Designs on driving down crime
Four designers are joining the Governments new anti-crime Design and Technology Alliance.
Four designers are joining the Governments new anti-crime Design and Technology Alliance.
The alliance of independent design experts will work to raise awareness about how design of products, spaces and places can be used to make life more difficult for criminals. Along with the Home Office, they will spread the word in both the public and private sector about designing out crime as part of the Governments overall crime strategy.
The alliances founding members, Sebastian Conran, of Conran and Partners, and John Sorrell, chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, have been joined by David Kester, chief executive of the Design Council; Jeremy Myerson, professor of design studies at the Royal College of Art; Gloria Laycock, director of the UCL Centre for Security and Crime Science and Lorraine Gamman, director of the Design Against Crime research centre at Central St Martins School of Art and Design.
Their tasks will include creating design that addresses specific types of crime and disorder, implementing such design on a broader scale, working with businesses and the police and inspiring better design through commissions, awards and publicity. They will be proving that design against crime can be both attractive and useable and also advising on the development of new innovations based on peoples real needs.
Home Office Minister, Vernon Coaker, said that innovative design played a critical role in driving down crime in England and Wales by more than a third over the last decade.
He said: Much of the 51 per cent fall in vehicle crime can be attributed to design improvements such as immobilisers and toughened glass. The Design and Technology Alliance will seek to build on these achievements.
They will champion the message that designing out crime is about sustainable and innovative design of products, space and places to make crime unattractive and communities safer.
