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‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft

BACKGROUND: Bicycle theft is a serious problem in many countries, and there is a lack of evidence concerning effective prevention strategies. Displaying images of ‘watching eyes’ has been shown to make people behave in more socially desirable ways in a number of settings, but it is not yet clear if...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Nettle, Daniel, Nott, Kenneth, Bateson, Melissa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520908/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23251615
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051738
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author Nettle, Daniel
Nott, Kenneth
Bateson, Melissa
author_facet Nettle, Daniel
Nott, Kenneth
Bateson, Melissa
author_sort Nettle, Daniel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Bicycle theft is a serious problem in many countries, and there is a lack of evidence concerning effective prevention strategies. Displaying images of ‘watching eyes’ has been shown to make people behave in more socially desirable ways in a number of settings, but it is not yet clear if this effect can be exploited for purposes of crime prevention. We report the results of a simple intervention on a university campus where signs featuring watching eyes and a related verbal message were displayed above bicycle racks. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We installed durable signs at three locations which had experienced high levels of bicycle theft, and used the rest of the university campus as a control location. Reported thefts were monitored for 12 months before and after the intervention. Bicycle thefts decreased by 62% at the experimental locations, but increased by 65% in the control locations, suggesting that the signs were effective, but displaced offending to locations with no signs. The Odds Ratio for the effect of the intervention was 4.28 (95% confidence interval 2.04–8.98), a large effect compared to other place-based crime prevention interventions. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: The effectiveness of this extremely cheap and simple intervention suggests that there can be considerable crime-reduction benefits to engaging the psychology of surveillance, even in the absence of surveillance itself. Simple interventions for high-crime locations based on this principle should be considered as an adjunct to other measures, although a possible negative consequence is displacement of offending.
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spelling pubmed-35209082012-12-18 ‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft Nettle, Daniel Nott, Kenneth Bateson, Melissa PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Bicycle theft is a serious problem in many countries, and there is a lack of evidence concerning effective prevention strategies. Displaying images of ‘watching eyes’ has been shown to make people behave in more socially desirable ways in a number of settings, but it is not yet clear if this effect can be exploited for purposes of crime prevention. We report the results of a simple intervention on a university campus where signs featuring watching eyes and a related verbal message were displayed above bicycle racks. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We installed durable signs at three locations which had experienced high levels of bicycle theft, and used the rest of the university campus as a control location. Reported thefts were monitored for 12 months before and after the intervention. Bicycle thefts decreased by 62% at the experimental locations, but increased by 65% in the control locations, suggesting that the signs were effective, but displaced offending to locations with no signs. The Odds Ratio for the effect of the intervention was 4.28 (95% confidence interval 2.04–8.98), a large effect compared to other place-based crime prevention interventions. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: The effectiveness of this extremely cheap and simple intervention suggests that there can be considerable crime-reduction benefits to engaging the psychology of surveillance, even in the absence of surveillance itself. Simple interventions for high-crime locations based on this principle should be considered as an adjunct to other measures, although a possible negative consequence is displacement of offending. Public Library of Science 2012-12-12 /pmc/articles/PMC3520908/ /pubmed/23251615 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051738 Text en © 2012 Nettle et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Nettle, Daniel
Nott, Kenneth
Bateson, Melissa
‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft
title ‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft
title_full ‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft
title_fullStr ‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft
title_full_unstemmed ‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft
title_short ‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft
title_sort ‘cycle thieves, we are watching you’: impact of a simple signage intervention against bicycle theft
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520908/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23251615
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051738
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