Influencing Behaviour for Crime Prevention through Architectural design and Construction: an Overview

This paper discusses how architectural design could be used to manipulate the environment to influence behaviour for crime prevention. The method adopted is the review of existing literature and the qualitative approach of observation. Architects are unavoidably involved in influencing behaviour of users and abusers of the built environment through their designs. The elements of architecture are subject to complete control and manipulation by the architect. Architectural design for crime prevention is a design process with the explicit intention to influence behaviour. The paper maintains that in designing with the intention to influence behaviour, the designer should focus on the intended behavioural outcome in order to create a particular experience and influence user and abuser decisions. The key to designing to influence behaviour is strategic thinking. This paper therefore advocates strategic (extended) thinking as a means of arriving at a creative solution that addresses security challenges. The uniqueness of this method is that it helps the architect to understand the attacker's methods, approaches and tactics and how to defeat them in order to create a defendable facility. It concludes that design to influence behaviour could be achieved if the architect has knowledge of crime prevention design concepts, theories and principles, the basic technology and types of crime prevention systems, products, and the process involved in integrating security and design. It recommends that architects become involved in the study of behavioural setting of a project site in order to expand the scope of programming to include and address social issues, such as crime, in their designs.