The 5Is framework
Designed to share know-how and improve performance in crime prevention
Paul Ekblom
Design Against Crime Research CentreCentral Saint Martins College of Arts & DesignUniversity of the Arts London
Implementation failure
• ‘Success stories’ in crime prevention often fail when mainstreamed
• Problem-Oriented Policing continues to be hard to implement to a high-enough standard
Familiar explanations forimplementation failure
• Deficient project management skills
• Limited analytic capacity of practitioners
• Short-term funding
• Over-centralised management
• Unsupportive organisational context
A new explanation of implementation failure
Limitations of how knowledge is captured through impact & process evaluation and how it is managed
These limitations hinder performance of crime prevention at Policy, Delivery and Practice levels
A new explanation of implementation failure
Common underlying themes: • Failure to handle messy complexity of choice,
delivery and action that creating and maintaining crime prevention requires
• Failure to clearly articulate practice • Reliance on cookbook replication – it doesn’t
work
What kinds of knowledge can research & evaluation supply?
Know• about crime problems
• what works to reduce crime/ increase safety
• who to involve
• when to act
• where to distribute resources
• why – symbolism, values, politics, ethics
• how to put into practice
Know-how Process of doing crime prevention 1
Know-how draws all knowledge together
Practitioners need know-how and technical skill to help:
Define the crime/ safety problem
Select intervention methods which
• Are evidence-based
• Are suitable to tackle the targeted crime problems in context
• Fit the priorities and available resources of the responsible organisation/s
Know-how Process of doing crime prevention 2
Replicate the methods intelligently
Innovate where replication is not possible or sensible – eg
lack of adequate evaluations, new contexts, new problems
Every replication involves some degree of innovation
Customisation to context, meeting stakeholder and duty-holder requirements
Followed by monitoring, feedback, adjustment
Know-how Process of doing crime prevention 3
Innovation draws on:
High-level principles of intervention which can generate plausible new ideas where there is no specific evidence base – derived from theory
Details of practical methods whose elements can be recombined in different ways to realise existing kinds of intervention in new contexts, or new kinds of intervention altogether
Know-how Process of doing crime prevention 4
Given the salience of innovation, the ‘design way of thinking and doing’ is important
But to help them to draw on design whilst feeding in crime prevention knowledge, practitioners need frameworks
Know-how Process of doing crime prevention 5
Existing practice guidance & knowledge frameworks for crime preventionProcess – SARA
ScanningAnalysis ResponseAssessment
Causation and Intervention – Crime TriangleVictim/TargetPlaceOffender
Limitations of existing frameworks
SARA is very simple and easy to learn, but:Has insufficient detail to organise knowledge and guide thinking, especially Response stageDoes not distinguish Mechanisms, Principles & Methods
Crime Triangle is also easy to learn, but:Again has insufficient detail/ depth to take practitioners beyond ‘kindergarten’ stage
Limitations restrict research too
Information captured by traditional evaluations –
Limitations for informing policy and delivery, and guiding practice
Impact evaluation – knowledge too narrow (cost-effectiveness) for Selection of Interventions – need a ‘Choice’ guide on multiple dimensions
Process evaluation – too simplified for Replication and Innovation
…like a wardrobe with no shelves or hangers
Elements of new frameworkDefinitions
Including crime prevention and community safety
Process – 5Is
Know how – a language and a map for describing all the tasks of the preventive process and thereby capturing, evaluating and sharing good practice knowledge
Elements of new framework
Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity
Know about crime, know what works to prevent it
Conceptual framework to map immediate causes of criminal events and preventive interventions in those causes
Definitions
Crime Prevention Ethically acceptable and evidence-based advance action intended to reduce the risk of criminal events… – by intervention in their causes
Or alternatively put:
– by frustrating criminal goals, through disrupting activities and organisations directed towards their pursuit
Risk = possibility, probability and harm
Community Safety defined positively, in terms of quality of life
MPLEMENTATION
NVOLVEMENT
MPACT
NTELLIGENCE
NTERVENTION
The Five Is The tasks of the Preventive Process
5Is builds on SARA to describe the process of prevention
SARA
Scanning
Analysis
Response
Assessment
5Is
Intelligence
Intervention
Implementation
Involvement
ImpactBut is more detailed, more structured
Methodology: Conjunction of Criminal Opportunityframework
5Is – The Zoom Structure
Message: Intelligence
Map: Causes, Risk & Protective Factors
• General social/geographical context • Evidence of crime problem – sources of information and
analysis • The crime problem/s tackled - pattern, trend, offenders,
MO• Wider crime problems • Consequences of the crime problem/s • Immediate causes, risk & protective factors, criminal
careers
Meat: Specific content of knowledge - particular
causes of crime problem
Detour:
Conjunction of
Criminal Opportunity
Immediate causes of criminal events: the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity
A crime prevention intervention
Reduced crime
Intervention in cause
Disruption of Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity
Decreased risk of crime
events
Wider benefits
Interventions: crime prevention principles and the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity
Illustrations of 5Is + CCO
Drink and disorder – problem-oriented partnership
Youth centres – Irish Republic
Grippa clips – product design
Operation Moonshine
Operation Moonshine – Intelligence
General social/geographical context
Evidence of crime problem – sources of information and analysis
The crime problem/s tackled – pattern, trend, offenders, MO
Consequences of the crime problem/s
Immediate causes, risk & protective factors, criminal careers
Operation Moonshine Intelligence: Causes – CCO
Offender Presence
Target Enclosure
Resources for Crime
Readiness to Offend
Crime Preventers
Crime Promoters
Wider Environment
Operation Moonshine Intervention
1. Modification of carrier bags
2. Targeted high visibility police patrols3. Acceptable behaviour contracts for persistent offenders4. Target hardening of retail store to prevent alcohol theft
5. Removing flowerbed from the front of row of shops6. Community clean up7. Youth shelter8. Mobile recreation unit
9. Arresting/cautioning of anti social behaviour offenders
10. Drop in centre for youths
11. A healthy living centre for youths
12. A forest location as alternative place for youths to gather
13. Disrupting a possible drugs market targeting youths
Operation Moonshine – Intervention
Method:– Removing the flowerbed from the row of shops
Principles:– Environmental design– Restricting resources for crime– Deflecting offenders from crime situation– Reassurance
Risks of countermoves:• Ram-raiding Counter-countermoves:• Bollards!• With sharp bits
Operation MoonshineIntervention
Method:
Community clean up
Principles:
Reassurance
Mobilising preventers
Building cohesion
Operation Moonshine Intervention
Method:
Youth shelter for local kids
Principles:Removing offenders from
crime situation and from alcoholReducing readiness to offend bymeeting needs legitimatelyRisks of countermoves:Inappropriate graffiti
Operation Moonshine Implementation
Converting method into action on the ground – management, planning and supervision
Targeting of the action on the crime problem, offender, place and victim
Inputs of £, HR, capacity-building
Monitoring, quality-assuring and adjusting the action in the light of feedback – adaptability
Outputs achieved for each method
Risks/blockages in implementation
Exit strategy/ expansion/ continual revision in case of changing fashions in ASB
Involvement
Irish Youth Centres
Visits to 10 centres in Dublin and Limerick, Republic of Ireland
Meetings with each team and local Garda (police), Probation
Over 120 practice knowledge items harvested, from tactical to strategic
Involvement – Mobilisation process
Clarify crime prevention roles/ tasks – need expert supervisor for motorcycle project, volunteer youth centre staff, community rep
Locate appropriate preventive agents – trawl organisations eg angling societies such as Dublin Angling Initiative, and local angling enthusiast
Alert them that they may be causing crime and/or could help prevent it
Inform them – challenge joyriding audience behaviour by showing video of consequences to stop them acting as crime promoters
Motivate them – get children off parents’ hands… in extreme circumstances pressure parents to send yp to youth centre by arranging conditional stay of eviction order
Empower them – increase capacity – training staff/volunteers
Direct them - objectives, standards – Health & Safety/ Child safety rules
Involvement – PartnershipPartnership as strategic background to individual operational actions
Each project had connections with wider ‘justice family’ of agencies eg on local probation project management ctee.
Discussions between agencies on what activities to be done on whose premises
Partnership in operationsMeetings with parents of young person at youth centre if problem arises – for every negative issue, ensure they discuss 3 positives first = the ‘compliment sandwich’
Agreement with local Garda that no yp was to be picked up whilst on youth centre activity or at the centre itself – a means of preserving trust between centre and yp
Involvement – of offendersOutreach – how to recruit young people to join youth centres & be treated
Another crossover – outreach may itself act as preventive Intervention via development of trusting relationships and even the process of volunteeringBut that is no reason to confuse ‘working the streets’ with clear understanding of Intervention mechanismsBuilding trust on street – at both individual/group levelsWhat if the street workers see the yps doing bad things – how to respond so they maintain trust – eg by asking ‘should you really be doing that?’ Softly-softly approach – crime problem not directly raised at first, may be mentioned in passing… get to know them initiallyVoluntary participation of yp rather than as forcible condition of, say, cautioningAnticipatory mobilisation of clients – building relationships with yp that offer ‘handles that can be pulled on’ when yp starts offending
Once joinedKeeping in – maintaining motivation – ‘career structure’ of building responsibility and status in the youth centreHandling of incidents such as theft/damage with acceptance & inclusion
Contact and re-entry Methods for maintaining continuity pre imprisonment, during and post release
Involvement – Climate SettingCreating/maintaining conditions of mutual trust, acceptance and expectation in support of preventive action, whether through professional intervention, partnership or mobilisation
Importance of staffing continuity so personal trusting relationships can develop – how to preserve this with changeover to more centrally-managed arrangements?
Sensitivity in handling serious incidents eg theft or damage in youth centre – implications for relations with young people and their families; but also with Gardai
Maintenance of good relations between enforcement and juvenile support arms within Garda
Openness and fairness in making resources of youth centres available to wide range of young people
Making youth centre facilities available to wider community – helped to build trust and credibility
Grippa clips – preventing theft of customers’ bags in bars
Grippa clips – aspects of ‘Involvement failure’
Senior management of bar company agreed to let us trial the clipsThen many of them were ‘let go’ and we were passed to more junior managementWe piloted prototype clips in 4 bars, and found that the public:
Liked the designs and the concept, butDidn’t actually use them!Customers unaware of what clips for and how to use them
Problems in InvolvementCard hangers to alert and inform customers without
scaring them – some hangers ended up on floor in
2 bars with less staff involvement
Overall, bar staff not well-informed or motivated to
care for customers (contrasting experience in
Barcelona where customer care stronger and crime
widely understood as serious risk)
Supportive posters confined to toilets
Little communication of purpose of project from
regional managers to individual bar managers
Just before first evaluation in 13 bars, bar company
pulled out of entire project due to the recession and
slackening of police pressure
Grippa clips – Involvement successSubsequent development and pilot with major coffee chain at London rail terminus, combining clips with Stop Thief chairsClips frequently used – why the difference?
Customer care focusRevised design, easier to useSelf-explanatory logo – and no falling card hangersImplicit imagery – paintings of Stop Thief chairs on café wallsStaff involvement and retention policy of café company
Index of three month moving averages for recorded ASB “CADA” incidents in The Close compared with rest of Valley park beats and Eastleigh BCU
0
50
100
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250
Feb-02
Mar-02
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Jan-03
Feb-03
Mar-03
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Wei
ghte
d in
dex
(bas
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eRest of Eastleigh ASB incidents (100 = 73 incidents)
Rest of Valley Park beats ASB incidents (100 = 11 incidents)
The 'Close' ASB incidents (100 = 5 incidents)
August 2003 - Youth shelter installed
Early 2002 and ongoing - High Visibility Patrols
April 2002 - Modification to carrier bags
November 2003 - ABC negotiations completed
April-June 2002 Flow er beds removed, bollards installed
August 2002 - Drugs supply w as addressed, w ith identif ication of suspects
Dec 2002-Feb 2003 Shop redesigned, security hardened, CCTV augmented
March 2003 - Prosecution and revoke of licence for anti-social motorbikers
Jul 2002 - Drop in centre starts on tw ice w eekly basis
Aug-Sept 2002 Community Cleanup
Impact - Moonshine
Impact – ‘Choice magazine’ approach to selecting interventions to replicate: Multiple dimensions of policy performance
• Selecting interventions that are effective, cost-effective and whose benefit significantly outweighs cost
• Efficient targeting on causes of crime/ safety problem • Prioritisation on harm, needs of victim & wider society• Coverage on the ground – how much of crime problem
tackled?• Scope – narrow range or broad range of crime types
tackled?• Adaptability – proofed v soc/ tech change/ adaptive
offenders• Taking action over appropriate timescales• Pursuing policies sustainable financially and in HR terms• Avoiding undesirable side-effects of action and balancing
tradeoffs with other policy values • Maximising legitimacy/ acceptability of actions• Ensuring policies are deliverable in rollout of programs
Further applications for 5Is framework
Beyond capturing good practice examples and failure mode analysis:
Synthesis/ testing of principles and theoriesFramework and source for toolkits and training
Supporting gap analyses for research, and strategic overviews for policy and delivery
Prospective business-planning/appraising tool, for project development and monitoring of implementation – ‘playback’ beside ‘record’
Further applications for the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity
Organised crime/ drug dealingTerrorismCybercrimeDesign Against Crime – crime proofing of productsCrime Impact Assessment/ Risk AssessmentHorizon scanningOffender interviewsInvestigation of crimeUnderstanding / describing Modus Operandi
The question of simplicity
Crime prevention/ community safety are messy and complex
So: It’s futile dumbing down to communicate with practitioners, if what you communicate can’t deliver successful prevention
These are issues for designers to address in making the framework usable
Overall philosophy – high investment in design leads to high return in successful performance of crime prevention
Where to find information on 5Is and CCO
http://5isframework.wordpress.com
www.designagainstcrime.com/crimeframeworks
Ekblom, P (2011) Crime Prevention, Security and Community Safety with the 5Is Framework
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Please send comments, suggest improvements or participate in development!
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