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Question: What makes connections (often deep ones) between diverse areas, has a network of equally diverse participants, and the potential to significantly impact the life of cities and their inhabitants? Answer: The researchers who combined to produce this special issue, of course. I was privileged to see them, and others, in action at a workshop convened in Stockholm by the Editor of this special issue, and to read the papers published here. I am no specialist in transport crime, but have a broad interest in research and practice in crime prevention and particular concern with the built environment and with design in general. The Editor has already capably summarised the content of the articles in the Introduction, which allows me, in what follows, to reflect on some of the many issues raised, both specific to transport and common to the whole of crime science.

This paper focuses on descriptions of crime prevention projects identified as ‘good practice’, and how they are captured and shared in knowledge bases, with the purpose of improving performance in the field as a whole. This relates both to evidence-based approaches to practice, and to growing attempts at explicit knowledge management. There are, however, fundamental issues in the transfer of effective practice in the crime prevention field, which few working knowledge bases have properly addressed. Evaluation often remains weak and descriptions of successful projects do not always contain the right information to help practitioners select and replicate projects suitable for transfer to their own contexts. Knowledge remains fragmentary. With these concerns in mind this paper systematically examines the projects contained in the UK Home Office ‘Effective Practice Database’, a repository of project descriptions volunteered and self-completed on a standard online form by practitioners. The Home Office descriptions (and their equivalents elsewhere) reveal significant limitations of richness, retrievability and reliability. Ways of addressing these issues are discussed, ranging from the media and processes of ‘knowledge-harvesting’ to the use of more purpose-designed frameworks such as 5Is. But the fundamental issue remains one of taking knowledge management seriously and investing sustained time, money and leadership effort to make it work.

Design against crime has always existed, but a combination of circumstances has led to its recent takeoff. Design seeks fitness for purpose and involves reconciling conflicting requirements, one of which may be crime prevention. The focus in this article is on design changes to the physical world while acknowledging links with social processes. The aim is to illustrate how design and prevention overlap, not to identify what works. After a review of contemporary schools of design, some of which can be criticized for narrowness and an uncertain empirical base, a broader definition of prevention is proposed that allows less restricted exploration of how different types of prevention employ design. The article then considers the process of preventing crime through design, discussing the special difficulties of designing when offenders can fight back. A wider-ranging look, from an ecological perspective, reveals interesting parallels between design against crime and other fields.

(2001). Future Imperfect: preparing for the crimes to come. Criminal Justice Matters: Vol. 46, New Developments in Criminal Justice, pp. 38-40.

It has been debated for some time whether lower rates of personal victimisation among the elderly are due to the fact that - because of fear or other reasons - they shield themselves from situations in which they might be victimised. This ‘differential exposure’ explanation is examined using data from the 1982 British Crime Survey which provides risks for different age/ sex groups and detailed information about respondents' ‘lifestyles’. Looking at evening ‘street’ offences, differences in risks between the age groups change very little when account is taken of different patterns of going out: irrespective of frequency, means of travel, destination and activity, the elderly are still less frequently victimised. Some theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.