Situational crime prevention or getting to the root causes of crime?

Some types of situational crime prevention (SCP) 1 measures are designed to exclude potential offenders from being in a specific area. Examples of such measures are the use of sound (music or noise) or light designed to exclude or make it harder for potential offenders to perform criminal activity. Such criminal activity could include assault, robbery, theft, vandalism, loitering, begging, or sleeping rough, 2 and the localities in question could include shopping malls, parks, beaches, parking lots, hospitals, airports, or train and bus stations. Moreover, steam vents, spaces beneath bridges and benches are also being designed (e.g., by being tilted or fitted with spikes or bars) to prevent people from begging, loitering, and sleeping rough (see, e.g., de Fine Licht, 2017; Akiyama, 2010; Andreau, 2015; Jensen, 2018). 3 In what follows, I will focus on the use of unpleasant sound and physical design (such as the examples mentioned above) to prevent criminal conduct. The use of these measures has by some of its critics or those who discuss the ethical aspect of SCP been called ‘hostile design’ (see, e.g., Rosenberger, 2017). Hostile design can be specified as “the deliberate shaping and design of urban spaces and artefacts with the intention of excluding particular activities and social groups” (Jensen, 2020, p. 227).