Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or CPTED offers a way to enhance the safety of our homes and neighborhoods by going beyond the traditional approach of dead bolts and window locks.

We live with crime every day. It has become, unfortunately, a fact of life. Discussions on the subject have traditionally focused much less on prevention than on arrest and punishment – measures that cannot be taken until after a crime has been committed.

Only in the last twenty years have designers and architects begun to see the need to plan and build with more than just the traditional threats of nature – fire, earthquakes, and hurricanes – in mind. They must now consider the threat of crime.

Enter a new approach to crime prevention CPTED. Much more far-reaching than dead bolts on doors and locks on windows, CPTED principles can be applied easily and inexpensively when building or remodeling, and have been implemented in communities across the nation. The results have been impressive; in some CPTED communities, criminal activity has decreased by as much as forty percent.

What is the secret to CPTED?
Design that eliminates or reduces criminal behavior and at the same time encourages people to “keep an eye out” for each other. These are just a few of the ingredients that go into creating an effective CPTED environment which is conducive to a safer more livable community.

The attached information sheet and brochure offer some fundamental ways to make your neighborhood an even better place to live.