. With all these products this is design against misappropriation, damage and misuse in the...

Design against crime has always existed, but a combination of circumstances has led to its recent takeoff. Design seeks fitness for purpose and involves reconciling conflicting requirements, one of which may be crime prevention. The focus in this article is on design changes to the physical world while acknowledging links with social processes. The...

Most evaluations of crime prevention are carried out with little regard for methodological probity. Of work that aspires to methodological adequacy, the standard designs are the before-after comparison group and the interrupted time series. The critical questions are whether a program has an effect (and if not, whether because of theory failure, im...

Describes the Safer Cities Program (SCP), which seeks to reduce crime and fear of crime, and to foster social and economic well-being, in 20 English cities and boroughs chosen for their level of social problems. The SCP, launched in 1988 by the UK Home Office as part of wider government action on cities, relies on local coordinators and modest fund...

It has been debated for some time whether lower rates of personal victimisation among the elderly are due to the fact that - because of fear or other reasons - they shield themselves from situations in which they might be victimised. This ‘differential exposure’ explanation is examined using data from the 1982 British Crime Survey which provides ri...