Articles

Why Choose Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) For Your Next Building Project?

By Joe Zaccaria, CPP

This CPTED design professional will work with the plans to instill a greater degree of:

• Natural Access Control
• Natural Surveillance
• Territorial Reinforcement

During this process, the CPTED professional examines what people (employees,visitors, etc.), vehicles, and neighborhoods interact with the planned space.

Additionally, the goal is to increase “natural security” and decrease the reliance on costly “electronic security”. A proper CPTED design will allow legitimate users of the space to comfortable and secure. Illegitimate users (the criminal element) will feel vulnerable and uncomfortable with the removal of entrapment zones and the associated increase in natural surveillance.

Too often, security is “dysfunctional” in that someone has simply sold a bill of goods to the owner during the construction process. This may include expensive state -of-the-art CCTV cameras, hardening materials, or other wares that the supplier sells. As the seller is concerned with moving goods and creating sales volume, the client’s actual need and suitability for on-site application of the device becomes a secondary factor. The transaction is void of a "client advocate”, as the construction team most often lacks security expertise and may rely on goods sold to them on another project.