Hot stuff? By Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe

Founder and Director of the Design Against Crime Research Centre, Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe, Creative Director of the Centre, tell Crimestoppers how burglars’ habits are changing as well as how design can help to prevent and deter crime. [March 2010]

Selling DVD players for £19.99, has made an inadvertent contribution to UK crime prevention.  Cheaper electronic goods from China and the Far East have forced burglars to change their targets.  The low cost of formerly “hot” domestic products means nowadays they are “simply not worth stealing”. James Treadwell and other researchers at the University of Leicester (2010) also suggest the availability of low cost goods is changing crime patterns too.  Their research indicates some “criminals are moving from traditional household burglaries to personal muggings.”  

The need for crime proofing the hot products we carry with us each day -   those described by the criminologist Ron Clarke (1999) as CRAVED i.e. Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable and Disposable -   to make them less attractive to thieves, is greater than ever before.    Despite the existence of Clarke’s CRAVED framework, and therefore the ability to predict the vulnerability to theft of mobile electronic devices, designed responses to this threat are in their infancy in terms of market uptake and success.  

Of course, some effective crime-proofing of hot products exists. For example, following efforts by the automobile industry in response to car theft in the 90s, today all new cars come with anti theft security as standard. Yet despite ten years of Home Office Designing Out Crime initiatives and innovation by young designers, crime-proofing products is not typical in many other market sectors. Today’s mobile electronic must-haves, like laptops, game consoles, mp3 players, cameras etc have little in the way of in-built anti-theft security, unlike today’s cars, even if  there are  some glimpses of  change  on the design horizon.  A recent competition entry to the Home Office Design Council mobile phone theft brief, delivered a device that uses a Bluetooth accessory that immediately sounds an alarm and locks the phone if the phone moves beyond a set distance from the Bluetooth device (see image to the left - image reproduced with permission of Data Transfer Communications Limited).  This way of preventing mobile phone loss and theft is an idea that’s been around for some time but only now has it been realised.   Although we’re yet to see if this competition number one will be a winner in the marketplace.

Meanwhile, there are no designs or robust security devices on the market to protect those objects which, although less technical by nature, are no less CRAVED. For example, jewellery and money remain vulnerable as are our debit and credit cards.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is currently being championed by security experts as the technology that will help us to track and trace our possessions in future, as well as to enable us to identify legitimate owners, if those possessions are lost or stolen.   Even though there are some ingenious concepts being proposed by student winners of national designing out crime competitions run in collaboration with organisations such as the RSA (Royal Society of Arts), there may be some way to go before new anti-crime design concepts find a route to market.

Whilst we wait for RFIDs to get up to speed with user anti-crime needs, there is a little good news. The humble bicycle seems to be fighting back, using low-tech ingenuity to make anti-theft design work for cyclists and against bike thieves.  Designers, along with policy makers and the police are gradually waking up to the fact that bike theft, if left unchecked, is likely to compromise the resurgence of the bicycle as a much needed sustainable transport option.   Like typically stolen CRAVED items such as cash and mobile phones, bikes provide a good example of a 'hot product'. The bike’s current popularity confers great demand and resale value and provides an attractive target for thieves. Johnson, Sidebottom and Thorpe (2009) describe the bicycles fit to the CRAVED framework and how recent bicycle design innovations are addressing the problem of theft.   In today’s market, consumers can buy anti-theft bikes, such as the Giant “Downtown” (see image to right, courtesy of Belijh Concept and Design) and “Puma” designed to thwart bike thieves. The “Downtown” bike features handlebars that can be removed and used as a lock. If the lock is broken then the bike is rendered unusable, as it’s difficult to cycle without any handlebars, and difficult to sell a bike that won’t steer properly.  

Similarly, the “Puma” folding bike replaces the down tube of the aluminium frame with a steel cable that works as a locking mechanism when the bike is folded.  If you cut the lock the bikes frame is weakened and will no longer work properly.   The missing or broken cable is also an obvious signifier of theft should the thief seek to resell the broken bike.   Such integrated anti-theft features can be used in conjunction with, or instead of, tracking and tracing chips that are also starting to be fitted into bike frames across Europe and the UK.

In addition to anti-theft bikes, designers are also addressing the street furniture to which bikes are parked. Today anti-theft bike stands are helping to reduce cycle theft in several of the UK’s towns and cities.  The M-stand is a variation of the common ‘Sheffield’ (n) stand. It is designed to encourage secure locking practice by making it easier to “lock both wheels and the frame to the stand” and more difficult to lock a bike to the stand by the bike’s top tube - a common insecure locking practice that leaves bikes vulnerable to theft by leverage.

The M-stand design has been tested on the street and has been shown to promote secure locking practices. Evaluation reveals cyclists lock more securely to M-stands than standard ‘Sheffield’ (n) stands.  Subsequently, new bike parking designs that are appearing in the marketplace such as Plantlock, Cyclehoop (see image above, courtesy of Cyclehoop Ltd) and the New York Y stand (see image to right, courtesy of Andrew Lang Product Design Ltd), have followed the lead provided by the M stand, and also promote the idea of locking “both wheels and the frame to the stand”.  We can’t wait for bike locks to catch up…and improve their performance too.  

This proliferation of design ingenuity linked to designs against bicycle theft is what electronics consumers need to help us stay safe and one step ahead of the muggers and pickpockets, who appear to enjoy the benefits of our current electronic must-haves as much as we do.

Author note

Lorraine Gamman
Lorraine Gamman is the Director of the Design Against Crime Centre at the University of the Arts in London, which she set up in 1999. She is also a member of the Home Office’s Design and Technology Alliance and the Vice Chair of the Designing Out Crime Association (DOCA).

Adam Thorpe
Adam Thorpe is the Creative Director of the Design Against Crime Centre at the University of the Arts in London and is the Director of the centre’s Bikeoff initiative. He is also the co-founder of the Vexed Design Company.

Read more about design against crime on the Design Against Crime Research Centre website.