TELEVISION SURVEILLANCE AND CRIME PREVENTION: EVALUATING AN ATTEMPT TO CREATE DEFENSIBLE SPACE IN PUBLIC HOUSING

Advocates of "defensible space" as a crime prevention strategy call for the use of modern electronic technology to overcome faulty planning of existing housing projects. The goal of the proposals is to provide residents with audio & visual coverage of particularly vulnerable areas, such as lobbies, through the imposition of closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) & sound amplification equipment. The effectiveness of using eletronic apparatus to render public housing more defensible has rarely been scrutinized. In order to test this facet of defensible space, a field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of closed-circuit television as a strategy for preventing crime in public housing. The elevators & lobbies of 3 buildings in a 26-building housing project were equipped with cameras & audio amplification devices monitored by tenants on their own television sets. The system studied is a bona fide, full scale endeavor to implement the prescripts of defensible space theory. Tenants living in these buildings & in 3 control buildings were interviewed about victimization & fear of crime before & after introduction of the security program. No positive impacts were discovered. The implementation process surrounding the program was also studied in an attempt to determine plausible explanations for the lack of impact. Most crimes associated with the housing project are committed by people living within the project itself. This problem of internal criminal activity is not well integrated into the theory of defensible space, which is aimed primarily at protecting residents from outsiders. There were bureaucratic difficulties in achieving efficient implementation & an intermittent pattern of tenant utilization which undermine the deterrence capabilities of the security system. 3 Tables. AA