Seoul is a very safe city in comparison to other ones of this size. However, it doesn’t mean that Seoul (or Korea) is free of crime and that there aren’t any improvements possible. Nowadays the biggest problem is the rise of sexual offences and harassment of women on streets.
In the last decade the number of reported incidents related to sexual harassment doubled. Besides stronger punishment for sexual offenders, Seoul also offers the service to accompany women on their way back home at night. Police can’t be everywhere and guard every women, thus it’s necessary to find other ways to reduce crimes and to create an even safer city.
In 2012 Seoul launched a program to prevent crimes through environmental design. This project is also called “Root out Crime by Design” and it is deeply embedded with urban planning. The result of this program is summarized in guidelines, which I’ll try to introduce. You’ll see how this concept was tailored to Seoul and where you are able to find the program in full effect.
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Concept
CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) is urgently needed in places with a high potential for crimes. According to the report, these places look like this:
You can fairly well understand why such areas can be dangerous: They have narrow and (at night) dark streets. Stores (if there are any) close at night and there’s nobody who could help in an emergency. Such an area is for example in Mapo-Gu Yeomni-dong (northwest of Gongdeok Station). It became the first pilot project area for Seoul’s CPTED guidelines.
Measures of CPTED
There are many ways to improve the urban environment. I’ll concentrate on the measures, which are most important for Korea. Let’s begin with street lights. Usually street lights only illuminate streets. However, it’s more important that pedestrian have light. So additional lights for the sidewalks have to be installed:
However, as I showed before, most of the crimes don’t happen on main-streets. They are all these side-alleys that lack sufficient lighting. To improve these streets, the following changes are necessary:
An area might be confusing so a map can be very helpful. A paragraph in the guidelines is also better visibility of house addresses and information of nearby locations. That helps to orientate better. The yellow color of the street light poles lets the distance feel shorter. If you know where you are and the way feels short, you may be less scared.
Unused blind alleys can be hideouts for rapists, thieves or murderers and so they should be closed with gates:
Burglar can use gas pipes to get into apartments of the upper floors. They have to be made inaccessible. Gated windows might let you feel like in a prison but if you live on the first floor, it may be unavoidable.
There are also other measures like front doors with high safety-standards and security facilities in each neighborhood. Safer means also more beautiful:
There aren’t any safety measure in Korea without CCTV. Cameras are going to be installed in crime hot spots (or everywhere?). Last week I saw in the news that there are two types of CCTV: 1. Surveillance cameras, here someone watches the cameras almost 24/7; 2. black-box cameras which keep the recordings for a certain time and then automatically delete it. So while at the first type, someone should see the crime, the second type will be used after incidents to find out what happened. The second option is 70% cheaper and almost as effective as surveillance cameras.
Something that I have already in my neighborhood are emergency bells at some street light poles. From my understanding the bell directly alarms the police. Maybe the bell also starts a loud noise to get attention from people living close-by.
Social Pillar
Although it is mainly about urban design, the project also included some community work. The goal in Mapo-Gu was to strengthen the social cohesion. Education about crime prevention was done and some residents had received more responsibilities but as far as I understood it isn’t a neighborhood patrol.
Conclusion
All of these measures of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design make sense and they aren’t any large changes in the urban landscape. Pedestrians can feel more comfortable. My personal opinion is that the built environment can only to a certain degree decrease crime. Community work is great but it’s more important to work on the fundamental problems in the society. A well-working welfare system is important to reduce the gap between rich and the poor. This may sound very naive but at least fighting poverty would help. Until then we have to prepare our cities to deal with crimes before they can occur.
Resources and Related Links: Root out Crime by Design | Research on CPTED in Korea | CPTED Guidelines
Hi Nikola, thanks a lot for the very interesting post. I wish more cities (including here in America) thought about this as well. I have read papers – and it makes sense intuitively – that say that making burglary/crimes of opportunity harder (alarms, bright streetlights, etc) significantly decreases crime. If you can combine these with urban form better for pedestrians + prettier, it’s a great win-win situation.
However, on your last point – that welfare payments or services to the poor may reduce crime – I can’t agree. In the U.S. there have been many good studies on this over the years. Here are 3:
In California counties, no relationship found between serious crime (homicide, robbery, assault, burglary, theft) and welfare spending.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820500219094#.Ud1ykUFwowc
This paper found that welfare reform in the U.S. – basically tightening the system by decreasing the level of benefits if the recipient does not find work within 2 years and totally cutting off aid after 5 years – actually reduced female property crime arrests by 5%.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18887
Finally, this paper find that welfare actually stimulates crime, since many welfare schemes give money on the 1st of the month to all recipients, who then become targets for crime. (There are ways around this such as transferring smaller amounts daily to a benefits card.)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14074
Anyway in my mind, there is not that much interaction between spending on/transferring money to the poor and crime. In my opinion, the only exception – a big one – is education spending, IF it is effective. (In the U.S., Washington DC spends $29,000/year/student yet has terrible education.) Spending a little money to make education a LOT more effective is probably the best way, but often politicians start with a budget which inevitably makes its way to the most politically-connected players in the system.
Thank you for this input on the relationship between welfare and crime! That’s really interesting. Education is surely very important.
Just what I wanted to say was that it’s easier to spend money on the built environment (in this case CPTED) than try to change/reform welfare, education or some other fundamental structure of society.
To your point about the win-win situation: I’ll try to visit this area later this month and take a look at it :)
Very good post. It’s good to see that Korea is out in front of making a very safe society even safer.
On the subject of sex-related crimes, there is one method of reducing those that is not mentioned in the CPTED, but which is said by many to be an effective method to reduce that kind of crime. According to a Korean friend of mine, sex-related crimes spiked in the city of Jinju after the city cracked down on the red-light district. My friend said that the public there actually demanded that law enforcement back off and let the red light district function as before, which, according to my friend, resulted in an the immediate drop of sex-related crimes back to the level they were at before the crackdown on the red-light district. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything (in English) on the internet to corroborate my friend’s story. So for now, I can’t say if it’s totally true or not. But it is worth thinking about.
Studies around the world addressing the question of whether or not legalized prostitution reduces sex-related crimes have yielded mixed results. Some studies say yes. Some say no. Again, it’s worth thinking about.
Oh James!
Your comment ended up in the spam-folder. Probably you used sex and prostitution too often :) Really sorry for that!
Thanks for sharing this great insight. I can imagine that having red-light district can have a positive impact on sex-related crimes but the effects (positive or negative) differ from country to country/culture to culture.
Really interesting post! Seoul is a huge city so this may take a long time to implement fully, if it ever is, but it is certainly an interesting project!
Thanks!