Building for Burglars?
This paper reports on a study conducted into the factors, other than location, which influence homebuyers to purchase a particular property. The study was prompted by a consistent failure over time by private housing developers to embrace the principles of the Association of Chief Police Officers ‘Secured By Design’ (SBD) award scheme, or even the major elements of that scheme, to ensure parity of security with newly built social housing. Many private housing developers have expressed the view, without supporting evidence, that they avoid building to SBD standards because the majority of house buyers regard a property with enhanced security as one that has reduced appeal. It has been these developers' expressed opinion that purchasers equate enhanced security with high-crime areas, and would therefore be turned off by rather than attracted to an SBD property. Without evidence to the contrary, developers have had little incentive to adapt their building practices, and individuals concerned with crime reduction have been unable to offer a convincing argument for them to do so.
The Economic and Social Costs of Crime
Every day decisions are made by policy makers and managers in the Criminal Justice System which reflect implicit judgements about the relative seriousness of different crimes, or about the benefits of pursuing one approach to reducing crime rather than another. This study represents a first step towards making such judgements more explicit and in making sure they better reflect the available evidence on the impacts on society of different types of crime. Cost of crime estimates can play an important role in helping the government to achieve the greatest impact on crime for the money spent. They can be used in both appraisal and evaluation of crime reduction policies, such as those in the Government’s evidence-based Crime Reduction Programme. They can help us to prioritise, focusing scarce resources on policies that have the biggest impact on harm caused by crime, rather than simply the number of crimes. Moreover, one of the two aims of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) is “to reduce crime and the fear of crime and their social and economic costs”. This study reports on progress towards a cost of crime measure that can be used to assess performance against this aim. Figures used here represent the best available evidence, but nevertheless needs to be much improved. The aim of this report is to stimulate debate and improvements in the evidence.
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.