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 VALUE OF PREVENTING NON-FATAL ROAD INJURIES: FINDINGS OF A WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY NATIONAL SAMPLE SURVEY
In 1988 the Department of Transport reviewed its valuation of a fatal casualty arising from a road traffic accident (see IRRD 816786). As a result a valuation based on willingness to pay (WTP) criterion was introduced, and a figure of U500,000 in 1987 prices was adopted. Following this it became necessary to revalue serious non-fatal and slight injuries. This report presents the results of one of two studies commissioned by TRL into the revaluation of non-fatal casualty costs on behalf of the Department of Transport. The alternative study, (Ives et al 1993, see IRRD 857397) reports the results of the application of relative utility loss methodologies to this problem. This report presents the resutls of a national sample survey of people's WTP to reduce the risk of a serious injury in a road traffic accident. It describes the testing of various elicitation procedures, the development of the national sample survey, questionnaire design and the analysis of the responses. It then presents the results of the national sample survey and after discussion recommends values to the Department of Transport.