Crime Victimization

The form and layout of a built environment has a significant influence on crime by creating opportunities for it and, in turn, shaping community crime patterns. Effective urban planners and designers will consider crime when making planning and design decisions.

Today, we know that crime is often not just a matter of making bad decisions. Rather, there are a variety of factors that are implicated in much criminal offending, some fairly obvious like poverty, mental illness, and drug abuse and others less so, such as neurocognitive problems. Today, we have the tools for effective criminal behavioral change, but this cannot be an excuse for criminal offending. In The Future of Crime and Punishment, William R. Kelly identifies the need to educate the public on how these tools can be used to most effectively and cost efficiently reduce crime, recidivism, victimization and cost.

The form and layout of a built environment has a significant influence on crime by creating opportunities for it and, in turn, shaping community crime patterns. Effective urban planners and designers will consider crime when making planning and design decisions.