HOW DOES THE ENVIRONMENTAL LANDSCAPE INFLUENCE CRIME

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Inside the Criminal Mind podcast, where we analyze
some of the most notorious criminal cases with psychology and
criminology combined. Here's your host.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
As a suppressor in their attempt to voy at the law.
So they call it in criminology, they call it crime
prevention through environmental design. Ah, what does that mean? Well,
what it means is you can actually put things in
place and give them as speed bumps that might slow

(00:42):
a criminal down in terms of their attempt to commit
a crime. An example of that might be a guardian
over a target or a victim. So during a sporting event,
say a football game, you may have higher presence of
police officers in and around the stadium and the bars,
and that higher presence of police acts as a deterrent

(01:04):
for criminals who might otherwise rob patrons who've had a
bit too much to drink. Now, what's interesting is that
it doesn't have to necessarily be an intentional application of
the environment in other words, police officers or lighting or
locks for that matter. It could just be the environmental

(01:25):
phenomenon that surrounds us that might reduce crime. I'm sure
you're familiar that when there's a full moon, it's suspected
that crime rates will go up, right, Yeah, does it? Well,
there is some statistics to show that when there's a
full moon, crime rates actually do, but it probably has
more to do with the fact that people tend to
be out. There's more light, so people tend to be

(01:46):
out later, and therefore there's more opportunity for criminals to
find victims when there's a full moon. The same thing
is true when the advent of electricity. Before there was electricity,
taverns and bars closed earlier. But when you have electricity,
bars stay open later. People then go out drinking more

(02:07):
and they have a greater instance of being robbed once
they're too drunk get home.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
You know what's amazing, Amby there was a study done
I can't remember where that showed that eighty one percent
of mental health professionals believe that the moon effects human behavior.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Well, in fact, it could, and it may. You know,
it may have a number of correlating reasons that may occur,
But I don't think the moon causes crime to go up.
There just may be some correlative effects. But I'll tell
you there is some correlation between the crime rates and
the trends we've seen in the last month and a
half and the environment we're currently in with the coronavirus,

(02:47):
we're seeing trends where certain crimes have actually gone down.
I'll give you one quick example, Carlos. The number of
car accidents, particularly DUIs has gone down. Now, why would
you think that is? In the era Corona?

Speaker 3 (03:01):
The du eys have gone down? Yeah, Well, it's kind
of funny because you have two different competing factors. You
have one, the alcohol sales have gone up like thirty percent,
but I'm assuming from what I've read, driving has gone
down considerably. So your targets are a lot less.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
That's right. So the taverns are all closed, the bars
are clothes, you can still go to a package store.
In fact, you're right, liquor sales have gone up, but
people are drinking at home. Now. The question then becomes,
because we've seen some trends in statistics that domestic violence
rates have gone up in this epidemic. Why do you

(03:37):
think that is?

Speaker 3 (03:38):
I'm sorry that what has gone up?

Speaker 2 (03:40):
I lost you the domestic violence?

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah, you know, that's that's been a tragedy because I
know a lot of countries are actually talking about their uptick.
And again, I think it's the maybe a lot of factors,
social economic factors, maybe the man. If it's the man
doing the abuse, the man could have lost his job,
suffering economic consequences, more tension because they're at the home together.
A lot of issues there.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, if you're increasing your alcohol consumption and you're bothered
up in a house for a month and a half,
you know, it's a recipe if there's conflict in the
marriage for domestic violence. On the other hand, we're actually
seeing a decrease level of reported incidents of child abuse,
and police officers are very concerned that the reason we're

(04:26):
seeing a decrease isn't because the PRIME has lessons. It's
because the children are not going to school or other
places where these crimes are being reported outside the home,
which is most often the case. That's the environment has. Yeah,
the environment has. The point is we're making here is
the environment has a lot of impact on how PRIME
is conducted and how it's reported. In terms of statistics,

(04:50):
did you know that in Chicago drug arrests have been
reduced by forty two percent over the last month. Oh wow,
that's half. That's half compared to the twenty nineteen rates.
So some experts are suggesting that drug dealers have social
distance themselves and they're waiting for the pandemic to end,
while other experts say that's ridiculous. These entrepreneurs don't really

(05:13):
care about their health or the health of their addicts,
and the addicts need the drugs, so they're finding other
ways to sell their drugs besides the traditional street vending way.
The other thing is police departments because like in New
York Police Department, fifteen percent of their police force have
gotten sick with the virus. So a lot of police

(05:34):
departments have cut back on investigations and arrests of drug
dealers because they don't see that as an immediate problem.
So it might be that drug dealing hasn't gone down
as much as we might think it has, but the
fact the enforcement and therefore the arrest rates have gone down,
so it gives the impression that there's less crime, when

(05:56):
in fact there may be the same amount, if not
more crime being conducted by rugiers.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
You know, it's interesting as a website some of the
listeners might be familiar with it called Heyjackass dot com,
and it keeps a tally of all the people who
have been killed or wounded in Chicago. And it's interesting
because they've had in April so far fifty two shot
and killed and one hundred and eighty six wounded. And

(06:25):
I'm trying to find the comparison to last year, which
I think was sixty six last year killed, one hundred
and eighty seven wounded. It's interesting Chicago doesn't necessarily seem
to be slowing down a whole lot, and.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
I don't know what that is. Yeah, I've found one
statistic online the Chicago's overall crime rate has dropped ten percent. Yeah,
maintain time. Well, yeah, from the point of mid March
the end of April, so a ten percent drop in
the crime rate over the year. That's a general crime rate,
and more specifically, when we look at crime statistics, you

(07:01):
break them down by the offense.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
So I'm just showing then of Apri with the coronavirus.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
It's odd.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
It's just funny that they haven't seen the slow down
in the last month very much.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah. Well, you know what's interesting in New York City's
crime rates, and of course it's the epithet for the
United States, but in comparison with New York City, it
took three years for New York City to see a
forty percent drop in the crime rate, it's three years
of hard work by the city itself. But in fact
it's only taken a month and a half for a

(07:32):
similar statistical drop in the overall crime rate in New
York City. Now that's because New York has been, you know,
basically in a complete shutdown for the last month and
a half. So you can see these statistics. Some of
them are a bit skewed in the in the sense
that some crime rates actually have gone up. In Houston, Texas,

(07:53):
aggravated assaults are up ten percent over the last three weeks,
and of course half of those domestic violence, significantly higher
proportion than normal in terms of domestic violence. And again
we moved to the possible reasons for that a little
bit earlier. Chicago also saw a spike in gun violence

(08:14):
this past week. Did you know this that there were
sixty shootings nineteen or fatal between Sunday and Thursday this week.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Oh wow, So that's a huge uptick for Chicago.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, so we don't you know, again, you don't know
why that is. If it's an anomaly. I think that
what we've seen over the last week in some parts
of the United States is people have tried to resume
some normalcy to their life in places like Georgia, in California.
You're in California, people are starting going to the beach,
so the governor had to shut the beaches down again.
So we might see this kind of ebb and flow.

(08:46):
And this is what I suspect we'll see over the
next months, this sort of ebb and flow of crime
and these ecological factors having some impact because people are
afraid of getting the virus. But then they get to
the point where they just been bottled up and they
gotta go out, particularly the criminal element, and they'll take
these crimes of opportunity when they see them.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, it makes me thinks to my point, I don't
want to straight too far from our topic. I guess
we can always continue on the next podcast. But do
you also think it's affecting the drug cartels considerably. They're
having a lot of hard times trying to get money
because they're having hard time getting supplies sent from China whatnot,
and so they've been really pushing their extortion business up

(09:27):
and kidnapping. Do you think maybe that applies to Chicago
in the sense that maybe these drug dealers are you know,
they don't have the demand because people either don't have
jobs or are not going out, whatever it may be.
So they're lacking demand, so their revenue is dropping.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeatory we have there might be some butterfly effect at
play in places like El Salvador. We saw has seen
a huge drop in the number of murders. They were
last year murder today and they're now like letting out
uh in El Salvador.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Sorry, listen, you broke up.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
You broke up lessen what oh less than less than
that you used to have last year six hundred murders
a day, and and so far this year or the
last month and a half or two, they're trinette about
one hundred murders per day wow, which for the country
of Al Salvador is very very few. But at the
same time, I think that you know, you you you
hit made a good point. That is, they've got to

(10:26):
be able to get the drugs here to the United
States in order to the distribution, in order for it
to sell them. We've already seen in the legitimate UH
supply chains how disruptive this pandemic has been. So it's
not just your toilet paper and your hand sanitizer and
your meat. Uh. It's also definitely affecting marijuana from Mexico, cocaine,

(10:49):
meth and and other and other drugs that that are coming.
So these bad guys are looking for other ways. The
environment has forced them to look at other ways to uh,
to sell our drugs. A Maryland man accused of operating
a darknet store selling prescription opioids boasted on his vendor
page quote, even with coronavirus, the shop is running at

(11:10):
full speed. He told an undercover FBI agent that he
was just waiting for a shipment because the coronavirus is
screwing everything up in his inventory. So he is a
guy complaining. He's complaining that the environment has adversely affected
his business and he's dealing in illicit drugs. So the

(11:30):
environment has a big impact, not just in how crime
is committed in the world, but also how police go
about investigating. And I think that's a topic we want
to revisit when we have some more time.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Actually I want to. So Andy talked to us a
little bit about environmental desire. Reminds me of a book
I read a while back, not.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Too long ago.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Actually, a few weeks ago, as you mentioned book reading
is going up, they talked about that Chicago. I think
it was Chicago there were talking about with the high rises,
they're looking at venturement and environmental design and how these
high rises were a haven for crime. And I think
they're also looking at Baltimore, had it in New York.

(12:12):
I'm not sure if that's where you were going what
your sentiment was.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Well, you know, when you look at crime prevention through
environmental design, it's a what the academics refer to as
ecological criminology and looking at how the environment either suppresses
or facilitates a criminals behavior or how police can use

(12:37):
the environment to uh suppress and act as as current
to criminal behavior. So one of the things that police
officers and agencies use in their analysis is a analysis
triangle that reads, if you picture a triangle, and on
the left side of the triangle you'd put handler the offender,

(13:01):
and then on the right side you would put manager overplace,
and then at the bottom at the base of the
triangle you would put guardian over target or victim. So
if you look at crime in those three dimensions, you
may have the handler over the offender, so that is
somebody who has some sway or influence over the potential offender.

(13:23):
It could be a parole officer, could be a family member,
could be a best friend, could be a police officer.
And the idea is to change the mindset, the idea
that this guy is going to come to crime. So
that's not really environmental impact. What we're looking at the
other two A manager over place is let's say you
have a dark alleyway, What logically would you do to

(13:46):
improve the safety in this dark alley.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
What might you do well for the dark out Obviously
put lights in motion detection lights.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Right, So in many places where they're are dark alleyways,
the the logical ecological design would be to lighten it up.
Put bright lights in that alleyway. Perhaps put a locks
of gates so people certain time can lock that alleyway
and it's not a throughfare. Put CCTD cameras in that alleyway.

(14:19):
You might put a sentinel, a guardian if you will,
over that particular target area or where victims may may
may be found. So there are a number of environmental
steps that can be taken in order to suppress or
to to make an in the environment less presentable for

(14:41):
a criminal to act. So that's one one model and
another model for property climate, particularly to change the environment.
And you see this when you shock is it's called
the VIVA model, the value inertia, visibility and access model,
And so basically it's the ability to look at property

(15:04):
and determine the value that the offender must place on
that particular item, and then determine, okay, what is the
weight or the ability to move this particular product? Like
a car is pretty hard to move, right, but a
cell phone fairly simple. And so the third piece would

(15:24):
be visibility, and the fourth is access. How hard is
it to get to that to that item? And and
authors we can take our personal property for example, and
we can say, okay, how valuable is this property. It's
let's take a cell phone. Okay, so the value of
the cell phone to an offender is pretty high inertia.
How easy is it for me to a criminal to

(15:46):
pick it up and move it? Well, it's fairly easy.
So if I make my cell phone visible in a
car and I need the access to that cell phone,
fairly easy, leave in my windows down on my car
door open. Am I basically baiting a subject criminal to
come and steal my cell phone. Absolutely, and yeah, so

(16:09):
this via model, it is a pretty logical, common sensical
way of looking at personal property. Whether it's a bicycle
left in the driveway of your home, or whether it's
a cell phone left at the driver's seat of your
car while you run into the quick Mark to buy
some milk and some bread. They can reduce the the

(16:29):
access and the plausibility that a criminal might have access
to your belongings.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Another one, I was gonna give you just a quick
example where we live. One of the number one robberies
is I still can't believe it as people leaving their
iPads or laptops in the car right and and they leave,
they leave the doors on off.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
On the news last night, they were talking about the coronavirus,
of course, and you know every other story is about
the coronavirus. And they were talking about in New York
State where I live, there has been enough tick of
carburg lewis in the Syracuse area, and so the police
were putting out on work telling people, hey, you know,
we're not driving our cars every day, and so we're

(17:15):
getting kind of lazy. Some of us are leaving our
car doors open and so they had CCTV coverage, because
again one of the misnombers is that CCTV prevents criminals
from acting. It doesn't. It records them while they commit
the crime, but it's not a crime preventive tool. And
so true to that to that point, last night on

(17:37):
the news, they showed these criminals breaking into several cars
in the Syracuse area and they weren't breaking windows or
you know, breaking, they were simply trying to open doors
that were left unlocked. So one of the simple ways
that you can go about doing crime prevention through environmental
design is by being more aware of your own environments,

(17:59):
your own proper party, and securing it. As you pointed out,
the iPads are one of the favorite targets. Another go ahead,
do we have time for me to mention a couple
of other little models.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, we've got a couple more minutes about the Yeah,
let's see how quick you can do it.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, there's another one called I love the acronym. It's
called prade and and crave is again it's a uh
it's an environmental model for protecting personal property. It's used
in retail stores a lot. But the PREDE stands for concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable,

(18:36):
and disposable. So the the the acronym is craved and
basically this this this acronym, if it's applied to property
in the store, tells the proprietor of the store how
important it is to protect that property from being stolen
or how they can change the environment to make it
more difficult for that property to be stolen. So used appropriately,

(18:59):
this will tell a store proprietor what items might be
left behind the counter. You have gone to a drug
store or another retail store and there's certain items that
you have to ask to look at behind the counter. Sure, yeah,
and that's because these items are easily removable, hard to conceal,
readily available, and easily easily accessible and stolen. So they

(19:24):
protect those either lock and key or behind the counter.
The United Kingdom England come up with a model. It's
pretty good for environmental design. It's called the twenty five
Techniques for Situational Prevention and uh the five categories, and
we can come I think at a later podcast we can
talk about this in more detail, maybe even have a
police officer crime prevention officer talk about this as well.

(19:48):
But there are five categories that they use, and one
of them, the first one is increase the effort. So
you want to increase the effort, uh, and there's there
are five ways to do that that they just increase
the risks of committing the crime, and then there are
five ways to do that, reduce the reward for the crime,
and then there are five ways to do that. Reduce

(20:11):
provocation and there are five ways to do that. And
then remove excuses, and there are five ways to do that.
So you get twenty five techniques out of this simple
model that I'll give you an example. So one way
to increase the effort in terms of say death, is
to harden the target. So you can harden the target

(20:32):
by using anti robbery schemes, tamper proof packaging on items.
You can have a steering lock on a car door
or you know number those bars you'll hook up your
steering wheel. Two. Yeah, that's that's hardening the target. By
the way, simply locking the door of your car is

(20:52):
a way to harden the target.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
I can't remember the statistic ones, but I think it
dropped it like almost twenty percent.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, it is significant because criminals are mostly criminals are lazy.
It's important to note to all human beings, we all
have one thing in common, and that is, out of
the womb, we are self interested. And criminals are particularly
lazy when it comes to the effort that obviously they
would get jobs if they weren't so lazy. They would

(21:21):
rather break into a home, and they would rather break
into a home that's empty, and they would rather be
in most cases, and they would rather break into a
home that's empty that somebody was careless and left the
door open. Yeah, So we can clearly make the crime
harder for the criminal if we're not as lazy as
they are.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Absolutely, and they are. They're looking for easy crime. So
a lot of people don't realize that they don't want
a lot of hassles. And I think one of those
there was a robber I spoke with, actually a home
burglar last year, and he said one of the things
that deters him the most, or neighborhood watch pros locked doors.

(22:03):
And one of the things that he says that people
always forget is to lock their bathroom windows.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
And all of those when you've just mentioned they're all
clime prevention through environmental design. So you know, if you
have if you have signage up in your in your
subdivision that says neighborhood watch, whether you have an organized
neighborhood watch or not. I have a friend who doesn't
have a active alarm in his house, but he's got
a dozen signs around his house saying that he does.

(22:33):
And you know, he that's probably as good as deterrent
than paying the twenty five dollars a month. In my case,
I have relivedon security, and I'm you know, maybe a
little more paranoid, but I have redundant security my home.
So if one alarm system doesn't catch the bad guy,
another alarm system will.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah, that's one thing folks don't realize too. A lot
has a lot of these burgers will also scout the place,
the more sophisticated burgers that have been around, And so
they're right, you have to be careful because they do scout.
They a lot of them act like joggers. They act
like just a neighborhood person just walking and they're looking
to see what time does Andy leave every day? Is
he leaving every day at eight o'clock in the morning.

(23:14):
His wife is gone, Okay, we got this figured out.
Is anybody around they'll check to see if there's a
dog in the house, and they do quite of an
elaborate amount of work.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Oh. Absolutely no. The professional burglar is just that he's
not your a nearly fifteen year old who sees a
bike left in the yard and runs off with it.
These people do their homework. They are a high level
of recidivism among that group, and they look at it
as a profession. They're too wady to get a job,

(23:45):
but they're not so wech that they want to deal home.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Absolutely awesome conversation. I think it's a good place to
wrap up as we continue looking at the criminal mind
and the criminal behavior. Andy, thanks again for all.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Your insight always applied follows again.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
That's well and again folks, remember you want to support
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don't miss future podcasts, and check out all the other
podcasts a Circle of Insight Productions.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Thanks everyone,